Port anD the Douro uP to Date 11who inventeD Port?
in 1678 two wine merchants apparently found the abbot of Lamego monastery adding
brandy during the fermentation rather than at the end. this would have killed the active
yeasts, thereby leaving some of the natural grape sugar in the wine. no names are
recorded – but if they had been, the abbot at Lamego would surely be as famous as
dom Perignon, the monk at hautvillers who is credited with fixing the natural sparkle
in champagne.faced competition from Lisbon and ‘Red Barrabar Lisbon’ (‘very strong, extraordinarily
good and neat’) commanded 6d a gallon more than Red Oporto.
Most of the Ports shipped to England in the early years of the eighteenth century
were dark and austere reds, fermented to dryness, earning them the name ‘black-strap’.
In a determined effort to make sure that the wines arrived at their destination in good
condition, many merchants would add a generous measure of brandy probably raising the
level of alcohol to around at least 15 or 16% by volume. An early winemaking handbook,
A Agricultura das Vinhas published in 1720, recommends the addition of three gallons
(13.6 litres) of brandy to each pipe of wine although this rose to between 36 and 48 litres
per pipe during the course of the eighteenth century. (This compares with the 115 litres
per pipe added to arrest the fermentation and produce Port today).
Baga anD BulloCk’s BlooD
Such was England’s control over Portugal during the first half of the seventeenth century
that, at times, it was treated like a colony. Thomas Woodmass reports as much at the turn
of the century warning of ‘bad feeling against us ... as the principal trade of the country is
in our hands, but that the treaties of commerce are in our favour’. As annual shipments rose
to around 25,000 pipes, an association of shippers was formed in 1727 to regulate the wine
trade and control the prices paid to growers. This led to accusation and counter-accusation
as experimentation led to adulteration. The use of elderberry (baga de sabugueiro or merely
‘baga’ for short) became widespread. This controversial practice crops up time and again
in the history of the Port industry (see page 137). According to John Croft, who wrote A
Treatise on the Wines of Portugal, it began in the early 1700s when Peter Bearsley found that
elderberry juice greatly enhanced the colour of the wine. By the 1730s sugar was also being
added and baga came to be used to bolster both the colour and flavour of wines overstretched
by poor-quality spirit. Worse still, wine from Spain (‘like bullock’s blood’) and raisin wines
mixed with British spirits extracted from malt were passed off or blended into Port. Villa
Maior quotes Rebello de Fonseca who blames the English merchants for having ‘ruined
the purity, great reputation and credit of the wine of Alto Douro enjoyed in the north
[i.e. England], by blending with it weak, raw, colourless and inferior wines of Valle de