Sellers, Charles.

Oporto, Old and New. Being a historical record of the port wine trade, and a tribute to British commercial enterprise in the north of Portugal.

London: Herbert E. Harper, 1899.

Quarto, [8], 314 + x pages. Illustrated throughout. First edition. One of the best and most useful books about the history of port wines and their trade, by an insider, an Englishman who lived much of his life in Oporto. The author seeks to "present to the public a historical record of the British families more especially connected with the shipping of Wine from the North of Portugal, embracing a period of nearly three hundred years..." (from the Preface). The names of most of the great Port wine shipping firms remain familiar to us today: Dow, Offley, Sandeman, Warre, Cockburn, Forrester and others, and the extensive genealogy of each is laid out in detail. Sellers contends that while the Portuguese deserved credit for the viticulture of the north or their own country, the English were responsible for the viniculture, and therefore were the "originators and disseminators" of Oporto's excellent wines. Oporto, Old and New remains one of a very short list of truly great books about wine and the wine trade in Portugal. But Sellers' work edges out the other classic study, Vizetelly's Facts About Port and Madeira, by virtue of his intimate knowledge as a "member of the 'portocracy'", and by a clearly apparent spiritual connection to his subject. "He wrote his book as a book on port should be written, retiring into the back office after lunch with a bottle of tawny". (Bradford). A truly fine copy, with only the tiniest bit of rubbing to the burgundy, cloth-covered, beveled boards. The front board bears the gilt-stamped city arms of Oporto. Rare in such fine condition. Interestingly, this book does not appear in the catalogue of the Instituto do Vindo do Porto, or in either of the two supplements to the catalogue, although a collector has informed us that it is indeed in the collection. [OCLC 17 copies; Gabler 2nd ed., G38010I; VP 2769: indicated as not included in the IVP library].