Lack of hype boosts port sales

By DITA DE BONI

Changing wine tastes and investor interest are making vintage port a hot investment item, says a visiting port specialist.

Nick Heath, marketing director of Portugal-based Taylor's and Fonseca ports, is here to celebrate the release of the 1997 Vintage Taylor's Port.

It is expected to sell for around $150 a bottle.

He says port sales are driven by public tastes, but the fact that the best vintages are becoming valuable commodities, traded by brokers and sold at auction houses, is adding cachet to the product.

Taylor's 1994 vintage - a "very good year," he says - cost about $US35 ($80) when released in 1996. The wine got a favourable review in the Wine Spectator magazine, boosting its price to $US200 within 10 days.

The price of the vintage has continued to climb as the product has become scarce.

"It's just like stocks and shares," says Mr Heath. "Timing is vital, and you've absolutely got to know what you are buying.

"It's also, to a huge extent, media-driven, [as] a good review can boost prices around the globe, and especially in the main markets of North America, the UK and, increasingly, Asia."

His visit marks the transfer of his company's distribution account from DB Group's recently disbanded Allied Liquor to Interwine, a joint venture of Australia's Rosemount Estate, Matua Wines and managing director Baden Ngan Kee.

Taylor's and Fonseca are New Zealand's leading port brands - in a small but growing market - with around 11,000 cases or 132,000 bottles sold overall each year.

The brands hold around 20 per cent of the market, with the company's vintage ports - ports produced from particularly good years - selling in small but valuable parcels.

Vintage port differs from other varieties - such as ruby, tawny and late vintage - by being aged in wood for two years before bottling.

Grapes for the vintage European port come from special vineyards in Portugal - mostly the Dovro Valley in the northeast.

The bottles can be kept for several years and will increase in value over time.

Port vintages are declared only if the wine is of exceptional quality. Limited supplies have seen the world price of the vintaged product increase nearly 25 per cent in the past two years.

"As consumers become more knowledgeable and discerning about wine in general, they transfer their interest in the best products and brands to port as well," says Mr Heath.

A descendant of the Portuguese Fonseca Guimareans port-producing dynasty, he has had a life steeped in the traditions of great wine. Taylor's, which brought the Fonseca business after the Second World War, was established in 1692.

It is the last fully independent company of the original British Port Houses that were established in Portugal to ensure a continuity of supply of the fortified lubricant over 400 years ago.

In New Zealand, Mr Heath is encouraged by the fact that after a static market in the early 1990s, port imports grew by almost 10 per cent to 1999.

The greatest growth came from the "special category" ports, including vintage ports, which have grown by 33 per cent.

More than Australia - which has a relatively large fortified wine production of its own - New Zealanders have always had a relatively high consumption of port, but Hr Heath says New Zealand is still a good place to buy the vintage product as we remain removed from overseas media hype.

And the best time and place to consume a vintage port? It hasn't changed much, he says.

"With friends, by itself, after a meal."