Original subtitles

male narrator: This is a story about port wine,

which was invented in Portugal.

Curiously, though, our story begins in England.

In an ancient cellar in the city of London,

deep underneath the medieval Vintners' Hall,

preparations are in hand for a special event.

Adrian Bridge, managing director of Taylor's,

one of the most prestigious port wine houses,

is personally supervising the decanting

of 35 bottles of his valuable 1985 vintage.

- This court is summoned, pursuant

to the company's charters, for the installation

of its officers for the ensuing year.

Gentlemen, please be upstanding.

narrator: Upstairs, final rehearsals

are taking place for the installation

of the new master

of The Worshipful Company of Distillers.

- David, I congratulate you.

- Thank you. All good luck.

[rousing orchestral music]

narrator: The London wine and spirit trade

have come to pay their respects.

*

London has been a pivotal market for fine wine

since the Renaissance.

[bugle playing]

The nearest place to find good wine was France,

but in the past, England always seemed

to be at war with France, so they had to look

further afield to their oldest ally,

Portugal.

[instrumental music]

*

Port is a sweet wine fortified with brandy,

originally to help it withstand the voyage to England.

It was created by English merchants

much like these gentlemen here.

It's part of English tradition.

Today it's still almost obligatory

for loyal toasts to the Crown.

- The Queen.

all: The Queen.

narrator: But tonight also celebrates

the British Royal Navy, which defended

the port trade against the French

for more than 200 years.

[lively orchestral music]

*

- Would you like a Malteser, sir?

[laughter]

*

- Lovely, absolutely delicious.

*

narrator: This is the classic image of port wine:

an after-dinner drink, a man's drink,

a curiously British drink

in spite of its obvious Portuguese origins.

all: * Rule, Britannia

* Britannia rules the waves

* Britons never, never, never *

* Shall be slaves

narrator: Well, so it is a very British drink,

but out in Portugal, it's another world.

[gentle orchestral music]

*

Deep in a forest in central Portugal is Bussaco...

Built as a royal palace and hunting lodge

about 100 years ago.

It was just ready to receive its first royal guests

when there was a revolution.

Since the 1920s, it's been a grand hotel.

They've been making their own wines here

since the hotel opened.

The oldest date from 1924.

There are more than 300,000 bottles in this cellar.

Bussaco is a famous place in Portugal

to hold a grand event.

[choral music]

*

Tonight is the birthday of one of Portugal's

most brilliant winemakers, Dirk Niepoort.

For this occasion, he's been pulling treasures

out of his family's cellar that represent

some of the best wine and port ever made

by anyone anywhere.

His guests come from around the world

and include his long-time friend Martine Saunier,

who imports his wines into America.

Dirk Niepoort represents the modern face

of Portugal's wine.

For him, port is only part of the story.

His aim is to create a revolution in winemaking.

Portugal is home to more than 400 native grape varieties,

and so far, they've only scratched the surface

of what's possible.

For Dirk and those who think like him,

the future possibilities are fantastic.

The tastes and blends could be

like nothing yet created on Earth.

*

[cheers and applause]

[relaxed orchestral music]

*

Port takes its name from the ancient city

of Oporto on Portugal's Atlantic coast.

It sits on the River Douro.

It's a northern city, a manufacturing city,

a no-nonsense, granite-based city.

The new town of Gaia was built

on the opposite bank of the river

in the 18th century

to accommodate the new boom industry of the time.

This is where they store and blend the ports.

To this day, in every one of these

elegant, low-roofed warehouses lies a fortune in port.

*

Dirk Niepoort and Martine Saunier

have known each other for many years.

She happened to try his port and then his fine wines

and was instantly captivated.

One secret to the family success is in the age

and complexity of the wine in these pipes,

as the barrels are called.

This is what really interests Martine,

because it's a treasure house.

There are wines here that date back almost

to the founding of the company in the 1840s.

Some are kept in demijohns, old glass apothecaries' jars.

- This is really our treasure.

Here you have the Garrafeiras.

- My word.

- Garrafeira is really special.

We are the only ones doing that.

As my grandfather says, aging it in these bottles

does make a big difference.

You can recognize it very, very well

because of its elegance.

That's why I like to call the Garrafeiras

our Burgundy-style port.

It doesn't sound right, but it does.

And I believe you do like Garrafeiras.

- It's my favorite anyway.

- Yeah, it makes sense. It's more delicate.

It's never as dark as a vintage.

It's never as fat as a Colheita.

- It is so elegant. - Yes, it sings.

It just has its own expression.

Incredible lightness of being sort of thing.

narrator: Dirk Niepoort is a rising presence

in the landscape of port.

The industry is dominated, however,

by two great companies of English origin,

the Symingtons and the Taylors.

You may see a multitude of brand names,

each with their faithful following,

but half the major port brands--

Dow, Cockburn's, Fonseca--

are owned by these two families,

which are the largest companies making quality port.

Top of the tree, perhaps, and constantly expanding

are the Symingtons.

This is Paul, the joint managing director.

- That's interesting, so we have the Bomfim '01

and the Malvedos '01.

I work currently with my brother and three cousins,

so there are five members of my family

working in the business with me.

I believe there's a very powerful affinity

between families and wine.

And however powerful big corporations become,

I don't believe their philosophy lends itself

very well to wine.

