Port Wine: Portugal's Douro Valley & the History of Port

Port is a fortified wine from the remote vineyards in Portugal's Douro Valley. Here, in the Douro Valley, time has almost stood still. You will not find the latest wine making techniques and fancy equipment. Instead, you will find a wine industry much the way it was over a hundred years ago. Yet, in spite of it, or because of it, vintage Port is one of the world's greatest wines.

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Port takes its name from the city of Oporto that is situated at the mouth of the 560-mile long Rio Douro or River of Gold. Although many port-style wines are made around the world – most notably Australia, South Africa and the United States – the strict usage of the terms Port or Porto refer only to wines produced in Portugal. It is these wines that we will explore here.

Pronunciation Guide

Baixo-Corgo [BY-shoe-Korgo]
Barcos rabelos [BAR-kos ha-BEL-os]
Cima-Corgo [SEEMA-korgo]
Colheita [col-YATE-a]
Engarrafadores [engarra-fa-DOR-ez]
Lagar [la-GAR]
Porto [PORT-o]
Quinta [KEEN-ta]
Tinto [TEEN-toe]
Touriga Nacional [too-REE-gah na-SHUN-al]
Tinta Roriz [teen-ta HOR-eez]
Vinha [VEEN-yah]

The History of Port
The history of Port begins in the 17th-century. The Portuguese of course, had been making wine for hundreds of years since the Romans introduced wine to the Iberian Peninsula in the first century B.C. And they were making quite a bit of it. By the beginning of the 17th-century, they were shipping as many as 1,200,000 cases of wine down the Douro River to Oporto each year. From there it was sold throughout Portugal, to the Dutch, and to the British. But it was the geopolitics of Europe in the middle of the 17th-century, that caused the British to develop Portuguese wine into port.