A plea to the Symingtons

[jdaw1]

A plea to the Symingtons, whose website is being rebuilt

Television is a lean-back medium. Websites are a lean-forward medium. Do not muddle the two. On television one can show content-free pictures of attractive people drinking a cheap lager, and some of the audience will believe that drinking that lager will make one attractive. The web is a lean-forward medium. The audience is engaged, and very flighty. If a website isn’t showing what the reader what seeking, the reader goes. The back button, the google search box, the tab close: all are a click away.

In particular, observe your own web-browsing behaviour. If a website has a ‟skip intro” button, do you use it? Thought so. If a website looks like it should have a ‟skip intro” button, do you start looking for it? Of course. And so do all your your website’s visitors. So every penny spent on the intro is a penny wasted. Don’t. An intro is there to hide a lack of content, and the lack does not stay hidden for long.

Lots of port-producer websites are rubbish. They begin with a series of slides of quintas, bottles, wine, and middle-aged men nosing things. Skip Intro.

Next, the substance, such as it is, is a Flash disaster. There are a few scattered facts, totalling a few hundred words at most. And these few are lodged within Flash, so it is impossible to link to a page containing a fact. That means that the only linkable page is the front page. This has little content, so google’s page-rank is diminished.

Please, websites should consist of linkable pages.

Let me impose a higher standard. When the Symingtons’ website is rebuilt, is there any class of fact that the Symingtons themselves would get by looking at that website? Is there any fact beyond marketing guff that you would take from your own website? No? Then start again.

There follows a more detailed commentary on some websites. It is not pretty reading.

[jdaw1]

Borges & Irmão, www.borgeswines.com

Wade through the language and legal (really: do you think that it would fool an eight year old?), and click on Estates, then on Quinta de Simaens, Technical Characteristics. (Note: the whole thing is Flash, so I can’t post a link.) On my wife’s Mac laptop we see the following:

(If the picture is too wide for your browser right-click and choose the the equivalent of View Image.)

Where’s the content? Well, the enormous graphic has pushed the content below the fold, so I scroll down.

The actual useful content is in a text box not much bigger than a postage stamp. Presumably the website company that made this abomination charged a pretty penny for it. Instead this should be a real HTML web page. The picture should be much smaller, clickable, leading to the large picture. The text should be up front, and being in HTML occupying most of the page. A small set of navigation links could live in a sidebar, or up top (but not both).

So what does it say?

Quinta de Simaens
The Demarcated Region of Vinho Verde

Region:
Felgueiras

Soil:
Slatey-sandy

Climate:
The predominant influence of the Atlantic, characterised by gentle temperatures throughout the entire year.

Plantation area:
40ha

Average vineyard age:
15 years

Varieties of white:
• Pedernã
• Azal
• Avesso
• Trajadura
• Alvarinho
• Loureiro

Brands produced:
• Quinta de Simaens
• Borges Vinho Verde Reserva

Right at the bottom, buried away, is a link to a PDF, Technical Sheet. This is one page, of oddly chosen trivia, but all the same, rejoice, for it is all the content there is.

Summary: www.borgeswines.com is parody of Flash-tastic television-website confusion. Not much content, and what there is, is hidden.

[jdaw1]

Taylor, www.taylor.pt

After the language choice, fifteen seconds of vacuous intro, with music. Cool! Any potential customer of Taylor researching the product at work can be more easily discovered, fired, and thus less able to afford it. Was that worth some pictures of bottles, barrels and glasses? Really?

Just don’t.

So we’re in. Let’s click on Our Port, for which there is a link. That leads to some marketing guff, of which the third sentence is a triumph of the genre: ‟Many experts believe Taylor's Single Quinta Vintage Ports to be better than other companies’ declared years.” However the second sentence of the second ¶ has actual content: Vargellas ‟has the highest percentage of old vines of any quinta in the Douro, 60% being over 75 years old.”

Underneath the picture of a bottle is a link. Clicking it causes two things to happen. First, the frame containing the text and link dies, ‟The page cannot be found”. But a small pop-up appears, Single Quinta Vintages. This is a bit of a mess, with some wine names, ‟Quinta de Vargellas Vintage 1967”, and some file names ‟VargellasVinhaVelha2000.pdf”. And lots of links, labelled ‟download notes”. Grounds for optimism!

