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Cockburn’s opens Port lodge to public
Cockburn’s has announced that its historic Port lodge in Vila Nova de Gaia is opened to the public.
From July 2012, travellers to Gaia and Oporto will be able to visit the Port lodge containing one of the largest stocks of Port ageing in cask in all of Gaia.
Not long after the lodge was built it only just survived a civil war, during which its roofs were set alight.
Visitors to the Cockburn’s lodge will be able to experience the atmosphere of an authentic, working lodge, which houses very considerable stocks of maturing wines in thousands of oak casks, tonnels and vats.
Inside, expert guides explain the workings of the lodge, the origins of the wines and how they are made. The tour passes through the longest storage gallery of any lodge, lined with thousands of maturing casks and paved with traditional Portuguese stonework, patterned with the “cockerel and coronet” symbol of the company.
Founded in 1815 by Robert Cockburn, born into a distinguished Scottish family, the company is owned by the Symington family.
Since acquiring Cockburn’s in 2010, the family has undertaken a thorough review of the company’s maturing stocks and winemaking.
Among the decisions resulting from this was the reviving of Cockburn’s best traditions, such as the practice of longer wood ageing of Special Reserve Port.