Fortified wines are wines that have had their alcohol content increased beyond the percentage possible from fermentation by the addition of high-proof spirits (usually, but not always, brandy). The major types of fortified wines (port, sherry and madeira) all share their creation, at least in their modern forms, to the tastes and demands of the British wine market.
Port/Porto
Winemaking in what has become modern Portugal dates back to the second century B.C. when the invading Romans conquered the local Celtic tribe, the mead-drinking Lusitani, and established the province of Lusitania. In northern Lusitania they established the town of Portus at the mouth of the Douro River and planted vineyards along the riverbank.
In A.D. 409 Lusitania was overrun by invading barbarian tribes, including the Vandals, Visigoths and Swabians. The latter remained and ruled Lusitania, while the Romanized locals con- tinued to tend their vines. In the early eighth century the Muslim Moors swept up from the south and conquered the region, including the town at the mouth of the Douro River, now known as Oporto (“the port” in the newly evolving Portuguese lan- guage). Moorish rule was relatively brief in northern Portugal. Within the century Spanish conquistadores drove the Moors from the Douro River region as part of the Christian reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula. In the course of this 500-year drive southward, a Portuguese national identity, separate from the Spanish of Léon and Aragon, evolved, and the Spanish finally acknowledged an independent Portugal in 1143.
While all of this fighting was taking place farther south, the Douro region was left in relative peace. By the 16th century it was producing and exporting wines, some of which, according to chroniclers of the time, were strong, “aromatic” wines that could take several years of aging (unusual at a time when most wines were unstable and soured quickly).
In the mid-1600s England and France were involved in a series of wars that disrupted the substantial wine export busi- ness from Bordeaux. British merchants turned elsewhere for sources of wine, including the relatively close Douro region in Portugal. The first British merchant house was established in Oporto in 1692. (It still exists as the modern firm of Taylor, Fladgate & Yeatman.). The English taste for wines at the time was for strong wines with high alcohol levels. Almost from the start some of the Douro wines exported to England were “spiked” with brandy, a procedure similar to that of sherry and madeira and done both to stabilize the wine for shipping and to cater to British tastes. But unlike these two other fortified wines, port (as the wine exported from Oporto was now called) had the brandy added during fermentation, rather than after-
ward. Adoption of this procedure was gradual, and not without controversy. But by the mid-19th century it had become the norm.
The English merchants in Oporto established a substantial local community, dominating the port wine export trade. As this trade grew through the 18th century, demand frequently outstripped supply, and quality suffered as some farmers and merchants adulterated their wine with inferior wines from out- side the Douro district, and with additives such as baga, the dark, red juice of the elderberry. The Portuguese government finally stepped in and established a monopoly in 1756 that set the limits for the growing regions for port grapes, classified all of the wine, set prices, controlled how much wine could be exported, determined who could export, and controlled the production of brandy to be used for fortifying the port. This monopoly lasted only into the mid-19th century before dis- solving amidst charges of corruption, but its reforms remained and helped to further shape the development of port.
The Victorian Era was the golden age of port. The phyllox- era blight in Europe, beginning in the 1870s, slowed port pro- duction until the use of grafted American rootstock brought the disease under control. By the early 1900s port was consumed by all segments of English society, with the upper classes mak- ing vintage port part of their basic lifestyle. The French favored ruby and tawny ports as apéritifs, the Germans mixed ports with herbs as digestifs, and the Americans drank ports as “tonic restoratives.” The Russian aristocracy single-handedly created and maintained the market for sweet white ports.
World War I, the Great Depression and changing tastes altered the nature of the port trade. The Russian market van- ished, as did the American market for “tonic” ports. The English trade has diminished, as the working class inclination for ruby port as a mixer (port and lemonade being but one example) is but a fraction of what it used to be Presently the French are the world’s leading consumers of port (accounting for around 40% of total production). Challenges from compet- ing wines, particularly from the more market-savvy sherry shippers, also has cut into port’s share of the wine market.
Still, as some old markets contract, others continue to open. Portugal itself now consumes a third of port production, and the markets in northern Europe continue to grow. The United States accounts for only about 2% of the total port market by volume, but most of that is for vintage and the more expensive tawny ports.
Madeira
The Madeira Islands are a group of subtropical volcanic islands in the Atlantic Ocean 350 miles off the coast of
Morocco. The Portuguese first seriously explored them in 1419 and soon returned to colonize the islands, beginning with the main island of Madeira. The settlers were faced with a thick forest, which they more or less burned down over the course of seven years. The resulting mix of volcanic soil and ash proved to be extremely fertile and the island was replanted in tropical plants and crops, with grapes, sugar cane and bananas being the dominant crops. By 1460, the first wine had been exported to Europe. Madeira wines, particularly malm- sey (made from the Malvasia grape), soon became a favorite of the royal courts of England and France. Malmsey earned a dis- tinctive place in English royal history in the mid-15th century when King Edward IV is alleged to have had his treasonous brother George, Duke of Clarence, drowned in a butt (a large cask) of malmsey because that was the duke’s favorite tipple.
