Wine Imports and British Wine Making
The term alcohol originated about four hundred years ago as the Arabic term for a blue cosmetic eye shadow (antimony sulphide), the term was later used to refer to any metal powder but by about the middle of the eighteenth century the term had come to mean distilled spirit of wine, probably due to the Alchemists experiments. The present sense of the word originated in about 1850, twenty years after the building of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway. Alcoholic drinks are available in three common forms; beer, spirits and wine, cider is a much smaller industry.
In the Middle Ages Britain was an important wine producing country but wine making declined in favour of beer as the climate changed. The comparatively small size of the cider market can be judged by the comparatively recent interest in taxing the stuff. The importance of alcoholic drinks in British culture has long been recognised, the standard three basic necessities recognised by Governments were for many years food, drink and tobacco.
Since the 12th Century regular imports from France included fruits, spices, and above all wine. French wines were cheaper than our own and the imports resulted in the decline of the English wine industry. Also around the 1150s we began to import sherry from Jerez, Spain and port wine from Portugal. Although Britain generally preferred ale to wine it was an important commodity, at one time the UK had a system for alleviating shortages called the 'Common Bargain', intended to prevent profiteering. Under this system the goods had first to be offered to the local corporation (who could then sell them on to the locals at reasonable prices), and in the 16th century wine was added to the list of controlled goods under this scheme.
London was a major port but a lot of the wine from France was actually shipped to Chester (which remained an important port into the 1840s when larger ships appeared), in Scotland the bulk of the imported wine arrived at the port of Leith.
The increasing tensions and eventual war with France in the later 18th and early 19th century saw prohibitive taxes placed on French wines. With the coming of the railways the Gilbey family saw its coaching business failing and the two brothers went into the wine and spirits trade. The problems with the French lead them to develop a trade in of colonial, and particularly South African or 'Cape' wine and the business thrived. The brothers built up the company they ended up owning two wiskey distilleries in Scotland and introduced their well known brand of gin, produced in London. In the 1860s a treaty signed with France saw the import taxes reduced, but this simply fuelled the buisness. One of the brothers, Walter, was later knighted and made a significant contribution to the breeding of shire horses.
In the 19th century the Marquess of Bute established a vineyard on a commercial scale at Castell Coch in South Wales, in 1905 there were 63,000 vines at Castell Coch and Swanbridge, but no wine making seems to have been carried out after the First World War.
From World War One until the late 1940s there seems to have been virtually no wine produced in the UK. In the early 1950s Major General Sir Guy Salisbury-Jones planted a vineyard at Hambledon, north of Portsmouth, in Hampshire and in 1955 the first English Wine to be made and sold commercially since the First World War went on sale.
Little wine is produced in Britain (although production has increased steadily since the 1970s) and there are two kinds; British wine is made using imported grapes in a rather industrial process to produce cheap but rather poor wine, mostly for the supermarkets. English wine (and I think Welsh wine) on the other hand is entirely home produced, from vineyard to bottle, and some of these are very good wines indeed. Demand far exceeds home production and we still receive regular imports.
Wine was (and some still is) imported in both barrels (cheap) and bottles (better quality), the bottles are shipped in plain wooden cases (usually 6 or 12 bottles per case).
With the development of ferries capable of carrying railway wagons in the 1920s we began bringing it in using continental rolling stock. The wine barrels vary depending on the country of origin and the class of wine, however a lot is shipped in standard 56 gallon 'hogsheads'.
Fig ___ Man with 6 bottle case of wine and a typical 'hogshead' cask
As wine is subject to tax it was landed and taken to 'bonded warehouses', where the people from Customs and Excise would determine the taxes due before it was shipped on to the customer.
Wine tankers are a relatively modern development but they were a regular feature of ferry traffic in the Speedlink era. One company in particular, Ermefer, operated a number of ferry tanks (of French origin) carrying bulk wine and fruit juices, the sketch below is very rough but shows the main features. In traffic the red sign faded so if you find a suitable tank wagon just a silver body with a white rectangle (perhaps with traces of red in the lower part) would serve.
