Slow Food conference also includes a slow Port Wine tasting

During this week is taking place in Turin, Italy, the Salone del Gusto fair, and event under the umbrella of the Slow Food organization. Slow Food, for opposition to Fast Food, aims to preserve traditional and regional cuisine. During this 4 day event, there was a workshop dedicated to Port Wine. Italy is not a traditional market for Port. Actually, it has one of the lowest per capita consumption between the countries of the Occidental Europe. So it was with a lot of surprise that I received the news that the event sold out well in advance. Together with me, there were two other family producers talking on the workshop: Miguel Braga from Quinta do Mourão and Manuel Viseu from Quinta de Baldias.

We were there to talk about Port Wine in general. A little bit of history; how is it made and aged; different types of Port.Suddenly, the very active audience exposed the trickiest question – “Why can’t we find more Port Wine in Italy, is this a problem of marketing, a problem of demand?”

I made a video of this moment of the discussion. Sound is not very good, sorry. I’m writing few topics about it, but I would really love to hear from you. Is Port Wine popular in your country? If not, how can we change this?

• Port Wine is a very old product
• many Port Wine brands were created over 100 years ago
• traditional consumer of Port Wine is over 50 years old
• marketing is focused on traditional channels, not taking advantage (yet) of new technologies

but

• we, industry, have created young Ports for young people
• we are making more and more tastings all over the world, introducing new people to Port
• and more important of all, we are increasing the overall quality of Port Wine, delivering better Ports at good prices

Now it’s your turn!

Oscar