ThePortForum.com

Recent articles you may not have seen.

https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2025/ ... ts-future/

https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2025/ ... the-douro/

The second is very interesting. Paul Symington savages the Portuguese government and the IVDP.

No beating around the bush there then ....

I've yet to fully read the articles (they're open in my browser, waiting for a good time to do so), but I must say that Paul Symington and his family aren't exactly your typical "Douro farmers" that he mentions in the article. Their interests aren't necessarily the same as my interests.

That second article is very damning of the government and agricultural institutes of Portugal, but I agree with the above, this is coming from someone who represents a monopoly on douro producers, the symingtons arn't typical farmers, they are business people who will fight a full war for a one cent difference on grape price. It would be interesting to know what the symington group pay douro farmers for excess grapes. However, no matter how you slice it, there is clearly a need for a reform to prevent the abandonment of vinyards in the douro.
The first article I find a little split on. I think port wine has found great traction recently through tourism, gastronomy, mixology as all suggested. Yes i believe premium ports are popular again thanks to new categories like 50 and 80 year old tawnies, but i get a sense that vintages by case have fallen simply because of the pricing. This obviously links in to the second article, but why would i go buy a case of 2023 to lay down for the next 20 years or more when i can go find a case of 1985 for roughly the same price? So it begs the question, are new vintages over priced...or are older vintages under priced?

JohnDavidFrance wrote: ↑08:58 Thu 20 Nov 2025 why would i go buy a case of 2023 to lay down for the next 20 years or more when i can go find a case of 1985 for roughly the same price?

I suspect this pricing architecture has been true for many decades. What has perhaps changed is that there are far fewer country cellars, college cellars etc, buying port at all never mind at release. Those type of buyers didn't have quite such a focus on storage cost, as the cellar was there and was to be used for aging stuff.