By fermenting the grapes separately they gained much valuable knowledge about the traditional Douro varieties and laid the foundation for Taylor’s unique research library of single grape variety wines. In 1927 at Quinta de Vargellas they created the first varietal blocks, separate terraces each containing a different Douro grape variety – a revolutionary idea in a region still accustomed to mixed plantings. Both had a keen interest in viticulture and in implementing new ideas. Under the leadership of Dick and Stanley the business thrived. By the end of his career Smiler had been responsible for no fewer than 50 Port harvests. From 1923 the company was managed by Dick and Stanley under the experienced and benign guidance of Smiler, a successful partnership that would continue until the latter’s retirement at the end of 1949. He joined the company at the same time as his cousin Stanley Yeatman. He studied at Montpellier in France, the first British Port wine shipper to qualify there as a viticulturist.
However Smiler’s son Dick was keen to join the firm. The London house closed and from that point the company was run solely from Portugal. In 1919 Harry O died and neither of his sons wanted a partnership, so Smiler briefly became the sole owner. His other passions were golf (not perhaps an ideal game if you live in the Douro) and Ceylon tea which he shipped in by the chest every year. Without him it is not clear that the company would have survived those troubled times. He calmly steered the company through two world wars and periods of great political and financial instability. Smiler was a much-loved figure, tall, charming and diffident. He supervised the making of the wine while his brother, Harry O Yeatman, was based in London looking after sales. Grandson of the first Yeatman partner, he was the first member of the family to live and work more or less permanently in the Douro. Nicknamed ‘Smiler’, he was a formidable Port wine taster. The monumental task of rebuilding Vargellas fell to Frank Yeatman, the key figure in the history of the firm in the first half of the 20th century. By the time of the purchase, the production of its vineyards is recorded as having fallen to only about four pipes. Notwithstanding the outstanding reputation of the Vargellas wines, the acquisition was a bold step for the firm as phylloxera had wrought havoc on the property. In June British forces commanded by Lord Arthur Wellesley took Oporto in a swift and dramatic victory and in July the three ships finally docked safely at Portsmouth. Eight pipes belonging to Offley were taken and one and a half pipes belonging to Webb, Campbell, Gray & Camo, the name under which the company was then known. The French troops did their best to loot the three vessels, which remained at anchor in the river, but were defeated by the size of the barrels. On 29th March the French army reached Oporto. On 17th March Camo finally succeeded in loading the vessels but they remained unable to reach open sea. It was now February 1809 and torrential rain, combined with snow melt further upriver, had swelled the river to a flood and the sand bar at the entrance to the estuary was blocked by fallen trees and other debris. But when they reached Oporto they were unable to tie up at the quayside. Three ships did eventually arrive with orders to collect 632 pipes of Port, including some consignments from other British-owned houses. In December 1808 Napoleon occupied Madrid and given the ease of his progress, few ship owners or captains were keen to sail to Oporto. The company recognised that Camo was vital to its survival and awarded him a one-sixth share in the Oporto partnership in return for his remaining in Oporto to run the company after all the British merchants had left.Ĭamo’s first challenge was to arrange for as much wine as possible to be shipped to Britain.
Taylor port wine full#
In his book Oporto Old and New, published in 1899, the historian of the Port trade Charles Sellers describes Camo as ‘a typical American, a man full of energy, fertile in resource and never wanting in pluck, three qualities absolutely indispensable in those distressful days’.
As an American citizen the French would not regard him as an enemy and possessions entrusted to his care stood a chance of being left alone. By 1808 the French army was fast advancing through Spain and there was a rush to make British possessions safe by transferring ownership to a friendly non-British company or, in the case of the wines, to arrange shipment to Britain.įortunately, the firm’s Oporto employees included an enterprising American of Turkish descent called Joseph Camo. This situation might have been disastrous as these were the years of the peninsular campaigns of the Napoleonic Wars.