- At the moment, they are quite closed.

- The color's fantastic.

I mean, you could put that in a pen and write with it.

It's just so concentrated.

Everything has to be long-term.

You're putting wine in the cellar,

which will hopefully be a magnificent

10- or 20-year-old in years to come.

We are in the worst recession Portugal has had for decades.

We bought an important vineyard last year, in June last year.

If I had had to go to a shareholders' meeting

with a whole lot of investors, they would've probably

sacked me on the spot.

My family decided it round this table here

in five minutes, even in the middle

of a big recession, because we know

we're thinking a long way down the road.

If Charles did his job right, his kids will one day

be saying, "Dad made this wine, and was he good,

or was he not good?"

But it is.

For us, this is all part of what we live for

and why we make the wine.

- You said it's interesting.

It's be a lot more interesting

if I had some in the glass.

- This is all mine. You can't have it.

- Thank you.

narrator: Down the road

are the Symingtons' archrivals, the Taylors.

Although not as big as the Symingtons,

they claim to make the world's finest port.

The CEO is Adrian Bridge.

- Taylor's is a very historic company.

I mean, clearly, going back 321 years,

it has got an immense history.

So, obviously, Taylor's is one of our brands.

And we have several others.

One is Fonseca,

and another one which is Croft,

which, in fact, dates all the way back to 1588,

so it's by far and away the oldest company.

It was established, in fact, from a royal charter,

monopoly charter granted by Queen Elizabeth I.

But that, in essence, is what we are, yes,

a business that is continuing to do

what we've always done.

[gentle string and harpsichord music]

*

narrator: Though most port is stored here,

the grapes used to make it

don't grow anywhere near Oporto.

The vineyards start more than 100 miles away

to the east, and they stretch all the way

to the Spanish border.

Imitation port wines are made all over the world,

but the real thing comes from here in the Douro valley.

The Douro is a strange land.

It still feels very much cut off

from the rest of the country.

It's also a tough environment.

The surrounding countryside is dark, hard granite.

The river, twisting and turning,

has cut its way down into deep, dark canyons.

In winter, it can look more like a coal field

than wine country.

Vineyards cling to near-vertical slopes

in the valley.

For centuries, they've dropped their roots

deep down into the crumbly rock.

There's still a huge diversity of ancient vines,

but some are being uprooted now and replaced

by standard varieties.

Their unique flavors could be lost forever.

Dirk Niepoort has spent years looking for parcels

of these old vines.

Dirk's family own less than 40 acres in the Douro.

They prefer to make deals with local families

who've nurtured these hidden corners for generations.

[all speaking Portuguese]

narrator: Most growers in the Douro are simple farmers.

They just grow grapes. They don't make wine.

A few may own less than half an acre

of incredible old vines, just a few rows.

- This is very, very old vineyard.

And it's one of my favorite vineyards.

And it makes good wine.

Look, look here.

Here you see, again, the stones, how they--

- Yeah, they support. - The support.

The different vines.

Look at these pieces, how they are hard rock,

but you can break them bare hands,

which means it's really, really old schist.

And if you look, you see there's

very, very fine layers, which is what makes

the big, big difference.

See?

- Yeah, I see, yes.

And it breaks off easily. - Yep.

- Yes. I see.

- I call this the treasure.

It's a hidden treasure that I found in the Douro.

In fact, it took me some years to find who is the owner.

And it took many years to convince him

to actually sell me the grapes.

He thought I was a little bit crazy,

and he laughed.

And I said, "No, look, I really like this vineyard,

"and I like it the way it is.

Would you sell me the grapes?"

And he said, "Yes, but aren't you going to buy

my good grapes?"

And I said, "No, I only want to buy these grapes."

And he really thought I was nuts.

narrator: Although they may not share Dirk's love of old vines,

when the farmers sit down to bargain,

they know the value of what they've got.

- Today we get along very well,

and he seems to accept it.

He still doesn't understand why I like it,

but it's also interesting.

Suddenly he said to me, "Well, it's interesting.

"Nobody really wanted those grapes,

"but now there are some colleagues of you

that would like to buy the grapes."

And I said, "Yes, but you don't sell it to them, do you?"

And he said, "No, they are for you."

[both speaking Portuguese]

narrator: Dirk has other kinds of suppliers too.

Manuel Villas-Boas and his family have been

making wine in this ancient house,

the Morgadio da Calcada, since it was built in 1680.

These barrels are some of the biggest ever made

in the region.

Manuel, like many others in the Douro,

has vines that are well over 100 years old.

There's still no heating in most of this house.

In fact, electricity didn't reach much of the Douro

till the 1970s.

Manuel and his uncle often like to start a fire

to cook the evening meal.

We're a long way from the bright city lights

of Porto here.

[both speaking Portuguese]

The Morgadio is one of the oldest houses

in Provesende, a picture postcard village

that is gradually dying.

Outside the wine industry,

there's virtually no work around here.

One of the people trying to save the village

is Paul Symington.

- This is a vineyard I've just replanted.

And then down at the bottom there is...

narrator: Paul sounds completely English,

but he was born in Porto and grew up here in the Douro.

He and his wife have opened a shop

and built a home in Provesende.

They've also planted their own personal vineyard

1,000 feet above the valley floor.