Let’s take the first of these PDFs, for 1967. The first three paragraphs are generic boilerplate, but then

Winter rainfall, from October to March was slightly less than the average. It was a set Spring with 2.54 inches of rain in May which prejudiced the flowering and the berry set was poor. July, August and September were all good hot months .

The vintage started generally on the 26th September and the weather remained good throughout. Sugar graduations were normal and showed slight increases towards the end of the vintage. Musts were slightly unripe, but had a lot of colour and the wines should develop well.

Press comments

James Suckling, Vintage Port
"Lovely, elegant and balanced. Medium ruby, with a fine violet nose, medium-bodied, with good but slightly simple fruit flavours."

This is content.

So why is it hidden? It seems rather ignored, with link that causes a page to fail, bringing a small pop-up with small links to PDFs at the end of which is the content! Presumably marketing saw this as non-guff, and therefore unimportant.

It is the best bit of the website. It should be brought front and centre. Clicking on Our Ports should lead to an HTML page. Either a floating box on the right could hold these links. Or the content could be brought into a table. And add more columns: starting with ABV and Baumé. Imagine allowing your customers to understand the product. I liked year YYYY, which recent vintage is most similar? Why is this content so hidden?

One bonus grumble: having only one comment suggests that it might have been cherry-picked as the best of a mediocre bunch. Having four or more would eliminate that concern.

Summary: People aren’t that stupid. There are enough low-fact and high-fact websites out there that people have learnt the difference.

[jdaw1]

Martinez, www.martinez.pt

The entire English-language content is www.martinez.pt/pdf/Martinez%20Profile_EN.pdf, being a page and half of history.

It is too light for a corporate website. But it is honest. Rather than expensively presented marketing guff, at least it doesn’t insult the intelligence of the reader. (Minor complaint: file names should not contain spaces: they should be composed of lower case letters, digits, underscores, and maybe hyphens, with a period before the file extension. No spaces, no anything else.)

Summary: not enough, but an honest insufficiency.

[jdaw1]

Niepoort, www.niepoort-vinhos.com

The root domain auto-forwards to www.niepoort-vinhos.com/en/ports/, which has a logical structure and is a sensible default.

And, wow! What a page! Actual content. After a strange graphic, there is a small section on each type of port. For example, under ‟Vintage” (which needs a tag to allow within-page linking) is ‟[ 1983 | 1987 | 1992 | 2000 | 2003 | 2005 | 2007 ]”. Real content, not only not hidden, but accessible from the natural place on the front page.

Summary: WOTN.

[jdaw1]

Sandeman, www.sandeman.eu

So I start by changing the year of birth to the oldest on the list, leaving unchanged the month and day at today’s, and the country as Albania. We enter the Flash zone.

At top click on Wines, then on Porto. There is a Flash text box, with non-standard scroll bars, and pointless marketing guff. Then I notice that extra links appeared in the sidebar, which isn’t big enough to hold them. Let’s choose ‟Porto Vintage 2007”. Of course, being Flash, I can’t link directly there I can’t send a link to somebody who wants to give me a present. Silly.

Text appears, in pale grey on white. It took me a moment to locate the scroll bars, which are not adjacent to the text. The text mostly reads like guff is the category on ‘food pairing’ updated as this wine ages? Thought not. The only real content is

Technical Details
Alcohol: 21,47%
Total Acidity: 4,58 g/l (tartaric acid)
Sugar: 103,5 g/l
pH: 3,51

Little content, hidden. This cannot be right.

Summary: when the revolution comes, the designer of this website will be first against the wall.

[jdaw1]

J. H. Andresen, www.jhandresen.com

Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to www.jhandresen.com I go. And this is what I see.


Being moderately paranoid, I run NoScript within Mac Firefox. This disallows web scripts, unless I explicitly give permission for that website. It seems that to see the products of J. H. Andresen I have to be naked. I am quite confident that other users of ThePortForum.com will also think this a bad idea.

So I temporarily allow jhandresen.com, and it’s Flash again, with the added stupidity of sideways writing. Top tip: move glass before tilting head. Then click on Product Range > Our Vintages > Vintage. And my reward?


Summary: Sandeman’s webmaster is forgiven.

[jdaw1]

Ramos Pinto, www.ramospinto.pt

www.ramospinto.pt has

and, beneath, a large black rectangle. Cool. Removing the ‘protection’ reveals a difficult-to-use Flash DoB-entry box. At least I’m through.

