King of port on why he is confident Britons will keep enjoying the drink
Chief of Dow’s maker Symington Family Estates tells Robin Pagnamenta that Brexit is not a concern
Rupert Symington sits back in his chair and takes a sip of mineral water. It’s late afternoon in the basement bar of London’s Lanesborough Hotel and the king of port is in expansive mood.
Dressed in a tweed jacket, corduroys and brown Oxford brogues, Symington looks every inch the English gent. It is only the craggy, tanned face that betrays a life spent in the baking hot vineyards of Portugal’s Douro Valley, where his family has been producing port for 130 years.
“They always say that with family businesses – there’s normally a founder and then there’s the children who generally get along reasonably well but complain about how much they’ve been left,” says Symington, who since January has served as chief executive of Symington Family Estates, one of the world’s largest port producers. “Then you have the rows – typically in the third generation – but we’ve managed to get through.”
Symington, whose family controls 2,630 acres of Portugal’s finest vineyards, is proud to represent the fourth generation of the dynasty. As millions of Britons enjoy a glass of port this Christmas, it is more than likely to be the Symingtons who can take the credit for producing it, storing it – often for decades – and shipping it. Many of their grand old brands – Graham’s, Cockburn’s, Dow’s – trace their origins much further back, with the oldest of all, Warre’s, holding records that date back to 1670.
“The trade goes back a very long way,” says Symington. “The first records of port being shipped were in the mid 1600s.”
Ten other family members work for the business, which was started by his great grandfather Andrew James Symington – a merchant who moved from Glasgow to Porto in 1882 aged 19.
Port – a fortified wine made by adding brandy or grape spirit to the sweet, usually red, wines produced in the dry Douro Valley – has been enjoyed by British drinkers for centuries. Today, the international trade is worth about $825m (£637m) and is growing at 4pc per year.
Traditionally taken downriver in flat-bottom boats, called barcos rabelos, for processing and storage, port’s popularity boomed after 1703, when Portugal and Britain signed a military and trade treaty as part of the War of the Spanish Succession.
“British merchants for the first time were given full rights to trade and do business in Portugal,” Symington says. “The next hundred years was nothing short of a gold-rush.”
The trade has always been shaped by politics. “When Britain was at war with France they would tax French products,” says Symington, who lived in Porto until he was 13, before attending boarding school and later university in Britain. “Port came in on the back of that.”
Symington is at pains to point out that Portugal is England’s oldest ally. It is a friendship that can be traced back to 1147, when English crusaders helped King Alfonso I capture Lisbon from the Muslims. Although today, global
‘The business is a lot bigger. I’ve been there for 27 years and we’ve gone from a €30m company to €90m’
demand is robust, especially the vintage ports for which the Symingtons are best known, it has not always been an easy ride.
Booming demand for the drink in the roaring Twenties collapsed following the Wall Street Crash of 1929. Three lean decades followed as producers fought to eke out a living through the Great Depression, the Second World War and its troubled aftermath.
“That’s when a lot of the family firms either sold out or closed down,” says Symington. “We were relatively lucky. We had to sell off a few assets to pay the bills, but we rode it through.”
In fact, those tough times offered opportunity too – above all to pick up other brands at knock-down prices.
The Symington stable grew to include Graham’s and Smith Woodhouse. It was fortuitous timing. By the Sixties, demand had started to pick up again.
Growth since then has been resilient, although the revolution in Portugal in 1974 was also an anxious time. While some vineyards in other regions of the country were nationalised, the Douro – the world’s largest area of mountain vineyards – was largely left alone.
Overall production volumes have fallen in recent years, partly because of labour shortages. However, the value of the port trade is still rising, mainly because of demand for top quality and vintage ports.
Perhaps that turbulent trading history of feast and famine stretching back centuries helps explain why Symington seems relatively relaxed about Brexit. Over the years, port’s popularity has taken off elsewhere. Scandinavia, the US, France and the Benelux countries are all major markets too as well as Britain. Although the fall in the value of sterling hit the company hard in 2016, the UK now only represents a relatively small share of the Symingtons’ overall business.
In any case, he remains confident Britons will keep on drinking port under virtually any likely scenario.
“After Brexit, I’m not overly concerned with the market,” he says. “We have to remember that wine in the UK is already taxed hugely higher than in almost any other country. So it will be counterproductive for Britain to slap tariffs on wines where they’re already receiving enormous amounts of duty.”
After university, Symington worked for a time in the City. He was lured back into the family business in 1992.
“The business is a lot bigger than it was when I joined,” he says. “I’ve been there for 27 years and we’ve gone from a €30m (£26m) company to €90m.”
Running a family business can be easier than a public firm listed on the stock market, he says. “We never have to ask our shareholders because we are the shareholders,” he says. “We have family meetings twice a year where most of the shareholders are represented at the table and we can actually move fairly quickly. But we also take investment decisions on a very long term basis.”
So, would they ever consider selling out? Symington curls up his nose and looks sceptical. “It’s very easy to for someone to write you a cheque,” he says. “But our family life is so inextricably tied up with the business and the region. I think we’d all find it extremely difficult to walk away.”