- It's a great panorama of some of the best vineyards.

We're very lucky to be here.

And we have a fabulous view.

My father was born here, sadly died in January this year.

He had a great fear of dying in Britain.

He said, "If I die in England, please take me home."

So he had a British passport, but this was his home.

People don't understand that.

They want you to fit in a box.

You're either British or Portuguese.

And they simply cannot accept that you can be both.

And we are both.

narrator: But how did Paul's English ancestors

ever get so deeply involved in port?

- The merchants from Cornwall, from Wales,

from the west of England would come down here

literally as an intrepid merchant selling wool and cod.

And you weren't a very clever merchant

if you didn't take something back.

And they would take olive oil and fruit and wine.

And then, of course, it had the blessing

of the political friendship between the two countries.

They've been allies for 600 years.

It's the oldest unbroken alliance

in the history of the world.

narrator: But however close Britain and Portugal have been,

the question remained-- how to control the quality

of the wine.

250 years ago, they came up with a novel solution.

This is Manuel de Novaes Cabral,

head of the Port Wine Institute.

- [speaking Portuguese]

narrator: But for the British, that wasn't enough.

They felt they needed a headquarters

to manage things here in Porto.

So in 1790, they built the Factory House.

Part market, part club, part meeting rooms,

but certainly never a factory,

the organization still thrives.

Every Wednesday, they hold an official lunch.

David Guimaraens, head winemaker at Taylor's,

arrives with a guest.

Full members have to be part of an English port family,

and they normally have to be male.

[men laugh]

- There's certainly an image that port is all

sort of old men and, you know, reading a book,

smoking a cigar, drinking a glass of port,

and that simply isn't true.

I think as an industry, we in our individual companies

tend to be fairly forward-looking.

And it's kind of nice to have this club where it sort of

anchors back to some of that tradition, lest we forget it.

narrator: Here today, the Symington family

are represented by James and Peter,

two of Paul's many cousins.

For 200 years, these traditions have been maintained.

Stilton cheese, specially brought over from England

to complement the port at the end of the meal.

There's no sense of unseemly hurry here.

[classical quartet music]

*

With such an English presence, you might think that Portugal

was in some sense overshadowed by the Brits.

But it's not.

Fiercely independent for 900 years,

it was master of the first global empire

that stretched from Brazil to Asia.

So it's no surprise that Portugal has also created

port wines to be proud of.

One of the finest is Ramos Pinto.

*

- So welcome, Martine. - Thank you.

- You're at the Ramos Pinto Museum, and I hope you like it.

narrator: Almost everything about Ramos Pinto

represents the opposite of the British tradition--

a more feminine appeal, a more southern market,

Brazil, Africa,

a different attitude to what port's really about.

- And the same idea that you don't know

if the temptation is the wine or the ladies.

- Well, it's a combination, I would say.

- I think. It's not easy to resist.

narrator: A lot of that is the direct responsibility

of the founder, a larger-than-life character

called Adriano.

He was such a super salesman that a glass of port

is still often referred to as an Adriano in Brazil.

- And now a port.

Finally, a port. - Finally!

- I'm going to sit here, because Adriano

used to sit here.

It was a pleasure to receive you

and--for me and for Adriano.

He's in the picture.

So saude, Adriano, and saude.

both: Saude.

[clock chiming]

[lively orchestral music]

*

narrator: Wine from the Douro used to be brought down

to Porto by boat until they dammed the river.

The boats were small and frail and shallow-hulled

to navigate the rapids.

A few of them still exist, maintained by the port houses.

And every summer, they compete in a colorful race.

Taylor's captain is Adrian Bridge.

- I think we'll win.

And then I think Fonseca's probably gonna come second.

Other than that, the rest of the trade, behind.

[horn blows]

[lively orchestral music]

*

narrator: The honor of the brand, not just the port house,

is at stake.

Senior managers join forces with sturdy apprentices

and try to maneuver the boats into some sense of order.

*

Paul Symington is in charge of the Dow's boat.

- Okay.

narrator: It's not easy.

The boats were designed to float downstream

loaded with pipes or barrels of port.

Now they're sailing upriver, trying to catch

what little wind there may be.

- What a disaster.

narrator: Alas, skill in winemaking

doesn't necessarily transfer to skill in navigation.

- [speaking Portuguese]

*

[sighs]

Porto! Porto!

[wood smashing]

narrator: There's no question about it.

Cockburn's is the easy winner in fine style.

But you may have noticed that one name

is missing from the fleet.

Almost every significant port house

puts a boat into the contest

but not Dirk Niepoort.

In almost every way, he thinks differently

about the traditions of port.

His pleasure is cooking rather than sailing.

Dirk likes to step back from the hurly-burly

and think about the big picture.

- One of the most important things about our company,

about port, is time.

And time is something that doesn't exist today.

We are driving all at 180 miles an hour.

We're driving too fast.

We're not seeing anything around us.

And this is something I would like to try to learn

to teach the next generation too.

Find time to slow down.

narrator: Tonight, Dirk has invited friends

from the port trade to dinner:

Peter, a senior member of the Symington family;

David Guimaraens, winemaker of Taylor's;

Manuel de Novaes Cabral of the Wine Institute;

and João Nicolau de Almeida of Ramos Pinto.