Wines > Port Wines > Select a Ramos Pinto Port Wine. Ignore the graphic, which looks like a difficult-to-use selector, and instead go for the non-linkable Ruby and Vintage, within which Vintage.

The Dark Side of the Port.
Opaque, thick, intensely red, vigorous, jovial, sanguine, the lifeblood of the Douro! A diamond to be polished by time in the comfort of the bottle.
A wine from one single harvest, representative of the growth cycle of one single exceptional year. After two years of refinement in wood, it is then bottled for a long life - 50 to 100 years.
A wine for special occasions, for commemorations and parties.
After it is taken out of the wine-cellar, it should be placed upright for a few hours to allow for the sediments to settle at the bottom. Two to four hours before being served it should be decanted to separate out the deposits and to allow the wine to breathe so that it can be served in all its splendour.
At the end of the party, by candlelight, with pine kernels, walnuts and cheese, the moments it creates are unique.

This has the double-distinction of being vacuous marketing guff that markets the opposite of what the Port companies want their customers to believe: ‟A wine for special occasions, for commemorations and parties”. What about Port for regular drinking so you drink more and we sell more?

Summary: Lots of complicated navigation to reach an absence of content.

[RAYC]

This was a very interesting post, and your points re: intros, flash and content are well made.

To add my two pennies:

- the feature/information that I particularly enjoy (and am delighted when made easily and prominently accessible) is the .pdf specification sheets that you find on some websites and for some ports (eg: http://www.smithwoodhouse.com/PDF/SW_Vintage1997_EN.pdf). The Smith Woodhouse site is better than most for these, and the linked example includes TNs from Suckling, Coates and Broadbent, together with overall impressions of the house/viticultural year and technical specifications (such as baume/acidity). Some include the number of bottles produced (or, more cryptically, released), which is also a good stat to have.

- since the IT systems at my workplace are several years behind what you would currently find on a basic home pc/mac purchased today, a website that does not support old browsers is particularly frustrating. Presumably this is the case for other large organisations (particularly since the crunch). Whilst a website with bells and whistles might be exciting to website designers, the trade-off is that requiring the very latest browsers may limit audience.

- although i have sympathy with your point re: electonic gateways requiring d.o.b. self-certification, this does appear to have become accepted as part of the basic arsenal for discharging social/legal responsibility to guard against the promotion of underage drinking, and I suspect omission would be a tough sell to the in-house legal departments at the larger corporates in particular (Diageo etc.).

FWIW, my stand out wine/port website for the last 18 months is here: http://www.leo-hillinger.com/english/index.php.

After trying a bottle of their wine at a restaurant and thinking it was interesting enough to google when home, I then spent 20 minutes browsing their site (which i thought was well laid-out with meaningful content on the winery, wine-making process/team and their products), culminating in the purchase of the specific wine i had tried at the restaurant together with a couple of others from their range. Whilst i accept that not all will want/are able to sell direct (and that branded polo shirts and spyder ski jackets may not be to everyone's taste...), I found the overall experience to be very gratifying.

[RAYC]

From the Portman Group's "Code of Practice on the Naming, Packaging and Promotion of Alcoholic Drinks":

"Website Age-Verification Pages (AVPs)

An age verification page (AVP) is a website landing page which requires visitors to confirm they are of a certain age before they can enter the website.

It is impractical to require all visitors to undergo an external check before being allowed entry to a site and it is recognised that self-verification is open
to abuse by the visitor.

Nonetheless, in the interests of deterring underage visitors and demonstrating commitment to best practice, companies should require visitors to a dedicated brand website to navigate an AVP before being allowed entry to the site."

http://www.portmangroup.org.uk/assets/d ... dition.pdf

[jdaw1]

Croft Pink, www.croftpink.com

After I have confirmed that I was born on 1-1-1900, this website takes a very long time to start up. Then clicking ‘Next’ gives another significant delay. And oh dear, website as television all over again.

Yes, Croft Pink has a different market. More cocktail bar, less formal dinner. But all the same, the ‘Next’ front page content consists of sunglasses, a bottle, a glass, and a swimming pool regrettably devoid of unclothed damsels. With annoyingly excited music. This isn’t really content. Would anyone really want to look at this except to click away? (Clue: correct answer is not ‟yes”.)

The PinkMoment section allows me to upload my pink moment, but such uploads can’t be seen by the public. Instead we have a view of a boat race, set to a drum beat. Please say that this is a parody.

