When Cockburn was great

A couple of weeks ago, a small group of us had the best excuse ever to take ourselves out to Oporto in northern Portugal: we had been invited by the Symington family, new owners of Cockburn, to help them raid the cellar of ancient vintages of Cockburn port that they'd inherited.

This was a particularly useful exercise since the Syms are determined to restore the reputation of Cockburn to something approaching its former glory when Cockburn vintage port automatically sold at a premium. This was certainly true in the first half of the twentieth century and persisted at least until...