- I think what is typical of my person

is to plan things in 20 years.

In our dreams, we can do anything.

The only problem is, we have to--

when we are back to reality, we have to be with

the feet on the ground.

But dreaming is a very healthy, very positive thing.

[all speaking Portuguese]

narrator: The big issue at dinner was whether

the port houses should stick to making port,

a higher-alcohol after-dinner wine,

or branch out into regular table wines as well.

- The table wine business is a much bigger business.

And in a way, it's more competitive.

But if you get the formula right,

that, to my mind, is the way forward.

And then if they can have alongside the table wines

a little bit of vintage port, you know,

that all adds to the package.

- As Peter put it, I think the future

of the Douro is actually quite brilliant

if we stop fighting, you know,

this attitude of subsidizing this and that.

Because I have the feeling that the table wine

is going to subsidize the port, which is ridiculous

in your eyes, but it looks like more and more

it might happen like that.

- Premium port has never been as healthy as it is today.

Douro table wines are a fantastic innovation

in the region, which are great quality.

But they live completely subsidized by port.

- I have two sons that have around 33 years.

And for them, their ideal thing

is to make a port wine.

The port wine for them is the king,

something that, for them, is impossible

unless you were born rich and you have a big stock to make.

But for them, they talk, they talk, they talk about port,

and they don't make port.

narrator: It's one thing to sit and talk in Porto,

but changes are already happening up in the Douro.

[lithe guitar music]

*

Dirk Niepoort made the decision to branch out from port

into table wines 25 years ago.

His headquarters and main winery is at the brand-new

Quinta de Napoles.

There's no trace of sentimentality

or quaintness here.

In this state-of-the-art facility, Carlos,

the chief winemaker, helps Dirk create

a dazzling array of red and white table wines,

a range of clever blends--

some inexpensive and some decidedly not.

- It only started, really, in California,

where I started cleaning tanks and working with wine.

And someone asked me, "Well, will you do wine

when you get back?"

And then I said, "Surely, I will do port."

And "What about wine?"

And I said, "Yeah, I think I will be making wine.

"And then I think my first wine is going to be a monster.

"And in 25 years, I think-- I hope I will be

making some fine wine."

And it's quite interesting; my first wine was a monster.

[cheerful instrumental music]

*

narrator: For several years, Dirk has been

stirring up a revolution,

encouraging new, young winemakers of the region

to try their hand at Douro table wines first.

And from time to time, they need to taste and compare.

- There are no two wines the same in the Douro.

I could have the wine from my neighbor next door,

would never be the same as my wine,

even if we will would be using the same grape variety.

narrator: It simply costs too much for a young winemaker

to break into the port-making world,

because you can't even make a start

without owning vast quantities of old port in barrel.

So a rainbow of highly original table wines,

that's the solution.

*

- We have vineyards with over 30 different grape varieties,

all mixed, and this is unique.

- You cannot imagine the quantity of varieties

that we found on this region.

You go to one vineyard, and it's difficult

to understand sometimes what is the variety

that are planted, because it's very old,

and you don't know.

- I think that the best wines of the Douro

are made with a mess.

Maybe this is not very commercial

or makes much commercial sense, but it does make

passion sense in which I love being surprised every year.

- The big change in the Douro valley was really the--

starting to look to the vineyard on a different way,

thinking that we could do port.

Port is a wonderful tradition, and it's something

so, so important for us.

But there's other things that we can do.

Because even within the vineyards,

there's only a small part that we can use to make port.

And the other part, nobody was paying

much attention to it.

And we're talking about exactly the same vineyards,

the same grapes.

So the quality potential, the character was there.

- Table wine is a challenge, 'cause there was nothing.

And now we're trying to position it somewhere.

- Not everybody knows it or not everybody realizes it,

but we're talking, indeed, about one of the best

wine regions in the world, no doubt at all.

narrator: They say that the Douro has nine months of winter

and then three months of hell,

the blistering heat before harvest.

Growing grapes in the Douro is very hard work.

Carlos, Dirk's winemaker, races around the hillside vines

checking after a summer shower, looking for rot.

This is a real worry.

Farmers in the Douro face a lot of risk.

Most of them have only tiny parcels of land,

and their livelihoods depend on the big port houses

buying their grapes.

One bit of bad luck, and they're in real trouble.

The problem is that producing grapes in the Douro

requires constant, expensive work.

At Taylor's Quinta de Vargellas,

machines can help, but keeping the land

from being washed away down the steep slopes

requires backbreaking effort, much of it by hand.

Taylor's owns more than 100 miles of these walls,

and 1/3 of them need some work.

- The risk at the moment in the Douro

is a very, very simple risk, and that is that

the economics of farming in the Douro,

which is one of the most expensive wine regions

in the world to farm,

require the price of grapes fundamentally to go up

for most farmers.

When a farmer sells grapes to a port producer

with a license, he makes a profit.

When the farmer sells that same bunch of grapes

to a table wine producer, he makes a loss.

Quality port is where the future is.

That adjustment means that this is an industry

which has got to move from thinking about volume first

and value second

to thinking about value first and volume second.

And that adjustment will mean that there will, in future,

be less port made.

It probably means that we need to reconsider

the size of the Douro, certainly reconsider

whether we should pull up some of the smaller vineyards,

and how that all should be managed.

narrator: Not everyone agrees with this solution.