Madeira, as part of Portugal, shared that nation’s place in the world wine market. Along with port it filled the vacuum in the English market left by the withdrawal of Bordeaux wine during the various wars between Britain and France between the 17th and early 19th centuries. English merchants set up shipping houses on Madeira which, while it was part of Portugal, was not actually in Europe, a legal technicality that allowed local shippers to avoid British tariffs on foreign goods shipped to British colonies. The American colonies in particu- lar became a major market for Madeira wines. The signers of the Declaration of Independence reportedly celebrated their deed with a toast of madeira.
The first quarter of the 19th century was Madeira’s golden age, with sales in Britain and Western Europe second only to port. Starting in the 1830s a gradual decline set in, helped along by competition from cheap imitations from southern France and an assortment of vine diseases, particularly oïdium and phylloxera, that wiped out whole vintages and drove numerous shippers out of business.
Today madeira is the odd man out among the three major groups of fortified wines. Its largest market is in France, but there it is primarily used in cooking (Sauce Madère is a major component of haute cuisine). Germany imports a fair amount, as still does England. But the great American market, where George Washington was reputed to end his day with a bedside glass of malmsey, has all but vanished. A faint echo of this dis- tant past can still be heard, though, in Charleston, South Carolina, where once a year the 200-plus-year-old Madeira Society holds its annual banquet to honor the favorite wine of the Founding Fathers.
Sherry
“This wine of Spain creepeth subtilly.”
— Geoffrey Chaucer, The Pardoner’s Tale from Canterbury Tales
Sherry wine is produced in the far southwest corner of Spain around the town of Jerez in the province of Cádiz, an ancient region whose capital city, also named Cádiz, is reput- ed to have been founded by Phoenicians almost 3,000 years
ago. The Phoenicians, who originally came from Canaan, are credited with bringing the cultivated grape to the Iberian Peninsula.
In the Roman era, the wines of Andalusia, then the Roman province of Baetica, were exported in great quantities to Rome. The Roman city of Xericium, thought by many to be the predecessor of Jerez, was the regional center of the wine export trade. The invasion of the Iberian Peninsula by barbar- ian tribes in A.D. 409 ended Roman rule. Andalusia (the “land of the Vandals”) came under the rule of the Visigoths, who remained in control until the Moorish invasion of the eighth century put the entire region firmly under Muslim control for the next 500 years. The Moors, although they were Muslims, were not immune to the appeal of wine and permitted their Christian subjects to continue to tend their vineyards and make their wine.
The Spanish drive of reconquest reached Jerez in 1264, and the triumphant King Alphonso X divided the local lands and vineyards among his followers and urged them to plant new vineyards. The local wine trade flourished and soon took in the nearby towns of Puerto de Santa Maria and Sanlúcar de Barrameda.
Wine exports to England probably began in the 14th centu- ry and grew to a substantial level during the late 15th century. English merchants were firmly established in Sanúlucar by the 16th century, where they remained, despite the constantly changing political climate as England and Spain fought a series of hot and cold wars during the 16th and 17th centuries. Even the sacking of Cádiz by Sir Francis Drake in 1587, dur- ing which he hauled off 2,900 butts (around 450,000 gallons) of sherry, proved to be a blessing in disguise. Drake flooded the English market with the looted wine, introducing sherry to many new consumers and greatly increasing the long-term demand for the wines.
The English of this time called these wines “sack” after the Spanish world sacar (which roughly means to take out–to export). The contemporary sherry brand Dry Sack is an hom- age to this archaic term. The word sherry, which slowly replaced sack, is an English corruption of Jerez. England became the dominant market for sherry, reaching an amazing 92% of the export trade in 1844.
The phylloxera blight reached Spain in 1875 and Jerez in 1894. The resulting devastation and new competition from imitation sherries brought a slump in the sherry trade, but the 1920s brought a renewed interest, particularly in the light-bod- ied fino sherries.
The comfortable, clubby world of sherry bodegas (produc- ers, or houses) began to change in the 1960s when corporate raiders bought up and absorbed many of the old-line sherry houses. The largest of these holding companies, Ruiz-Mateos Hermanos S.A. (RUMASAfor short) grew to control a third of the entire sherry trade before collapsing in 1983. Multinational giants now dominate the modern sherry trade, but it is heart- ening to know that members of the old sherry house families are still managing many of these enterprises.
