BY STUART PESKETT
The Symington family, which owns Graham's, Dow's, and Warre's Port houses, claims that robotic lagares are the best bet for making top-quality Port.
For the past 2,000 years, Port wines have been made with foot-treading, but three members of the Symington family - Paul, Peter and Charles - said at a seminar in London on Tuesday that after nearly a decade of research, they had decided that top-end Vintage Port can be made perfectly well - if not better - in robotic lagares, compared with traditional ones.
Charles Symington said:"We were not looking for something that would just mimic treading; we wanted to improve upon the existing system."
He highlighted the major drawbacks with foot-treading:
the ongoing labour shortage;
the lack of flexibility as to when it is possible to tread;
the time taken to empty a lagare, causing prolonged fermentation; and
limited temperature control.
Paul Symington said: "We are not looking to eliminate traditional lagares, but we are convinced we are making better wine in these new lagares. If Portugal is going to remain a major wine region then we need to push the boundaries."
A set of three lagares with a robot attachment costs around 95,000.