But there's no doubt that the future of the Douro

is at stake.

For his part, Adrian relishes a challenge.

And today he is promoting the port trade

and raising money for charity in a bicycle race.

[lively orchestral music]

*

narrator: Adrian and his fellow members

of the wine trade from London

have already cycled four days to get here.

Now he will lead them on their last lap into Porto.

- Good luck, chaps!

*

- No pain, no gain.

narrator: Paul Symington also loves to get out

into the Douro in the summer.

He's going dirt-biking with a great friend,

the local priest.

It was Father Antonio who taught Paul

how to ride a dirt bike in the first place.

[both speaking Portuguese]

- When I'm on my motorbike with Father Antonio,

you see some astonishing things, and you can go on ancient tracks

which people haven't been down for years.

He's a fantastic man. I like him.

If there were more priests like him in the Catholic church,

there'd be a lot more people going to church.

narrator: They start at Paul's house,

up in the hills near Provesende,

and then they make for the highest peak

in the surrounding area.

[lively orchestral music]

*

- The Douro's a very special place.

The largest area of mountain vineyard on Earth

is in the Douro.

There's nowhere on Earth with so much mountain vineyard.

narrator: It's this magical, mountainous terrain

that makes the Douro so spectacular

but also so difficult to make money in.

The grapes are hugely expensive to grow,

but only a few of the wines sell for premium prices.

Perhaps the answer lies in more vigorous marketing

of port.

This the Quinta do Bom Retiro,

the heart of the Ramos Pinto operation.

The chief winemaker, João Nicolau de Almeida,

and Jorge Rosas, one of the family,

are in charge of international sales.

narrator: Back in Porto, the summer days bring out

the most British side of the Brits.

Porto is one of the last places in continental Europe

which still sports a full-time cricket club.

The game is played here according to

the strictest rules.

- Yes!

- Yes!

[applause]

narrator: Every year, the British port makers

challenge their clients, the wine merchants of London,

to a traditional one-day match.

[light orchestral music]

*

- Oh, yes!

narrator: There are still enough British families

here in Porto from which to find a port maker's eleven,

complete with backup family to provide tea.

They almost all speak very good Portuguese now.

Many were born here.

But the atmosphere is just as it would have been

100 or more years ago in an English city

or an outpost of the British Empire.

[waves crashing]

As midsummer approaches, Porto bursts out

into a dazzle of parties and special events.

The brotherhood of port makers is holding a special ceremony

by the seaside to celebrate the 2011 vintage.

Each port house makes its own decision every year--

is their port good enough to stand alone, unblended?

If so and if the Port Wine Institute agrees,

then a vintage is declared, and everyone's happy.

- You know, Porto is a small city.

And when you say something,

everybody knows immediately everything.

So there is a lot of gossip.

And as someone said yesterday, if suddenly there would be

a bomb here, the port trade would disappear within seconds.

It's a bit strange and funny.

narrator: Whether pouring a sample bottle

from each port house into a giant loving cup

actually creates a drink worth having

must remain open to doubt.

On the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday of midsummer,

the city celebrates the festival

of St. John the Baptist.

[light orchestral music]

*

Each district will have fun in its own particular way--

72 hours of fun.

*

In the heart of the city, at the historic stock exchange,

the brotherhood of port makers

has something more serious in store.

Arcane ceremonies seem to have a special appeal

to European winemakers.

Carefully selected new members will be admitted

to the brotherhood.

This time, one of them is Martine Saunier.

It's an honor not bestowed on too many people.

But here in the Douro,

the world's oldest delineated wine appellation,

traditions have a way of building up.

[applause]

Every part of Porto's colorful history

is pressed into service on St. John's weekend--

the firemen's band, the elderly streetcars,

and parties everywhere, day after day.

*

It all leads up to a grand climax

on the final Sunday night.

Many people from Lisbon, Portugal's capital

to the south, make fun of Porto as a gray merchant city

which wouldn't know how to have fun if you

banged it on the head with a plastic hammer.

Well, this is Porto's weekend to prove them wrong.

[lively orchestral music]

*

[fireworks crackling, booming]

*

Back in Roman times,

they called this midsummer festival "Vestalia."

2,000 years later, the people of Porto

still haven't lost the knack of having fun.

*

The River Douro stretches all the way east

to the Spanish border and beyond.

In these hot, high hills, the grapes ripen early.

It's a very different feeling up here,

just a few miles from Spain.

These are Ramos Pinto vineyards as far as the eye can see.

Humans have lived up here for more than 500 centuries.

Martine visited one Paleolithic site

in the Côa Valley with a local archeologist.

You can still make out sketches and drawings

on the tough granite rocks from 50,000 years ago.

- Oh, yeah. Right, right, right.

Yeah.

narrator: People have been living up here,

picking fruit, domesticating animals,

developing agriculture ever since.

Down at Bom Retiro, Ramos Pinto are preparing

for the harvest of 2013.

These are some of João's best vines.

narrator: It's the same story the world over.

If you want to make great wine, you have to be hands-on.

João may be a living legend as a creator of fabulous wines,

but he's out there soon after dawn with the pickers,

seeing what they're getting, already imagining his blends,

favoring one terrace over another

in the order of picking,

because you can never trust the weather.

