In the House of Port

A guided tour through the Port and Douro Wines Institute, located in the historical center of Porto. The extract of the article writen by José João Santos is very interesting. It dives into one of the organisations responsible for giving such good reputation to Port Wine for almost two centuries, and yet, only in recent years people started to notice that it was there (which is someting quite difficult because the building is very big). A small guided tour to the heart of the Institute, Port and Douro Wines, finishing with a small list of its main exporters.

Here we learn that Port is not only in Gaia.

It is a place not very known to the public, which, for that reason, is important to get to know. There works many of the services of the institute that treats Port Wine (and Douro Wine since 2003), among laboratories, a tasting chamber and even a library with a valuable archive. (…)

It is one of the buildings that gives the historical center of Porto its unique look, classified has World Heritage by UNESCO since 1996. Its order of construction was given much earlier, in 1843, to be the headquarters of the Commercial Banc of Porto. The Port and Douro Wines Institute (IVDP) would be created only in the XX century, in 1933, and two years after, in 1935, it occupied its current installations, after being working temporarily in the neighbor Palácio da Bolsa, other of the city emblems, also very connected to the wine and the entrepreneurial spirit of Porto.

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“It would be almost a crime keeping the doors of this building closed. We have to open it more and more, because it’s an element of the city”(…)to justify one of the thoughts claiming the building as the “first place open to visit and in contact with Porto Wine before the visit to the cellars, in Vila Nova de Gaia”. It would make sense, let us add, if not for the city of Porto being under a remarkable affluence of tourists all year around. “it would be like an introduction to Port Wine”, completes Manuel de Novaes Cabral (current president of the Institute).

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Besides the possibility of acquiring wine bottles of several producers and Port Wine Houses, the store in the Institute possesses a tasting room which allows visitors to contact with sets and different categories of Port Wine, from the 2€ ones (white and LBV) to the 5,70€ ones (a Ruby Reserve, a LBV, a Tawny 10 years and a Tawny 20 years). The visitor can also acquire publications regarding Port Wine and the Douro Demarcated Region, consult book collections in the impressive Institute library, watch videos that illustrate the Douro region and the making of wines produced in set region and even request for a guided tour through the laboratories and the Tasting Chamber.

The IVDP laboratory was created simultaneously with the Institute. A team of 35 elements analyses annually an average of 8,000 processes, which equals something like 150,000 analytic parameters. The Tasting Chamber tastes daily, in the morning, a maximum of 20 Port wines and three times a week, in the afternoon, DOC Douro wines. Not every tasters of Port taste Douro wine and no taster of Douro wine can taste Port wine. (…)Each Port wine takes two to three days to be evaluated. In the case of DOC wines, five days.

The importance of rigor

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”The work consists in coordinating a group of tasters, orientate their training, to assess external tendencies in order to have precision in the tasting of the wines, reflecting what the companies and its consumers want. We try to have a high level of demand”, explains Bento Amaral, one of the faces of the institute. “The average quality has risen greatly, both in Vintage Wines as in Reserves. There’s a smaller percentage of rejections: on average, 5% in Port wines and 16% in Douro wines”.

A task for a generation

Little by little, the president Manuel Novaes Cabral has been opening the Institute to other cultural manifestations, such as book presentations or poetry sessions. “We have sought to be open to many things, including cultural activities, bringing close together different audiences to Port Wine”, he says. Another project goes to the creation of a room with photographs of the previous IVDP presidents, “a kind of gallery that cherishes this institution”.

(…) the president of IVDP acknowledges the difficulties in communication when questioned on how Port Wine can, and should, reach the consumer. We stand before a wine full with many particularities, which possesses two main families (tawnies and rubys) but also a series of other factors: age, single harvest, the Reserves, the Single Quinta, whites, and, more recently, rosés, types of maturing…

“Port Wine is a very complex reality and very hard to transmit, sometimes even including some specialists. We often complain about this complexity, in communicational terms, but this complexity is good. When communicating we have to be able to transform this apparent difficulty into an advantage. There is work to be done for the Institute but also for its brands”, the president of the IVDP considers.

To desecrate Port Wine is another inevitable theme. “Port Wine doesn’t want to lose its traditional and even ritual character, but we want to find new consumers through, of course, some innovation. And the Port Wine sector has been innovating, with the example of rosé, in the market for the last six years, or even cocktails”, he adds.

On the matter of demand and customer service, Manuel de Novaes Cabral considers that there have been a favorable development, starting with the city of Porto. “Ten years ago I would it find very difficult counting with my fingers the venues that knew how to serve Port. Fortunately, now I don’t have enough toes nor fingers to count them. There’s a general development in the food sector, most of the middle/high class restaurants in the city have an acceptable, good, and, in some cases, excellent service (…)”.

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“It’s a task for a generation”, claims Manuel de Novaes Cabral, emphasizing the importance of making the portuguese market, on different levels, a priority.

“Now, and in recent years, Portugal represents 14% to 15% of the market of Port Wine. That’s very little. That’s why I say that the portuguese market is yet to be explored. Port has always been made to be exported and is not by chance that even today is served in inadequate glasses – we all know the importance of glasses and temperature -, being often treated as a liquor”, he insists. (…) “Our priority isn’t to sell more, but to sell better”, claims Manuel de Novaes Cabral.

The main markets of Port Wine

A list of markets of Port Wine, between January and August 2013, according to data provided to the magazine WINE by the IVDP.

• 1º France - (around 50 million euros, with a share of 24.8%). Special categories represent 16%.
• 2º Portugal – (30.2 million euros, with a share of 15.1%). Special categories represent 17.2%.
• 3º Netherlands – (24 million euros, with a share of 12.1%). Special categories represent 17.2%.
• 4º USA – (~19 million euros, with a share of 9.5%). Special categories represent 78.2%.
• 5º Belgium – (~19 million euros, with a share of 9.4%). Special categories represent 16.3%.

According to the data provided by the IVDP, between January and August of 2013 the special categories represented 34.9% of total sell of Port Wine.

The main 11 markets (with a share superior to 1% of sales in quantity and value) represent, together, 90.4% of the total commercialization in value and 93.5% of the total commercialization in quantity. (…)

page 93-102, Wine magazine, November/December 2013