Fortified wine da Fonseca, the founder of the oldest table wine company in Portugal dating back to 1834. Port wine (also known simply as Port) is a fortified wine from the Douro Valley in the northern provinces of Portugal. It is typically a sweet red wine, but also comes in dry, semi-dry and white varieties. Sherry is a fortified wine made from white grapes that are grown near the town of Jerez, Spain. The word "sherry" itself is an anglicisation of Jerez. In earlier times, sherry was known as "sack" (from the Spanish "saca", meaning "a removal from the solera"). In the
History of Portuguese wine as to the origin of the fortified wine known as Port, one of the most prevalent is that of the 1678 visit by English wine merchants to a monastery in the Portuguese town of Lamego located along the Douro river. In search of new wines to ship back to England, the merchants came across an abbot in Lamego who was producing a style of wine that the merchants had never encountered before. While fortification of wine had been known for centuries, the fortifying grape spirit was usually added "after" fermentation, when the wine was already fermented dry. The abbot of