So an experiment. Perhaps this is for bartenders, in the modern fashion called ‘mixologists’ (from the French via Greek). Standing at their place of work, they don’t have computers. They might have an iPhone, from which they could presumably summons a recipe. Good idea!

OOPS!

CROFTPINK
NEEDS FLASH PLUGIN
TO RUN.

IF YOU’RE TRYING TO
VIEW THIS WEBSITE ON
A MOBILE DEVICE WE
RECOMMEND YOU USE A
DESKTOP COMPUTER
BROWSER.

In invisible ink, underneath, it presumably adds ‟We knew that the client wouldn’t test the website on an iPhone, which is how we got away with this.”

Even if, for the sake of vanity, CroftPink wants a flash-tastic website for the world to ignore, the recipes should be in an HTML section that works on phones. Tough test: a Kindle can access the web, and makes a hash of formatting. The recipes should be legible on a Kindle.

PS: if, back on the computer and having deleted the evil LSO cookie, I claim to be born 1-1-1996 in Cuba, then a message appears briefly:

REQUIRED INFORMATION MISSING
Make sure that your birthdate is well typed
and your country is properly selected

Then I can try again. Cool. That’ll fool all the children not.

[jdaw1]

The Portman Group’s Code of Practice on the Naming, Packaging and Promotion of Alcoholic Drinks, 4th Edition is unbearably tedious, as well as pointlessly unrealistic, but not quite as clear-cut as the earlier quotation suggests.

The Code is to be applied in the spirit as well as in the letter.In judging compliance with the Code, the matter should be looked at broadly and with regard to all the circumstances including(but not limited to) the drink and any other relevant matters, including the overall impression conveyed.

Corporate websites, used solely for company information rather than to promote a particular brand(s), do not need to feature an age verification page.

If the bulk of the website is about vineyards, that leaves room to do the right thing.

[jdaw1]

What Should Be On A Port Website

After some criticism, a positive suggestion is needed.

Start with a question. You buy a vineyard. It’s a bit dilapidated. You do the work, repairing walls, replanting vines, fixing drainage, etc. Hurray! Are you done? No, of course not, it needs maintaining.

If you want a website to be something about which people are talking, if you want people on ThePortForum.com, on WineSpectator.com and the rest, to be talking about you and yours, you need a supply of real content, well organised.

For some companies that is too much commitment. For example, Quinta de Ventozelo has no vintage ports after 2004: the website was built and forgotten. If that’s you, then be realistic at the start. Build a small low-maintenance website that is mostly contact information. Don’t spend lots on a large structure that will echo with its emptiness.

For the Symingtons, at whom this plea was originally directed, with their numerous Port brands, there is plenty of content, and enough people and competent management to make it happen.

I see two streams of content: Vineyards, and Wines.

[jdaw1]

Vineyards

The main page should have a link to each of the major vineyards.

For each there needs to be a good map, well-labelled. This is not a child’s map with three labels and a pretty picture: there should be contour lines, and colour blocks identifying varietals. It will be difficult to make such a map without cluttering it. Do the work.

Next create a small map, say a few hundred pixels across. On this map mark a number of places from which photos are to be taken. Mark those places with an arrow, showing the direction of looking. On each copy of this map the ‘current location’ will be bright blue, the others pale grey.

Now we have an HTML page with its own URL. It contains a small map, and a photo, about 700 pixels across, taken from that place. Clicking on the map jumps to photos taken on the same day from the other locations. Clicking on a set of text dates (‟2011.08.01, 2011.09.01, 2011.10.01, 2011.11.01, !) jumps to the photo taken from the same location on different dates. Thus there are two easy-to-use dimensions of navigation. And by clicking on the photo it can be seen at maximum resolution.

Recall the following.

When the Symingtons’ website is rebuilt, is there any class of fact that the Symingtons themselves would get by looking at that website? Is there any fact beyond marketing guff that you would take from your own website? No? Then start again.

The primary audience is yourselves. On 2nd August 2015 I want the Quinta manager to be looking at a computer, clicking on yesterday’s pictures, and those of the same day in previous years, comparing leaf size and colour. (So always take the photos at the same time of the day.) This website really should be a good tool for the professionals. So, when choosing locations, ask which would be most useful. And ask which dates: probably none in winter (do one anyway), one a month early in the growing season, and one a week as harvest approaches. Ask!

