POET WINE (ii.e., Porto or Oporto seine), a species of red wine, hot and heady, which is produced chiefly in a mountainous district of Portugal, called Cima de Douro, and exported from Oporto and Lisbon. The vine from which this wine is produced is generally planted on craggy slopes with a southern exposure. The grapes are gathered from the commencement of September to the middle of October. The cultivation and gathering of the grapes for port wine employ annually 10,000 cultivators and 20,000 gatherers. The wine, when pure and unadulterated (which is very seldom the case), does not acquire its full strength and flavor till it has stood for some years, but care must likewise be taken that it is not allowed to become too old. The color of new port wine varies from pale rose to deep red, and changes with age, becoming a deep tawny brown, which is permanent. By far the greater portion of the wine made is mixed with spirit even during the time of fermentation, in order to give the new wine the ripeness and strength which exporters require, and which the wine does not naturally attain till it has stood for some time; the proper color is also given by an ingredient known as jeropiya, which is a preparation of elderberries, molasses, raisiti-juiee, and spirit. It is
an excess of this jeropiga in the inferior sorts of port which communicates to them the medicated odor so frequently noticed. The extreme "headiness" of port is chiefly due to the liberal admixture with spirit, and this is the case with all the sorts generally exported. From the time when port came into demand (about 1700, though it was known in England for a considerable time before this) down to 1826, its export was a monopoly in the hands of the English merchants, and the amount of wine produced increased, with tolerable steadiness, year after year till 1836, when it reached 38,459 pipes, valued at £1,122,500. The ultimate effect of this monopoly was to increase the price of port wine iu England, and at the same time so to deteriorate its quality, that in course of time it became of less demand, and was gradually, to some extent, supplanted by southern French and other wines. Since 1836 it has fluctuated, being sometimes more and some times less than this figure; in 1850 the exportation reached 37,487 pipes, of which 25,400 were sent to Great Britain. In 1875 the quantity of wine imported into Great Britain from Portugal was 35,500 pipes; £1,492,761.