26 Port anD the Douro
Death on the Douro
Although Joseph Forrester married in 1836, his English-born wife died of typhus in 1847
shortly after having given birth to their seventh child. He never remarried but sought female
company from Antónia Adelaide Ferreira. The nature of their liaison will always be open
to interpretation, but there can be no doubt that they supervised the planting of vineyards
together and spent a considerable amount of time in each other’s company. Dona Antónia
was clearly a strong and single-minded character and this side of her personality must have
appealed to Forrester.
Dona Antónia accompanied Forrester on 12 May 1861 when he left Quinta do Vesúvio
travelling downstream by boat. At Cachão de Valeira, a narrow and forbidding stretch of
the river that was then a white-water rapid, the boat capsized. Forrester was said to have
been wearing a money belt laden with gold sovereigns that must have weighed him down
as he struggled to swim to the riverbank. He apparently reached the side and grasped a
rock but was pulled down by the fast-flowing current and never seen again. Dona Antónia
and the other members of the party survived, the ladies buoyed up by their crinolines.
There are a number of versions of this tragic episode and the circumstances surrounding
Certainly the altercation generated by his pamphlet in 1844 continued until his death
seventeen years later.
Apart from Shaw (who was said to favour French wines anyway), few of Forrester’s
backers, from small growers to His Eminence the Cardinal, can have been in any way
conversant with the British market and the growing demand for a sweet, fortified style
of Port. Indeed Forrester’s own firm was accused by others of shipping wine that was
unstable and had to be returned by his customers. Oswald Crawfurd, the British Consul
in Oporto, summed up the debate with the benefit of hindsight in Portugal Old and New
(published in 1880):
‘The true point at issue has always seemed to me to be, not whether port can be made
without the addition of distilled wine, but whether wine so made is worth making or
worth drinking. Such wine is an unmarketable product, and I think deservedly so. It
is a strong, rough and comparatively flavourless liquor. If a man were to add six drops
of ink to a glass of very common red burgundy he would get something exceedingly like
unfortified port. Every Oporto wine merchant has tried the experiment of unfortified
Port Wine. It is a pity they cannot sell it for they would quickly make their fortunes; but
the plain truth is that it is an abominable drink.’Forrester’s idiosyncratic views on Port died with him and unfortified wines from the Douro
received little or no attention until Fernando Nicolau de Almeida revived the tradition with
Barca Velha a century later. The subsequent history of the Douro’s unfortified wines is taken
up in Chapter 6.