By all means add a few views that you think might of interest to touristy types, but exclude none of the important ones. We will do the virtual tour. Links to these HTML pages will appear on the web: ‟this year looks just like the incredible 2012 twice in one decade, and in my lifetime!”. You should want to be the subject of such a conversation.

To the photos perhaps add a few labels identifying varietals. Underneath the photos add some commentary, perhaps along the lines of ‟last week’s rain can be seen in the leaf growth, and brighter green, of varietal z”. Such comments help the Quinta manager in 2040 when comparing to what is then happening, and today would be a joy to us.

This is a substantial commitment to a stream of content. (A dozen major vineyards, four to a dozen locations in each, consistently photographed more than a dozen times a year.) Do not start it lightly. And if starting it, make it as useful as possible to yourselves. If you use it, you will maintain it, and it will be fabulous; if you don’t, you won’t, and it won’t.

[jdaw1]

Wines

Again, fill it with content. For three reasons.
1. Your agents and representatives want data.
2. Your customers do.
3. To give the impression that you take your own products seriously.

I think there is a natural division into wines on current release, and older wines. For these purposes current release can mean in the cellars for later sale.

Niepoort-style, a single page of current wines, divided by type. Each should link to a HTML (not just PDF) page of real data. There would also be a link to Older wines, containing like links.

The HTML is for on-screen viewing, so keep that clean. The PDFs, as they are to be printed by your agents, may, if marketing really insist, have two ¶s of guff about decanting and only special years and lying down and washing behind the ears and eating enough pork pies. But do not omit any of the real content.

What data do your labs produce? ABV, Baumé? Yes, both of them. A tannin-measure? Acidity/alkalinity pH? Yes, them too please. Anything else comprehensible to somebody with A-level chemistry? Yes. For non-new wines there should be multiple columns, giving these results on various dates: immediately on bottling, and at each subsequent occasion you have tested them. Yes, I am happy to have 12+ columns of lab results for the 1985s: show that you take your products seriously. Flaunt your thoroughness.

Also include narrative about the vintage, and harvesting dates. Numbers made, and numbers released (halves, bottles, magnums, and larger). Price at release is always entertaining, and by illustrating the increase, encourages current purchases.

Things are a little tricky for the likes of Otima. Otima is meant to be an unchanging constant, but isn’t. You should show the old data, but I don’t know how to label the batches. Perhaps with your batch number. Have the current release with current releases; previous with older wines.

Include tasting notes from multiple reputable sources, including your good selves. Include TNs of the newly bottled port, and more recent TNs to show development.

Go back in time: flaunt your history. You have some data, even if only harvest dates, for the ≥1900 Vintages. Each can have a page, just like the new boys. For these the narrative might describe the few occasions that somebody still living has tasted them. Be honest: there is no shame in admitting that not all bottles of super-old port are in perfect condition. If you know to which merchants you shipped it, say. Show that my bottle of Warre 2007 is an exemplar of a few centuries of tradition.

Summary: content, well organised, easily accessible, and easily linked from a bulletin board.

[jdaw1]

Other

Not so much a stream of content, but there is other content to include. Biographies of your twenty most important people. Information on wineries and buildings. Corporate history. Stuff.

Again, do it well. Well ≠ glitzy; Well = full of good content. 

[g-man]

I don't fully agree with julian's assessments.

The intro is useful for those first timers and garnering new interests like how american beer company budweiser has a flash intro that shows you all the commercials they have, but you can quickly navigate to other sections of the non flashed links.

Complete waste of time for those who revisit the site.

I personally absolutely abhor flash as there's no way to truly link pages, important pages that Julian brings up.

Set a cookie, if the visitor has already visit the site, skip the intro.

[Cynthia J]

You're writing faster than I can read, Julian, but I am trying to keep up with you, and I have circulated the link. Thanks!

[jdaw1]

I have now said what I thought needed saying. Perhaps others could say whether they agree or disagree.

If you want an opinion about other websites, just ask. If you want I’ll secretly review a preview of your own new website though expect my email to hold an uncensored full-throated opinion.

[Alex Bridgeman]

I read this thread with a lot of amusement. While I thoroughly agree with the sentiment of what is written, I do so love Julian's style.

I find it unbelievable that I cannot go to a major producer's website and easily find details of old wines, recent tasting notes for them (or not so recent) and harvest reports. It is astonishing to me that I have to dig out Suckling or Broadbent's books - for goodness sake, guys, these are your products: be proud of them and show your pride.

