Check out for those of us unlucky to be going home today and onto the coach for the short journey across the river to Vila Nova de Gaia. We were visiting Graham’s Port Lodge, and we started our visit looking at a display of memorabilia from the history of the Graham and Symington families.
Symingtons now own Graham’s (along with Dow’s, Warre’s and Quinta do Vesuvio – in total about 30% of the entire production of the Douro). The family took the lead on the videos that explained the making of Port, from the vineyards to the winery to the lodges where the wines were stored, blended and matured. We then walked through the cellar, built in 1890, where 7 million litre of Port are resting, about half in barrel the rest in bottle.
We walked past huge chestnut vats where young ruby ports are kept, and the much smaller oak barrels for tawny ports and the vast vats used to blend wines prior to bottling.
In the Colheita room we found barrels of single harvest tawnies dating back to 1935, and two that were from 1882: the third had been bottled and a crystal decanter of ‘Ne Oublie’ recently sold for €16,000. Needless to say we didn’t taste that!
In the vintage port cellar we learnt about the process undertaken to ‘declare a vintage’, and we the hunted out bottles from years that were meaningful to us. The bottles are monitored carefully to ensure the corks remain in good condition, necessary because there were bottles from vintages back into the beginning of the 20th Century. Their oldest vintage still in a bottle is 1868 – we also didn’t taste that!
What we did taste was a line up of four super Graham’s Ports: a vibrant Late Bottled Vintage from 2018, a super concentrated Quinta de Malvedos single estate vintage from the same year, and two tawnies: a 20 year old and a 30 year old, both so smooth, with lovely evolved flavours.
Following some fresh air on the terrace, looking across to Porto, we took the coach down to the quayside and walked along to Quevedo where we had a very comprehensive tasting along with some platters of cheeses, meats and olives.
A rosé port and tonic cleared our palates, two still Douro DOC wines whetted our appetites, and finally we worked our way through a super succession of five ports: White, LBV, Vintage 2013, 10 year old Tawny and to finish a 40 year old Tawny.
I think the group split pretty much 50/50 on preference for ruby or tawny, but that wasn’t the point. Our couple of days focussing on the Douro gave us an enhanced understanding and appreciation of its still and fortified wines, and unfortunately for some the realisation that the half finished bottle of vintage port from last Christmas in the cabinet is destined for the sink. But what fun we will have choosing and drinking ports this year!
On leaving Quevedo we said our goodbyes to those not going to the airport, and were on our way. Remembering however that we had promised Luis we would come back next year!