Ver: 7'36'' a 9'38"
Segue abaixo uma transcrição de um discurso de Paul Symington aquando de uma prova vertical de Vintage Port da Cockburn's (1863 até 2011) em Londres em 2015. A família Symington sendo originária da Escócia, produz Vinho do Porto desde 1882 e actualmente é a quinta geração que está no comando de todos os aspectos inerentes ao negócio. O curioso deste discurso é a referência à Ordem de Cister como produtores de bons vinhos no Douro desde a sua chegada a Portugal no séc. XII:
"At 1147, in the second crusade, the king Afonso, the I of Portugal, convinced a lot of crusaders, most of them English, but also Dutch and Flemish, to stop off in Lisbon, to catch Lisbon from the Moors. Many of them stayed on. The first bishop of Lisbon was an Englishman and many of the crusaders settled down in Santarém valley.
So I think is somewhat unlikely that the British were in Porto in 1147. It would take them 500 years to get to the Douro. As if there was some sort of barrier around the Douro: there’d be lions or… it’s just nonsense.
At 1153, the Cistercians founded two great monasteries in the Douro valley – no one talks about them. Tarouca and Salzedas. The next time you go to the Douro, go and see these monasteries. They owned hundreds of hectares of vineyard and land and it is almost certain that this Cistercians were making wine, and very good wine back in the 12th and 13th centuries. This is where the merchants found their wine, for absolute certain. And it’s a great misreading of history to think that the English somehow invented the wines of the Douro. But the first Anglo-Portuguese alliance was in 1373; treated of Windsor in 1386; and in 1387, John of Gaunt’s daughter, Phillippa of Lancaster, married King John, the I of Portugal, in Porto. Again, I think is somewhat unlikely that the English who came with Phillippa of Lancaster (many did) founded (terrifying) to go to the Marão to the Douro region, which after all is only about 2 days on a horse.
So this is all a myth…
As you all know, Catarina de Bragança married Charles the II of England in 1662. These two marriages are pretty much the reason why Port is what it is today, certainly in this market."
Neste discurso, Paul Symington incentiva os críticos e jornalistas de vinho a irem visitar os Mosteiros de São João de Tarouca e de Santa Maria de Salzedas na próxima viagem ao Alto Douro e fica incrédulo de como ninguém fala deles.
O Vinho do Porto "embrionário" surgiu certamente da ordem monástica de Cister e não de um acidente num tal barco num viagem entre Portugal e Inglaterra.
