The Vintage Port Crisis (1937), André L. Simon

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jdaw1
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The Vintage Port Crisis (1937), André L. Simon

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Wine and Food, “A Gastronomical Quarterly Edited by André L. Simon”, issue “No. 15: Autumn Number 1937” has, pp47–51, an article by André L. Simon entitled “The Vintage Port Crisis”.
André L. Simon, in ‘The Vintage Port Crisis’, wrote:
André L. Simon
The Vintage Port Crisis

Vintage Port has stout roots deep down into the soil of tradition in England, so deep that it may well be unafraid of passing storms and hurricanes. That is, indeed, something to be grateful for. The storm that is raging now may twist a limb or even break and carry off decayed branches, but the tree itself stands in no real danger of being uprooted. The danger exists none the less, and it may be as well to try and understand how and why it has suddenly flared up. But, first of all, let us be clear as to what we mean when we talk of Vintage Port.

Vintage Port, like all Port, is a wine made from grapes grown in a particularly favoured part of the Valley of the Douro, defined by the laws of Portugal; it is a fortified wine and it is shipped from Oporto. Unlike some Port, Vintage Port is the best wine made in any one year, and the year one of the best as regards the incidence of rain and solar heat, freedom from fungoid diseases of the vines and insect pests; in other words, grapes at their best. But the best wines made from the best grapes in the best years are not necessarily Vintage Port. What places Vintage Port in a class entirely by itself is the fact that it is bottled early and matured in bottle instead of being allowed to mature in cask. Port of fine quality bottled within two or at most three years from the date of the Vintage when the grapes from which it was made were gathered, takes much longer to mature, that is to grow in grace and beauty, casting off earthy salts and vegetal mucilage in the form of a crust and beeswing, than when left in a cask, in contact with a far greater supply of air than can filter through a cork. It is this slow rate of oxidation which gives to Vintage Port its inimitable ‘Vintage’ character and its unchallenged supremacy over all manner of fortified wines made in Portugal and practically in every part of the world where grapes grow freely in the open. Hence, in order that Vintage Port may exist, somebody must be ready and able to bottle early the best wines made in the best years in the Upper Douro Valley.

Up to now, the growers attended to the cultivation of the vineyards and grew grapes which they sold to the merchant, or shipper, for cash, whilst the shipper, who may also be a grower, had to deal with a fresh supply of grapes every year, good or not so good, scarce or plentiful, quite irrespective of the ups and downs of the demand in the world’s markets. Most of the wines which the shipper buys every year go into his lodges and remain in casks for a very long time; he blends the wines of one year or of one Vineyard with those of another year or vineyard so as to obtain as time goes on a series of different types of wines, all of them Port, suitable for different markets and circumstances, and he is able by so doing to secure for his different types of wines from the wood—or Marks—a continuity of character which is the basis upon which stands his reputation as a shipper. This means the immobilization of a very large capital, since the trade in Port from the wood, be it tawny, ruby, or white, represents the bulk of the Port Wine trade. Hence, when a limited quantity of a particularly fine wine is made in a particularly favourable year, which the shipper ships as Vintage Port, he looks upon the English wine-merchant as the fit and proper person to purchase the wine and bottle it in England, keeping it and selling it eventually at a price that will repay him for his enterprise, his outlay and his skill. In other words, the shipper, at Oporto, supplied the capital needed for the maturing of very considerable quantities of Port in the wood, and the wine merchant, in England, supplied the capital needed for the bottling and maturing of limited quantities of Vintage Port shipped occasionally. It is this admirable division of labour and charges which is being challenged at present. The English wine merchant has become restive. He hesitates to buy and bottle Vintage Port to the same extent as he used to, and the shipper is faced with two alternatives: he can keep most or all his would-be Vintage Port in cask an give up hope of it ever being Vintage Port; or he can step in and do the work which the wine merchant fails to do, that is, bottle his Vintage Port at his own cost, keep it until fit to drink, and sell it at a much higher price some years hence.

Of course, the first thing to be ascertained is whether the public want Vintage Port and whether it is worth the shipper’s or merchant’s while to bottle Vintage Port. It is quite true that the lack of cellars in modern flats, the disappearance of large houses and the kind of hospitality which they made possible, the greater haste and nervous tension of modern conditions, all militate against the normal enjoyment of Vintage Port, a wine which one cannot toss down like a cocktail, a wine which demands, as it confers, a greater measure of peace and contentment than almost any other wine. And yet, in spite of adverse conditions and all handicaps, there is a demand, and there will continue to be a demand, for Vintage Port. There cannot be any question of giving up bottling Vintage Port, and the only question to arise is whether it will be the merchant or the shipper who is going to do the bottling of Vintage Port in future. Such a question would probably never have arisen had both the merchants and the shippers been wiser during the past twenty years; had the first not bought more than they needed and the second not shipped so many vintages.

