INTERNATIONAL WINE & WHISKY CONSULTANCY

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England and Portugal have long been trading partners, and by the 16th century England was routinely exchanging bacalhau (dried salt cod), wool and other goods for red wine from northern Portugal.

 

Wars with France and embargoes on French goods in the 17th century increased the demand for red wines to replace the French claret that had been gracing the better British tables.

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Portuguese red wine – known as Port, since it was shipped from Oporto – had a rather uneven reputation, to put it kindly, and given the patriotic necessity to eschew French wines, the search was on to source better quality wine from Portugal. The wine was apparently pretty harsh, austere stuff, and prone to spoilage in transit.

 

At some point in the 17th century winemakers or shippers began adding brandy to the wine casks to address this issue, and there are apocryphal tales of monks in the Douro who added the brandy during fermentation, in the same way it is added today.