28 Port anD the Douro
the golDen DeCaDes
The mid-nineteenth century proved to be something of a golden age for Port. Production reached
100,000 pipes in the early 1840s, of which around a quarter was exported, mainly to Britain.
Port, mostly drunk young and often mulled, became a commonplace drink at all levels of society.
At Oxford it was known as ‘Bishop’. At one stage the Companhia intervened in order to stem
over-production, purchasing 20,000 pipes of lower-quality wine from Douro farmers. But at
the opposite end of the spectrum, the practice of declaring wines from exceptional years gained
momentum with 1847, 1851, 1858, 1863 and 1868 proving to be some of the finest vintages
of the century. These wines came to be appreciated not so much for their youthful vigour but
for the character and complexity that they gained with age. An auction catalogue from Christie’s
dated 3 December 1860 lists 120 dozen of ‘Rare 1820 Port Wine’ from Burmester.
Under the constitutional monarchy of Maria II, life became easier for the British
community in Oporto and they began to mix much more freely with the Portuguese.
Following the demise of the ancien régime, society became more open and much less
inclined to the extravagances of religious devotion that had affronted the foreign mercantile
community in the past. According to a visitor at the time, the British ‘moved in the higher
circles of Oporto society’ and ‘inhabited some of the best houses in the most airy parts
of the city’. In the mid-1840s, firms like Sandeman, Martinez and Quarles Harris were
regularly shipping well in excess of 1,500 pipes of Port a year.
Disease anD Devastation
The good times did not last. In 1852 oidium (powdery mildew) first made an appearance
near Régua, spreading rapidly throughout the Douro. It began, according to Henry Vizetelly
who visited Portugal in the 1870s, by imparting ‘a strange bitter flavour’ to the wines.
Vineyard yields began to fall but due to an excess of production the disease did not greatly
affect the Port trade. However, the growers suffered. Unable to survive three poor harvests in
a row, a number of properties (among them Quinta do Noval) changed hands. Production
at Dona Antónia’s Quinta do Vesúvio fell from an average of 313.5 pipes in 1853 to 69
pipes of mostly poor-quality wine in 1856. In order to stem the fall in production, new
vineyards were planted in the Douro Superior where the oidium attack was less virulent.
A number of papers were written on the subject of oidium including one by Port shipper
James Dow entitled An Inquiry into the Vine Fungus with Suggestions as to a Remedy. He
issued a farsighted ‘warning’ to the Portuguese people reminding them that ‘we hold no
production of the soil by fixed tenure’ and that ‘apathy ... must be the worst fungus of the
two; for while Oidium tuckeri may be converted into a friend, the other must be for ever
a deadly enemy’. Although oidium could never in future be described as ‘a friend’ it was
brought under control fairly quickly by the use of sulphur (enxofre).
There was much worse to come. The advent of the steamship meant that hitherto
unknown pests and diseases were able to survive the voyage across the Atlantic. By far the
most devastating of these was phylloxera, which was first discovered in a Hammersmith