So, please, view your websites as a means to make your archives public. While I accept that many who visit your website will want the marketing bumf, please also make space on your website for those of us who are just as Julian describes - hungry for facts and contents, but bored by flash and glitz. We buy and drink vintage port for the love of the stuff, not because we like the colour pink. We are hooked, but persuade me to buy your product when it is next released and not your competitor's!

[DRT]

I agree entirely with what has been said above. Whilst some producers websites give some of the content that Julian describes these are the exception rather than the rule. Most are no more than marketing hype with little or no useful information. It is extremely rare to find a comprehensive list of vintages declared by a producer on their website never mind any useful information about them.

Like Julian, I am happy to review and provide constructive feedback on any producer's site that is under development, but I can't promise to be as brutal as Julian

[JacobH]

With apologies if I duplicate anything Julian says:

Things I dislike about Port [and other wine / drinks] websites

Introductions

I also, without fail, skip these. I think there is nothing wrong with an introductory video or presentation which will be of interest to new visitors but that must be available as an option to view from the home-page since it is not the case that all visitors, even new ones will want to view it. For example I freely confess that I have almost no knowledge of claret, yet when I was looking at Château Mouton Rothschild’s website recently, I still skipped the introduction because I wanted to get straight to the information contained therein.

For those who are looking for specific information I cannot overemphasis how annoying these introductory videos are. If I want to see what the Taylor’s range is, I want to be able to quickly go there, without waiting for a flash video to download, then play and then generate a ‟skip” button.

With the web, you should not force your visitors to do anything and should do you best to allow them to access the information as quickly as possible. Videos are a huge barrier to this.

I also would, respectfully disagree with g-man about using a cookie to stop the video showing on subsequent visits to the site. I use more than one computer on a daily basis which means the cookie solution would not work since the cookies are not easily transferred between computers. I also regularly clear my cookies, meaning that the ‟you have viewed the video” cookie would disappear. The solution is to have a link to the video or presentation on the home page, allowing those who want to see it to opt-in and those who don’t to opt-out.

Music

Music on websites is awful. If I am distracting myself at work for a few minutes by looking at the Sandeman’s website, I don’t want that fact broadcast to the whole room if I foolishly forgot to turn down my speakers before loading the site. I also may wish to listen to music on my computer whilst browsing the web. Auto-loading music gets in the way of this.

Flash

Having an entirely flash-based site usually means that a) I can’t link to pages within it; b) the back/forward buttons in my browser do not work; c) my mouse's scroll wheel does not work; d) I cannot copy text from the site; e) it takes far longer to load than it should; f) I cannot view the site from my mobile phone; and g) most blind people cannot view the site which (in England, at least) may be unlawful discrimination. Please, have an HTML-based site, built by people who understand web-standards.

Navigation troubles

Take the Poças website. I want to know about their Quintas. But is that ‟wine” or ‟passion”? The only person who can answer that for sure is the designer of the website. This is not a good thing!

Lack of content

The great advantage of the web is that you have freedom to write at any length you choose. It is therefore extremely disappointing when Port websites have not more information than will fit on the back of a postage-stamp and when it looks like it was written by a marketing consultant rather than someone involved in the trade.

What I would like to see on Port Shippers’ websites

Useful and interesting information

Everyone I have spoken to who has been involved in the trade has been passionate about what they do. This just doesn’t come across on the websites. Tell me about your Ports, what they are like and how they are made. In particular, I would like to know about the following, but there may be more things you can say. In general (and this is probably the most important thing I will say here) the content of the website should be so informative, useful and interesting that your own staff use it as the primary source of reference when they are looking up anything that is not commercially confidential.

The Ports

I’d like to see the full range, including all those funny ‟Special Reserve”, ‟Finest Selected Reserve” ruby Ports with confusing names, with proper information about what they are (e.g. Which Quintas do they come from? What is their average age? How were they matured?) and, particularly, what the winemaker is aiming for in those blends and what he thinks of them. I’d also like to see full and accurate lists of declared vintages (so that when I’m looking at an auction for a 1993 Quinta do Something, I can see if it does actually exist) and, if possible, any tasting notes the shippers have. For the old vintages, it is also fascinating to read extracts from harvest reports and can really add to the enjoyment of old Port.

The Shipper

Full histories of the shippers are fascinating and there is never enough about this on the websites. The shippers know more than anyone else can do about their own histories and it would be wonderful to have better resources than the few reference books that we currently have to rely upon. And please, resist the temptation for recently acquired brands to airbrush out their former owners.

