Porto Very Old Tawny- Hunt's

Hunt's Port

Historic port wine company

The Newman family from Dartmouth, in Great Britain, had been importing Port wine since 1503. Between 1650 and 1679, the members of the Newman family partnered with a few families of fishermen and merchants: the Roopes, the Holdsworths, the Hunts and the Teages. Together, they brought Port wine from Portugal, which was traded for salted cod (fished and prepared in England before being shipped to Oporto). The partner families founded the "Hunt Roope & Co. Ltd" group. In 1700, it simply became "Robert Newman & Co."

The group opened its first office in Portugal, in 1711, to manage the shipments of fish coming from England. The Newman family also settled in Newfoundland, in Canada, as a way to export the Port wine brought from Portugal. The wines were stored in Canada, left to age for a few years, and then sold in the United States and Britain. In 1735, the group was officially renamed "Newman, Roope & Co.", resulting from strengthened ties between some partner families, such as the Holdsworths and the Olives. The group would change name many times after that, following the evolution of the relationships between the different families.

In 1956 and 1958, the Ferreira family (who specialized in Port wine since 1751) bought the Hunt Roope group as well as the Constantino company (founded in 1877 and known as the "Sociedade dos Vinhos do Porto Constantino"). The two iconic Port wine businesses were merged together to create the "Hunt Constantino Vinhos SA". A few years later, in 1988, the Casa Ferreira itself was bought by the Sogrape Vinhos group. The latter, founded in 1942 by the Portuguese entrepreneur Fernando Van Zeller Guedes, is still active today.

Discover the port wine made by Hunt's.