[bell chiming]

At the Morgadio da Calcada, many of the old vines

are almost ready.

- So what is the state of the grapes right now?

- Well, basically, we have the whites,

which are getting ripe.

But the reds are not ripe yet.

And I wanted to do a little experiment

of doing them together.

So we are waiting a little bit more for the reds.

But if you look at the whites, it looks really good.

- Yeah.

- The color's fantastic, isn't it?

- And so we're waiting another few days.

Probably, we'll start picking on Monday.

- This vineyard? - This vineyard, yep.

- I heard that there is rain in the forecast

in the next week.

- Yes, there is.

- So that's very scary,

because if it rains and you got

warm temperature again, it's going to have mildew.

- It could rot them out very, very fast, yeah.

But we expect it to be here cooler, because we are

at the high elevations.

So it's a risky thing, yep.

- But is always, for every winemaker,

to decide the perfect day.

- We will have to wait and see what happens.

narrator: Upriver, at the Quinta dos Malvedos,

the British Union Jack flies side by side

with the Portuguese flag.

This is Symington territory.

Time seems to stand still here.

Local villagers do all the picking.

These grapes will go into one of the Symingtons'

very best brands, Graham's.

In charge of brand development and marketing

is Rupert Symington.

There seems to be a member of the family

for every significant job in the company.

- Well, my family, in the four generations

that we've been here, each generation

has added a brand.

My father and his cousins brought Graham's,

which is our sort of flagship brand today.

Graham's often, you know, used to fetch

the highest prices for vintage ports.

So a very sort of prestigious brand.

Personality is a little bit richer, more opulent.

I like to describe it as "old money"

as opposed to, you know, the nouveau riche,

which would be another port, which we won't mention.

And then my generation has become the owner

of the famous Cockburn's brand, which, when I was a kid,

was the--they were the big guys in town

with the chauffeur-driven cars.

But we're very excited to kind of define

what we feel about Cockburn's.

My family, I mean, can be perceived

as being this great juggernaut, swallowing up

everything in its path.

Paul, Johnny, and I, we're all crazy.

We all recycle any profit we make out the business

into more vineyards, more business,

you know, because we love it, not because we just want

to create an empire.

It's a bit of a sort of family responsibility.

I was taught by my father that this is

a good business to be in.

This is what I do.

narrator: There are Symingtons involved in every part

of the operation.

Charles is the company's chief winemaker.

The stress of harvest weighs heaviest on him.

- We're off to a late start, probably ten days later

than would be usual, due to the conditions

we've had earlier this year.

We've had a late start.

And what has been coming in up until now

is in fantastic condition.

Ripening has been really fantastic.

Although it's been slow, it's been

exceptionally promising.

Unfortunately, it does look like,

in the next couple of days, the weather's gonna change,

which could spoil what I felt was going to be

a first-class vintage.

So it's in the balance,

and we'll have to see what comes,

but it's certainly not a comfortable position

at this stage.

narrator: Of course, when the sun's out

and it's a beautiful day, the Douro can seem

like a fairytale land full of quaint customs

and celebrations.

[upbeat traditional music]

Everyone turns out to bring in the fruit of the land.

It becomes clear how much of a family enterprise

the making of good quality port still is.

The old families

and particularly the old British families

have gone to great lengths

to keep the old traditions going.

*

You could call it paternalism, but it's the only way

that these remote winemaking outposts

can survive as communities.

The pickers are all from small villages nearby.

This is the best employment they'll get

in the entire year.

[lively orchestral music]

*

narrator: For the older generation, however,

harvest is as much celebration as hard work.

Alistair and Gillyanne are Adrian Bridge's

father- and mother-in-law.

*

- This plaque here commemorates the 11 years they took

to open this up by making the flow of water

possible for a boat to go up and cutting a ledge

the whole way up.

It was impassable for all history,

and then, in 1791, therefore, this was passable.

And it opened up the whole of that area.

And that was all planted up.

And it was quite something.

Right, back to Vargellas for a glass of port.

Are you ready? Hold on.

*

Right, we're gonna have a glass of white port and tonic.

- Wonderful.

- White port and tonic.

It's a lovely drink for a hot day,

a hot day in particular.

There we are.

And as we are safely back, we should raise our glasses

to our "Tintonica," Martine, who's safely back to Vargellas.

- Wonderful, delicious.

Thank you for the tour.

narrator: Back at the house, Adrian returns

for cocktail hour,

though it appears the weather has taken a turn for the worse.

- We always stayed at Pinhão, when we built the house.

- And then you developed the house, which is where

we really would like to go to, 'cause it's pouring rain.

- Very good, let's go into the house,

out of the pouring rain.

narrator: When it rains, Adrian has plenty

of party tricks up his sleeve to amuse the visitors

till dinner's ready.

- What we're going to do is open a bottle

of vintage port, but instead of using a corkscrew,

I'm gonna show you another way to do it,

which involves some port tongs, nice red-hot port tongs.

We put these round the bottle here.

But what I'm trying to do here is to heat up the glass

just below the cork but above the level of the wine.

So then we take that off. All right, put that down.

And then what I need is just some cold water, like this.

And then--

[glass clinks and people exclaim]

There we have it.

- My goodness. - Pops off and breaks cleanly.

So we can then pour straight from the glass.

