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5 unusual facts about Port Wine


Frank Arthur Brock

Brock brought on board with him a box marked 'Highly Explosive, Do Not Open' which actually contained bottles of vintage port which were drunk by his men.

Investment wine

The most common wines purchased for investment include those from Bordeaux, Burgundy, cult wines from Europe and elsewhere, and Vintage port.

Oz and Hugh Drink to Christmas

Oz and Hugh Drink to Christmas is a BBC television programme in which wine personality Oz Clarke and comedian Hugh Dennis travel through Britain to sample a wide array of seasonal Christmas beverages, including whisky, winter ales, mulled wine, wassail, sloe gin, Buck's Fizz, Port wine and Sherry.

Quinta classification of Port vineyards in the Douro

The Quinta classification of Port vineyards in the Douro is a system that grades the terroir and quality potential of vineyards in the Douro wine region to produce grapes suitable for the production of Port wine.

Willem Hesselink

His thesis on the secrets of Port wine made on the banks of the Douro has proved to stand the tests of time and is still quoted regularly.


Cumberland sauce

Although variations exist, common ingredients include red currants or cowberries, port or wine, mustard, pepper, orange, ginger, and vinegar.

Rabelo Boat

Although not in use anymore, still today we can admire these graceful vessels belonging to the Port Wine Companies in the banks of the Douro river, in the cities of Porto and Gaia.

Reinald Oudinot

The objective of the work at Leixões was to provide a safer harbour than that offered by the hazardous mouth of the River Douro, in an effort to help export Port wine and other products from the Douro Valley.

Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, 1st Marquis of Pombal

Even exports from Portugal went mostly through expatriate merchants like the English port wine shippers and French businessmen like Jácome Ratton, whose memoirs are scathing about the efficiency of his Portuguese counterparts.

Trichinopoly cigar

In Dorothy L. Sayers' The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (1928), Lord Peter Wimsey remarks that an acquaintance who once "polluted" a Cockburn 1886 port wine by drinking it while smoking a cheap Trichinopoly cigar was "ear-marked for a bad end".


see also

Port-wine stain

Port-wine stains were shown to be caused by a somatic activating c.548G→A mutation in the GNAQ gene.

Thelma Scott

She continued to act in the theatre, performing with Ray Milland in Hostile Witness at Sydney's Tivoli Theatre in 1967, and in 1968 acted in J.C. Williamson's production of Spring and Port Wine, playing Daisy Crompton opposite Alfred Marks.