image of both Port and Douro wines worldwide, but it is not the cure-all for the region’s
problems. It has to be hoped that future tourist development will be tightly regulated.
Portugal has never been very good at conservation but the World Heritage status granted
to the centre of Oporto, the heart of the vineyard region and the Côa Valley has raised
awareness of the unique character of the Douro, both at home and abroad.
Like so much of European agriculture, the Port industry is tied up with rules and
regulations that are refreshingly absent from much of the New World. Many of Portugal’s
state institutions and much of the country’s legislation date back to the 1930s and 1950s.
While it is fair to say that the benefício system has served the Port trade reasonably well for
over sixty years, there is now a clear need for fundamental and far-reaching reform. The
benefício may have helped to keep Port production and sales in check (avoiding the grape
glut that so undermined Sherry) but it takes no account of Douro wines, an increasingly
important part of the overall equation. At the same time as limiting the production of
Port, the authorities have allowed the total area of vineyards in the Douro to grow out
of all proportion. When I wrote the first edition of this book in 1998 there were 38,000
hectares of vineyard. This has risen to over 45,000 in 2011. This planting has taken place
at the same time as yields have increased with the new, mostly EU-subsidised, vineyards
planted in the 1990s, which are now in their prime. At the time of writing there is a huge
imbalance between the production and sale of Douro wines, leading to a chronic over-
supply of grapes. Whereas the price of Port grapes is controlled by the benefício, grapes for
Douro wine are market priced, and the Port shippers complain that by paying an artificial
price for Port grapes they are effectively subsidising Douro wine. The consequences of a
continuing decline in Port sales do not seem to have been considered by the authorities.
The consolidation of the Port trade into five groups brought strong and mostly healthy
competition to the trade. With many fewer brands, the business is much less fragmented
than it was. Two family-owned groups, the Symington Family Estates and the Fladgate
Partnership, dominate the market for premium Port. In spite of the overall decline in sales,
the so-called ‘Special Categories’ continue to grow. From just 5 per cent of world sales in
1990, the Special Categories have risen to account for 20 per cent of sales by volume and
37 per cent by value. This growth has been based on sensible marketing and a substantial
increase in the overall quality of grapes produced in the Douro. With the new vineyards
planted in the 1980s and 1990s now in their prime and technology paying dividends in
the winery, it is fair to say that the quality of Port has never been better. But the premium
market is concentrated in too few hands. The Symingtons and Fladgate Partnership together
produce nearly two-thirds of the Special Categories market between them.
The Port trade is often thought of as being stuck in an eighteenth-century time warp,
but in fact it has changed more in the last three decades than at any time over the past
three hundred years. Not all the changes have been for the better. Much of the vineyard
planting carried out in the 1980s was badly conceived and is going to be costly to put
right. But on past record the Port industry has had a remarkable capacity for reinventing
itself and renewing its appeal. The Port shippers are by no means in an ivory tower and
the trade in general is so much less isolated than it was when I first came to know it in
272 Port anD the Douro