Fig ___ Sketch of an Ermefer tanker
In 2005 Ermefer (the food grade transportation arm of Group Ermewa S.A.) were bought out by Stolt-Nielsen Transportation Group (SNTG), by this time they were using mainly tank containers and these were to be rebranded Stolt Tank Containers (STC).
Port
Port wine (also known simply as Port) is a Portuguese wine originating from the northern provinces of Portugal, the name comes from Oporto, the main port in the region from which the wine was exported. In the UK the drink can only be sold as 'port' if it is made in Portugal, elsewhere no such restriction applies. Port became very popular in England in the 18th century when wars with the French meant that high duties were imposed on French wines, however the long sea passage often caused the wine to spoil to extra alcohol was added to 'fortify' the wine. The wine is made from red grapes, but it then has some additional grape spirit added (often called brandy but it bears little relationship to the brandy you can buy). The result is a rather alcoholic wine that goes well with cheese and pickled walnuts.
The wine is aged in barrels in Portugal and most is shipped out in large barrels (a typical size being the Lisbon Butt of 117 gallons capacity, nearly twice the size of the hogsheads used for beer and wine. The better quality vintage port is bottled, the bottles are then packed (with some straw) into flat wooden cases for shipment to the UK. Until fairly recently (the 1930s I believe) Port wine was unfiltered, so you had to decant it through muslin to filter out the sediment. Once the bottle is opened the port has to be drunk within a few days at most (some bottles have a more modern stopper, in which case it will last for a month or so after opening).
There are three basic types of Port wine: Ruby, a deep red wine and probably the most familiar to most, Tawny, matured in smaller barrels than ruby port, these are a paler colour and often served slightly chilled and White, which is not often seen and is made from white grapes (usually associated with cocktails). These three types are then blended to produce a range of port wines.
Many of the major port producers were British or Portuguese (although recently the French and Germans have taken over a large part of the industry) and probably the best known brand is Sandeman, founded in 1790 by the Scottish businessman George Sandeman and based in Oporto. In the 1980s a survey found that the Sandeman Don (the 'man in a cape') logo was one of the most recognised company logos in the world.
Fig ___ Sandeman Logo
They established their own brand, the House of Sandeman, in the 1780s, the wine was imported in wooden casks and Sandeman's branded theirs as an assurance of quality. This was one of the first companies to label and advertise its products, Sandeman branded wines were being shipped to several countries in Europe, North and South Americas, Africa and Asia by the 1820s. As well as their range of port wines Sandeman also produce sherry wine, table wine, Madeira and brandy. For a time in the 1980s the company was taken over by Seagram's, but in 1990 the family regained control of the company.
Croft's Port started life as Phayre & Bradley after its founding partners, the name changed in 1736 when Mr croft joined the business. In 1911 the House of Croft was acquired by the Gilbeys, the distinguished English wine trade family (who also produced one of the most popular brands of gin). It is now owned and run by descendants of two old Port wine families, the Yeatman’s and Fladgate’s.
Cockburn’s was set up by Scotsman Robert Cockburn in 1815, over the years they have acquired a reputation as innovators (not altogether popular in the conservative Port trade). In the 1930s they set up an experimental vineyard and have managed to bring back some of the older grape varieties, these have lower yields but produce interesting flavours. In 1994 they were the first wine company to be awarded the ISO 9002 for quality management.
Cálem, founded in the 1850s has the distinction of being one of the few Port houses that was (until 1998) Portuguese family-owned. As in Bordeaux, most Port businesses are now in corporate hands and the company is now part of Portuguese group called Sogevinus, which also owns Burmeirster amongst others.
Churchill’s is the First Independent British Port Shipper in over 70 years, established in 1981 and based in Oporto.
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