- But tell me, how did the whole thing start and why?

- Well, I think, you know, the reason for it

is that sometimes, if the cork is old

and can't be pulled out, then this is a way

to cleanly open it.

And, in fact, it's such a clean break

that you can pop that back on,

and you wouldn't even notice a thing.

But anyway, a glass of vintage.

Cheers. - What is it, '87?

- This is the Vargellas '87, Taylor's Vargellas '87.

- Wonderful, thank you.

narrator: That evening, the rain seemed to have

settled in for good.

It's not an easy time

for Taylor's chief winemaker, David Guimaraens.

- Well, it's the 30th of September,

and we've been in harvest now since the 10th,

initially with the fruit coming from the Upper Douro

and gradually working our way down the River Douro.

And we've got a challenging year.

Last Friday, the weather broke, badly.

And that has changed the harvest,

has changed the harvest completely.

The vines are thirsty.

And they're gonna suck in this water.

The berry's gonna swell.

So the first few days is dilution.

Next, it will burst,

and then you get rot coming in.

narrator: Some of the harvested grapes

are already in the granite lagars.

After treading, they're being punched down.

- On Friday night, I was feeling relieved

that I got 80% of my top fruit in.

And I knew on Friday that I had not lost the year.

And that is particularly important, because

some of the initial ports that we made look really nice.

At the same time, it's incredibly frustrating,

because I knew that from here forward,

it's not gonna be the same.

And so it's one of those split years.

We're gonna have a first half and a second half of the year.

[solemn orchestral music]

*

- This rain is going to be a problem.

And I'm afraid that a lot of rot

will arrive very, very soon.

But then again, here we are

in the most beautiful wine area in the world,

some of the best vineyards for port at the bottom,

some fantastic vineyards here, old vines,

perfect for making white wine, making a red wine.

We'll see.

We will see.

*

narrator: For the most part, Dirk has done well.

Making a lot of table wine from the lighter

grape varieties, he wisely picked most of his grapes

before the rain

but not all of them.

At the Morgadio da Calcada, Dirk waited

just a little too long.

The red grapes from the old vines

are pretty much a write-off,

destroyed by the rain and damp fog.

And though the younger vines can be salvaged,

it's a real blow to the Morgadio.

They have a tiny output,

and some of their best grapes are lost.

*

- They are bigger,

because these three or four days raining, they are--

- If you pick them up today, it's fine.

[indistinct conversation]

Are you going to look at the white?

narrator: So much about growing grapes and making wine

still depends on sheer luck.

Further upriver and barely touched by the rain so far

is the Quinta do Vesuvio, another Symington property.

The picking crew are ending their work

in the vines, but their day is far from over.

- The reality of the picking is quite harsh,

because they're picking all through the day,

obviously breaks for lunch and what have you.

But then in the evening, they come down,

and then they go to tread for three hours additional,

having started at 6:45 in the morning.

[man chanting]

We're treading because it really is

an incredibly effective way of getting color and flavor

out of the skins in a very short time.

Our fermentation time is short, 48 hours.

Your foot, my foot is a very effective way

of squeezing the skins

without unduly bruising the pips.

- [chanting]

- I think it's probably the last place on Earth

where a significant amount of wine is made

in this ancient way.

If you go to Pompeii and look at

the ancient ruins there with the old cartoons

and drawings on the wall, and there you'll see

stone tanks with people treading,

exactly what we do today.

We're not doing it because we like to maintain

some weird historical thing.

It just works. And it works for us.

narrator: Downriver, at the Quinta de Vargellas,

the same thing will happen at Taylor's.

Each company has its own habits and techniques.

There will be two hours of this day after day.

And remember, the treaders are the same villagers

who were out all day picking the grapes.

- After two hours, we give the signal.

It's called "liberdad." It's known as liberty.

And there's a traditional song that's sung,

which is about women and pretty girls and freedom.

[all singing]

Then all hell breaks loose.

The accordion player starts,

and you grab the nearest pretty girl, and off you go.

[upbeat accordion music]

*

narrator: Though you're dancing, of course,

you're still treading the grapes.

It's free-form.

Guests are welcome to join in.

It's a celebration.

And there'll be a few glasses of last year's port

to crown the evening's efforts.

*

And then, sometime during the night,

when the party's over, each lagar reaches

its best maturity at exactly the right alcoholic level.

Almost casually, a dose of brandy is added,

and that stops the fermentation in its tracks.

From now on, this is officially port,

a wine fortified with spirits

to reach approximately 20% alcohol.

- So this is the almost birth of port.

These grapes were picked two days ago.

The vineyard really matters, the picking,

and, of course, the care in the winemaking.

It looks exceptional.

Do you see the color?

It's incredible. It's fermenting.

And look at the smell.

It's so expressive. It's so beautiful.

And we will see.

Maybe in 50 years, it will be good.

It's, of course, too early to say

what it will be.

But I have no doubts that this will make

some great port, in some decades,

something spectacular.

narrator: Port spends most of its life in barrels,

sometimes as much as 100 years before being blended.

But eventually it'll all be bottled,

and the bottles will need to be perfectly sealed.

That's why corks exist.

The process of making and using corks

was largely invented by the Portuguese,

for whom the cork tree is a native species.

