ABOUT PORTOVINTAGE.COM
PORTOVINTAGE.com was born from an old friendship within a Portuguese and a French, both have been wine professionals for over at least thirty years. They are epicureans and good winetasters. João Pulido, Portuguese, has been the president of a wine club for 30 years and a profound connoisseur of all Port wines and their producers. The Frenchman is me, Sylvain Favard, wine lover since ever and Port wine lover since João introduced me to this spectacular wines, which I did not even imagine the existence before.
I met João in the 90's in Bordeaux at a professionals wine event and I never let him go again. Diogo join us later, he’s the youngest - enologist with a more technical approach. We talk about French and Portuguese wines, but we mainly focus on Port wine. Like most of all the French and Belgians, I’ve always loved Port wine, but nowadays, thanks to João and Diogo, I share all the secrets of the most ancient wine denomination of the world.
My biggest discovery was the myriad varieties of Port wines and the large number of great small producers that we can´t find on the international market. In “Alto Douro” (wine region where Ports are produced) there are thousands of producers, very different from each other. Most of them have been harvesting secular vineyards, transmitted across generations. Some properties are extended over dozens of hectares and others only have a few rows of vines... A producer makes not just one Port, but a whole range, from classic Tawny and Ruby to very old LBVs and Vintages.
All the farming work is very hard in the terraced vineyard, but the landscape is breathtaking. Too often the estate is fragmented with difficult access to plots, severe winters, manual harvesting which generates low incomes and long aging wines. Moreover the "one third law" was enacted in full by Sebastião José de Carvalho e Mello and Marquês de Pombal. In 1756 forced the winemakers to store permanently the equivalent of two third of their sales.
Thanks to both, at each tasting with several producers I have realized my lack of knowledge and decided to know more about Port wines. The richness of all these tastings, the wide range of all these Port wines, the personality of each producer … made me understand that Port wine is truly one of the greatest wines in the world. It was a real disclosure for me!
While we were visiting wine estates near the village of Galafura, I discussed with João and Diogo the lack of information about Port wines in Belgium and France. And in that day, PORTOVintage.com was born.
From that moment on, we have decided to open the Port wine world directly from the producers in Portugal up to your home. With PORTOVINTAGE.com you have access to a great number of traditional producers, all very proud of their wines, their origins and their traditions.
The Selection Committee of PORTOVINTAGE.com only selects Port wines which gave them the greatest emotions. Our selection offers a lot of different Ports - most of them unknown to public at large- responding to all wine tasting occasions. Of course, you can serve Port wine as an aperitif or with dessert, but also with a blue cheese if you are a connoisseur, and throughout the whole meal if you have been initiated... it makes you bend over your knees!
For this extraordinary journey, the reason and the passion must be married. Given the scarcity of the products, the offer is accessible only by subscribing to the Club.
The quality and the variety of PORTOVINTAGE.com committee selection, is to the enrichment of your cellar to create the most unforgettable tastings that will lead you, like me, to the passion of Port wine.