The wines of 1917, 1920 and 1924 were very good and shipped by most Port shippers, Cockburn excepted, but quite a number of shippers also shipped as Vintage wines those of 1919, 1922, 1923 and 1925. Then came the 1927 Vintage, an excellent one, Shipped by all shippers, including Cockburn, and eagerly bought and bottled by all wine merchants practically upon the eve of the world’s worst economic depression. The 1927 Vintage Port, following upon an unprecedented series of Vintage years, and followed by an unprecedented slump, was the last to be bought largely and easily by the wine merchants in England, who woke up soon after to the fact that they had been bottling Vintage Port much faster than the public was drinking it. Since 1927 there have been three vintages: 1931, 1934 and 1935. The 1931 wines were remarkable, possibly the best since 1912—perhaps since 1896. The wines of 1934 and 1935 were not wines of the most wonderful excellence, yet fully deserving of being shipped. as Vintage Port. Unfortunately, when the time came to ship the 1931’s, if they were to be bottled as vintage wines, few wine merchants had any room for them in their cellars, fewer had the necessary available cash to pay for them, and fewer still had sufficient confidence in the future. Matters had considerably improved, however, when the 1934’s and 1935’s were ready for bottling, and it is greatly to be regretted that the Port shippers could not agree among themselves to ship one or the other of those two years, but not both. Quite a number of them shipped 1934 as a Vintage last year, but a Vintage year which is not shipped as such by Cockburn, Croft, Graham and Taylor, to mention merely the most illustrious absentees, leaves a great deal to be desired. At the same time, the fact that quite a number of Port shippers did show a 1934 Vintage has created in the mind of many wine merchants a feeling of doubt as to the claims of the 1935 Vintage to be the better of the two. ‘When in doubt, hold your hand’, appears to have been the policy adopted by the majority of the English wine merchants, and their purchases of both the 1934’s and 1935’s have been far too timid to please the shippers. Some of these have come boldly forward and announced that they were going to bottle their own 1935 Vintage themselves now and sell it in bottle instead of in bulk. Their decision, one that was forced upon them and none of their choice, does not appear to have brought forth any loud expressions of gratitude on the part of the wine merchants. It is certainly much better to have Vintage Port bottled two years from date of vintage by the shipper than no Vintage Port at all, or not enough, but it is ever so much better that we should have Vintage Port bottled by wine merchants rather than by the shippers long as there remain in England wine merchants worthy of the name and of the proud traditions of the English wine trade. There is no doubt that the shipper who bottles his own 1935 Vintage Port will use the best quality bottles and corks and see that that the work is done under the best possible conditions. When the time comes to drink the 1935 Vintage Port bottled by its shipper the crust may be firm and the wine good, and not only good but uniformly good. This is claimed by bottling shippers as a new and valuable asset, since hitherto one never knew whether two Vintage Ports bearing the same name and date were of equal excellence and value: there was always the question of the bottler and the bottling. And yet this diversity was, to our mind, and still is, a far more desirable asset than a standardized Port. As Hilaire Belloc so forcibly expressed it at the last annual general meeting of the Wine and Food Society, ‘in diversity lies the fullness of life and in the absence of that lies the decline of life’.

In the olden days the bottlers of Vintage Port were divided into two main camps, those who fined the wine before bottling and those who did not; the second camp was further divided into those who bottled the wine when star bright and those who had the pipe rolled about just before bottling so that wine and sediment should all go into the bottle. The bottles and corks, the temperature of the cellar at the time of bottling, the skill and care of the cellar staff, were all factors which were responsible for the diversity of Vintage Ports of the same year and brand, and responsible also for the considerable amount of interest taken by men of taste and culture in Vintage Port. ‘The decline of our civilization is traced to the fact that men are losing their sense of differentiation, of quality and multiplicity’, exclaimed Hilaire Belloc at the Vintners’ Hall Meeting. He hailed wine as one of the last few remaining factors capable of retarding the progress of civilization’s decay, and this chiefly because in wine we have a distinction of quality and a far greater measure of differentiation than in almost all other articles of diet, most of which have become standardized in order that their looks—not their real quality—should appeal to the masses and that their cost should be within their means. Hence our fervent hope that the wine merchant willing, and able, to bottle Vintage Port in the right manner, and yet in his own individualistic way, may not disappear altogether from the land; that he may never lose faith in Vintage Port, nor charity for his fellow-men who depend so much upon him for the joy and comfort that Vintage Port was to their fathers, and should be to their sons.
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Re: The Vintage Port Crisis (1937), André L. Simon

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There might be typos, mis-capitalisations, or other errors of transcription. Tell me by PM rather than cluttering this thread with such dull things.
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Re: The Vintage Port Crisis (1937), André L. Simon

Post by jdaw1 »

To me it seems plausible that the 1929 crash, following Vintages of ’20 ’22 ’24 ’27, did deter English (and Scottish etc) wine merchants from buying + bottling + storing Vintage Port. With that argument I agree.

But André Simon argues that the cause was also the ’34/’35 split declaration. That part of the article is, for my taste, less convincing


André L. Simon, in ‘The Vintage Port Crisis’, wrote:In the olden days the bottlers of Vintage Port were divided into two main camps, those who fined the wine before bottling and those who did not; the second camp was further divided into those who bottled the wine when star bright and those who had the pipe rolled about just before bottling so that wine and sediment should all go into the bottle.
We need to know which bottlers did which.
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