The Quintas

Histories of the Quintas are also fascinating. When were they founded? When did they get bought by the current shipper? Also, practical details are very interesting. Where exactly is it? Longitude and latitude co-ordinates are welcome so I can then look it up on Google Earth or other satellite mapping programmes. How is the vineyard planted? Where are the wines vinified?

It would also be interesting to read more about the independent producers who support the major shipper’s blends. Considering that all the literature states that the same quintas supply to the same shippers for years or even decades it should be possible to have some information about significant independent quintas; this, again, would be information that would be fascinating and not readily available.

Good Pictures

The Douro is beautiful. But few shippers’ sites do it justice. There should be extensive galleries with wonderful photos of the vineyards and the, equally photogenic, process of wine-making and maturing.

Some high-resolution ones for use as desktop-backgrounds would not go amiss either.

Beginners’ Information

Few sites have really good information about the very basics of Port: what are the different styles?; how are they made?; where are the wines from?; why is there a split between the Douro and Oporto; and how to serve Port. Some things would benefit from a good video. A senior partner demonstrating decanting in the Factory House or a lodge would combine history, current information and practical details. The blending master showing what he does might help de-mystify that art.

It is also worth not underestimating the problems of terminology. Navigation bars should say ‟Vineyards” not ‟Quintas” and wines should be listed as ‟Port” and something like ‟Other / Table / Dry Wines” rather than ‟Vinho do Porto” and ‟Douro” which are confusing unless you understand that ‟Porto” is Port and ‟Douro” is the table wine from the same region.

Other information about the Port trade

General, in depth, information about the trade and how Port is made is interesting and it would be great to see more of it. Things like the Graham’s blog on corks or Oscar’s blog on colheita topping up. For example, I’d love to see a website with detailed pictures and descriptions of the various grape varieties used in Port.

Where to buy the Port

This is often a mystery on many sites. Please, give up-to-date links to importers and (even better) retailers so that, by the time the hard sell of your website has succeeded, I can actually buy the stuff.

Contact Information

Even if you don’t welcome visitors, proper contact information is extremely useful and those who you do invite will be grateful for it. Especially out in the Douro where finding your way around is a nightmare.

[g-man]

With apologies if I duplicate anything Julian says:

The Ports

I’d like to see the full range, including all those funny ‟Special Reserve”, ‟Finest Selected Reserve” ruby Ports with confusing names, with proper information about what they are (e.g. Which Quintas do they come from? What is their average age? How were they matured?) and, particularly, what the winemaker is aiming for in those blends and what he thinks of them. I’d also like to see full and accurate lists of declared vintages (so that when I’m looking at an auction for a 1993 Quinta do Something, I can see if it does actually exist) and, if possible, any tasting notes the shippers have. For the old vintages, it is also fascinating to read extracts from harvest reports and can really add to the enjoyment of old Port.

I'd especially would love to see the wine maker's notes on the ports themselves.

I love how my old fonsecas had tags recommending decant times and proper drinking instructions per port.

[Andy Velebil]

Like AHB I read Julian's posts and got a great chuckle, as anyone who knows him knows the passion and direction his heart lies.

My main gripes about any wine producers websites (from any country) is the lack of information about current and past products. It drives me nuts when I am looking for information about a product made by company on their website and it doesn't even list that they make it. I don't care if it's only a product for a certain country or market, please list it as in this day and age everything produced is now globally accessable to some extent.

Technical sheets: I love these and wish every producer would put links to easily accessable and printable. I understand for older vintages this may not be possible, but at least for newer ones...for ALL products.

That said, I do applaud the progress many Port producers websites have achieved in such a short time as I remember only a few years ago there were hardly any.

[Glenn E.]

I have also been enjoying this thread and agree with what is being said. I haven't read all of the suggestions in detail - as they are VERY detailed - but they do all seem to be good suggestions.

It drives me nuts when I am looking for information about a product made by company on their website and it doesn't even list that they make it.

Which brings up another piece of information that we're constantly asking about, and which the producers must surely have. At the risk of duplicating a suggestion that someone else has already made:

A list of declared vintages.

Better yet, a list of all products that have been made over the years. Declared vintages, SQVPs, Colheitas, LBVs, etc... there's very little reason that this shouldn't be accessible from the producer's web site. It would be extremely useful to us, your dedicated fans.