Warre's Port Warre's Traditional Late Bottled Vintage 2008
Brand: Warre's Port
Carefully selected from the finest wines of a very good year, this port is aged in oak casks for 4 years before being bottled without fining or filtration. This ensures that, as with Vintage Port, the fruit concentration is retained. Once bottled, Warre's Traditional Late Bottled Vintage Port is left to mature for a further 5 years in Warre's own cellars before being offered for sale. It is this prolonged ageing in its own bottle that gives this particular LBV so much outstanding style and complexity. Around 1670, the year in which Warre's was established, an embargo was levied on French wines as a result of the deteriorating relationship between France and England. The founders of Warre's settled in Northern Portugal in the town of Viana do Castelo at the mouth of the River Lima. They traded English woollen goods and dried cod in return for the produce of the Minho district and beyond, primarily wine. War in 1689 created additional demand for Portuguese wines, which forced many Oporto merchants including Warre to explore the Douro region, an area known for its big black tannic wines. The Methuen Treaty was signed in 1703 confirming that England would defend Portugal in the war of Spanish succession. Preferential treatment for English textiles was also agreed in return for a duty on Portuguese wines that was a third less than that levied on France. Access to the Douro region remained difficult as there were no roads over the mountains and the river was prone to severe flooding. The quality of the wines gradually improved. The wines, which were being fermented to dryness, were largely austere and very dark in colour. Although the first apparent evidence of fortification occurred in a monastery in Lamego in 1678, most merchants did not add brandy to the wine before the 18th century and even then it was only used in an attempt to ensure that wine arrived at its destination in good condition. In 1729, the first member of the Warre family arrived in Oporto. William Warre was born in 1706 at Fort St. George in Madras in India. He became a partner in the firm and henceforth it was known as Messrs Clarke, Thornton and Warre. William Warre was the first British resident to acquire land in Vila Nova da Gaia, across the river from Oporto, later to become the centre for the port companies' lodges and administrative offices. During that time the Douro region suffered a period of over-production, which brought on a slump in the trade and a dramatic fall in prices. The Marques de Pombal, Prime Minister at the time, stepped in in 1756 to safeguard the livelihood of the Douro growers. Pombal created the Real Companhia, a virtual state monopoly, which excluded the English shippers. This action was followed by a bloody riot in the streets of Oporto known as the 'Tipplers Revolt' which was largely blamed on the British. Despite this revolt a series of measures were implemented to regulate the production of Port including the drawing up of a boundary around the...
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