Cockburn Vintage Port 1985
- Vintage
- 1985
- Country
- Portugal
- Region
- Douro
- Size
- 750ml
- Grapes
- Port Blend
- Rating
- WS90
Shows an abundance of thick, rich fruit and plenty of backbone. Very inky, dense color, with a rich, floral nose of berries and cherries. Full-bodied, medium sweet, with massive anise and cherry flavors and extremely well integrated tannins and acidity. - WS90
The unique story of Port.>/b>
The story goes, that two British merchants travelling through Portugal’s Douro Valley in the seventeenth century came across the monks at a monastery near Lamego drinking a local wine with grape spirit added to it early in its fermentation so that the wine kept its natural sweetness. They decided to start shipping this wine back to Britain. The fortifying spirit helped to preserve the wine on its long sea voyage as well as giving it a unique sweet taste. This was embryonic Port. The same production methods are, more or less, still used today. In 1756 the Marquis of Pombal (Marquês de Pombal) drew the limits of the Douro region, creating the world’s first officially demarcated wine region. It is a region sculpted both by nature and by humans over centuries and is for this reason now recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The Cockburn Family.
In 1815, the Scotsman Robert Cockburn and his brother John, already successful wine merchants in Leith near Edinburgh, set up a branch of their firm in Porto: R & J Cockburn’s. They had many business partners through the years. And like all of the early Port companies the name changed. Eventually coming to be known as Cockburn’s & Co: the name that survives today.
The Cockburn family continued to run the company until well into the twentieth century. Other families though joined the extended family of Cockburn’s & Co during this time. The Wauchopes, the Smithes, the Teages and the Cobbs were amongst them. The Cockburn’s & Co family thus gradually swelled to include some of the finest winemakers and Port tasters that the trade has ever known.