[cheerful music]

*

Today, the very best corks are made under

clean-room conditions to prevent them

from developing that notorious taint

that can spoil the wine.

The founder of the cork company is Jochen Michalski.

- When we inspect the corks, we have to do

a sensory evaluation to make sure that the corks

are sound for--to seal a bottle of wine long-term.

And the way we do this is, we soak a cork in wine.

And then 24 hours later, we smell the cork.

And there has been nothing yet--

there has been no electronic nose

which can really simulate this.

We have--many of our customers have wines which retail,

you know, for $50, $100, or $150 or more,

so for them, it is crucial

that every single bottle is perfect,

and to those customers, we actually offer today

a solution that we individually test

each individual cork which they use at their winery.

So we literally examine every cork

and approve it before we ship it,

whether it's sound for wine or not.

And we have customers who order 50,000--

or 100,000, actually--

and you'd be surprised, you know,

that we have to do 100,000 sniff tests,

but we do it.

We have a lot of qualified employees here

who we have trained over the years.

And all they do is smell corks

from morning to night, one by one.

[birds squawking]

narrator: In the winter, the winemakers set to work

to create the different ports.

Basically, they've all spent time in barrel.

But ruby port is younger, and tawny port is older.

And there are also a few fashionable inventions,

like white port.

- Well, we have the port wine here.

It's a very complex wine.

We have many categories of port wine.

Here we have the entrance level--

white, tawny, and ruby.

Then we have the reservas-- white, tawny, and ruby.

Then we have the old tawnies-- 10, 20, 30.

And the vintage.

narrator: What make a great port is the blending,

and João of Ramos Pinto is a master blender.

- Let's try to make a blend.

Here, you have what we call the "piano."

And each bottle represents

a wine that is in the cellar,

aging in the cellar.

Like a piano, each bottle is a key.

The idea is to make a perfect symphony.

As you can see, I have here young wine, ruby.

It's still with some fruit,

red fruit flavor.

But also, we have very old wines,

like 1900, 1884, 1909.

So first I choose an approach.

The first approach, which is gonna be the base...

Now I'm going to find which of the old wines

could marry with the wine that I have here.

So let's be patient and try.

You see, this is just a drop.

I want it old but with a vivacity,

with a youngness, with a spirit.

[gentle piano music]

*

narrator: All over town, the same thing is happening.

At Graham's, Charles Symington and two tasters

are creating their 30-year-old tawny.

Conversation is hardly necessary.

*

[indistinct conversation]

Dirk Niepoort has created most of his classic port

with long-time master blender Zeze Nogueiras.

- Blending is a little bit like psychology.

It's like observing people.

You have to look at the wines, look at the vineyards

where it comes from, and understand the wine.

And then you can use the strength,

the strong side of that wine to emphasize

the character of the whole blend.

And this can be--small quantities can make a miracle.

[gentle piano music]

*

Blending is an art.

I like to say that, for myself,

two and two is not four.

Two and two can be 10. It can be even 12.

Of course, if you don't know how to blending,

it can be minus two.

*

[laughter]

There's wines that are fantastic.

But if you keep them and keep them,

suddenly they become a miracle.

And this is a little bit-- our duty

is to guard these treasures

and then in the right moment, to catch them,

put them in the bottle, and show it to the world

and enjoy them.

- Oh, wow!

[metallic tapping]

- Of course, my duty here is, I have to do

the same thing that my grandfather did for my father

and my father did for me.

So I have to make sure that we forget things.

And by hiding things in this warehouse,

I think we can do things for the next generation--

not generation, maybe generations.

And that's very rewarding.

So this is a wine, probably,

we'll put on the market in about 15 years

or something like that.

- Well, I'd rather have it now.

- You know, port, we have to give it time.

- Yeah.

narrator: It's the birthday of Dirk's father,

Rolf Niepoort, the grand old man of the family.

Three generations are gathering to celebrate.

[indistinct conversation]

[cheers and applause]

Besides the cake, there's a rather special port.

- Rolfi.

- It's your birth year? Yeah.

narrator: This is a bottle created in 1927

by Rolf's father.

Today, they'll drink it to make a very special toast.

[glasses clinking]

[laughter]

narrator: From generation to generation,

the winemakers are not only passing on the responsibility

for the family name and company

but also for the fate of Oporto and the Douro.

What will the future bring?

- There's been a lot of change

in the years I've been working with my family.

It's putting huge pressure on an ancient wine region.

There are not many of us left

who still have this real passion for what we do.

Fortified wines, generally, around the world,

have been declining for the last 20 years.

So if you want an easy business, then don't get into port,

because it isn't easy.

But I think there are enough of us who actually

really believe in it and appreciate the sort of--

the really finer parts of it.

And I think there are enough of us to make sure

there's a good future.

- Being a family business, you know,

I have to worry about not just whether we like

a vintage port today.

I have to worry about whether the next generation

are gonna feel that those who went before

did a good job or not.

And so we need to do the very best that we can.

And that, to me, is all about keeping some focus

on what we really know well,

which is making top-quality port.

- What the next generation is going to do,

I have no idea.

But we will see.

We have to give them some space,

like my father gave me space to do things

a little bit different.

But the times are very fast.

What I'm trying to teach my children is,

"Please, slow down a little bit and think.

Take your time."

[regal orchestral music]

*