An emotional Cockburn port tasting

I’m such a hardened old nut, it’s not often that wine tastings bring tears to my eyes, but I did find myself with distinctly blurred vision towards the end of Tuesday evening last week when the Symington family opened the last two bottles in existence of Cockburn’s 1863 and 1868 in London to celebrate the bicentenary of this once-iconic port producer which they acquired in 2006.

There was something very affecting about watching a row of five members of the same family, brothers and cousins (left to right Dominic, Johnny, Paul, Rupert and winemaker Charles in the line-up below), describe...