Port anD the Douro uP to Date 43Unlike much of Europe, which underwent a social revolution in the wake of the
Second World War, Portugal, under the firm authoritarian grip of Salazar, seemed to go
backwards in time. One Port shipper who returned to Oporto after war service remembers
a ‘time warp’ with an ‘upstairs-downstairs world’ of domestic service. William (‘Bill’)
Warre, who first went to Oporto in 1948, recalls a feeling of comparative luxury along
with ‘Victorian service’. He reached Oporto by cargo steamer which crossed the bar of
the Douro when the tide permitted and moored at the quayside at Vila Nova de Gaia,
stacked high with pipes of Port. With trade remaining slack Warre spent much of his
time shooting partridge either on the Aveiro marshes south of Oporto or in the Douro.
Wyndham Fletcher of Cockburn’s records ‘There was no new business ... we spent our
time examining stock; in other words tasting through our old vintage Ports!’
In the Douro, the quintas continued to make their wines in the time-honoured manner,
trodden by foot in granite lagares, most of which had been built in the nineteenth century
or earlier. Cars were still something of a rarity and, until the late 1950s, many shippers
preferred to visit outlying properties on foot or by mule rather than risk their vehicles on
the appalling roads and tracks. Sarzedinho, a village in the Torto valley producing some
outstanding wines, was only accessible by stepping stones. Despite the difficult times,
a number of Port shippers clubbed together to build a bridge across the river in order
to reach the vineyards. Between 1945 and 1949 the Salazar government continued to
legislate, adopting Álvaro Moreira da Fonseca’s points system to classify vineyards from
grade A to I, a system that is still in use today (see pages 58–62). At the same time the
Casa do Douro laid the foundations for the formation of co-operatives to create an outlet
for hard-pressed growers.
The continuing depression in the late 1940s and throughout 1950s meant that many
shippers fell on desperately hard times. Michael Broadbent, former head of Christie’s
Wine Department in London, recalls the gloom that pervaded his first visit to Oporto
in 1953:
‘The view from the old British Club was splendid, but not the surroundings. The poverty
in Oporto was appalling with barefoot children in rags. More to the point, most shippers
were on their last legs, some on the point of bankruptcy; also staying at the Club was a
management consultant who was as glum as his clients across the river. The feeling we
all had was that the Port trade was on the verge of extinction.’Throughout the 1950s Port shipments remained static at a little over 200,000 hectolitres
per annum. Exports of inexpensive Ports to France and Belgium/Luxembourg increased but
with the Americanisation of taste, shipments to English-speaking markets remained static
or fell. With less than 20 per cent of the Douro’s production fortified to make Port, Mateus
Rosé was the main beneficiary. The Port shippers were further wounded by the sudden
imposition of the so-called Lei do Terço in September 1959, which required each shipper
to maintain a three-to-one stock ratio. In other words, for every pipe of Port sold in a year,
a shipper needed to have two in the cellar in order to comply with the law. Port producers