The FTLOP series, Port Personalities In Focus, is proud to introduce you to: Mark Squires

1. Please share some information about your life and how you wound up working as a wine writer after your career as a lawyer, initially covering Douro wines, then Port and eventually all of Portugal, as part of your extensive beat, and at what age?

I like to say I had one of the original wine blogs (The E-Zine on Wine at marksquires.com) in the ‘90s. I don’t even think they called them blogs then! Like a lot of people, I got bitten by the wine bug, for me circa 1980, and obsession led to a desire to turn it into something more. I could tell you stories on obsession! I was holding with my friends horizontal tastings of 1977 Port releases not long after they came out. Not that I had any clue as to what I was doing!

My E-Zine received a lot of favorable and national attention from Business Week to Newsweek, but it was hard to quit a law career without a plan. The old saying is “golden handcuffs.” Not that I ever had the most profitable law career, to be sure. I was too busy looking for time to do wine stuff.

Luck came in the form of being teamed with Robert Parker in the ‘90s at the Prodigy internet service’s wine section. He was the outside expert and I was the forum leader. When Prodigy went under, he finally started his own online site circa 2001 for the Wine Advocate. I had already started my E-Zine in the mid-90s. In today’s atmosphere this sounds kind of routine. It is amazing how far we have come in online activity; it wasn’t routine then. My own forum from my E-Zine site then moved to his site in 2001. In 2006 he asked me to start reviewing too. In essence, I merged what I was doing on my own site into his, but I got to do it in a more comprehensive, full-time way.

It was hard to leave law and switch careers. What you want and what is possible are two different things. This made it possible. I continued reviewing for the Wine Advocate until June 2023.

The first introduction to Portugal was on a Vinus Durii trip in 2006, and that led to the first Wine Advocate report in February 2007. (Happily, I had a chance in March 2023 to revisit at least some of the wines in that very first report, closing the circle!) I had wanted to review Portugal much earlier for my E-Zine, but I just didn’t have the time or resources.
Now I did. Israel came along next in 2008. More eventually developed as I took over most emerging regions, but I considered my most prominent regions to be Portugal, Greece, New York and Virginia.

One correction: my initial assignment was Portugal not just Douro. The first article included wineries like Cortes de Cima, J. Portugal Ramos, Covela, Esporão, Chocapalha, Campolargo and others too. Port was tacked on a little later. (Madeira never included.)

 

 

2. What is your favorite style or category of Port to drink at home, and can you mention some of the most memorable Ports you have ever consumed, and why?

Without question, I’m a Tawny guy first. Give me Colheitas, in particular, although not always. And I like them old and complex, if possible, like a 41 Kopke, a 34 Niepoort, and so many others. There are always the extreme rarities, too, like 19th century examples, but those are sporadic treats. They are hard to come by and very pricey (often beyond any concept of value; if you can afford it, you won’t ask what the price is).

On a more regular basis, 20- and 30-year Tawnies are nice at home. Old reliables like a Ramos Pinto 30 always deliver. They are not impossible to find or over the top in price, but still reasonable in maturity and complexity.

It is a good insight into my preferences to say this: I just don’t find most 10-year olds to be all that interesting, although the price is nice. They are fresh and fun, but rarely distinguished IMH O. For much the same reason, I pretty much ignore Ruby Reserves and go straight to the LBV level when I want a ruby-family Port, but don’t want to break into a VP.

 

 

3. Besides those mentioned above, who are some Port producers that you most enjoy drinking, and please reveal a few emerging Port firms which have impressed you?

It depends on the category. Let’s focus on LBVs, so as not to turn this into a book. There are a lot of fine LBV producers, including some big names like Noval, Ramos Pinto and Warre’s. I tend to like the traditional or near-traditional LBVs best by far. Tip: if they have a long cork, it tends to be a good sign for the style I want. That’s not an infallible tip, but it’s a good start.

Smaller producers also excel. I very much have liked, for example, wines from Portal, Crasto and Duorum. There are plenty of others. That leads to another point—I think smaller producers are doing a great job in general these days and have improved since I began reviewing way back when. If I’m looking at Vintage Ports, I have to look at Wine & Soul, for instance, every time. They have become tremendously good and very consistent.

 

4. You and I have talked about your passion for Portugal and her wines, can you elaborate on what you find most compelling about Portugal, compared to other countries you were involved with?

Let’s start here as a wine reviewer. As such, wine is what I think of first. Portugal is just wine obsessed. Israel, for an example, is almost the opposite. Israel actually has a longer wine tradition than most realize, but the country is not wine obsessed overall and the per capita consumption is rather small. In Portugal, it seemed like everyone and their mother (often literally) was associated somehow with wine, directly or indirectly, not to mention drinking a lot of it. Greece likes wine a lot, to be sure. Portugal seems controlled by wine, though. You get in an Uber and you start talking, the driver finds out you are in wine and says, “Well, my mother works in the office at Symington. My uncle has some vines in Bairrada. I was thinking of going to oenology school. My grandfather used to sell grapes to Taylor’s.” It never ends. If there was no wine in Portugal, the entire economy would collapse.

In addition, Portugal has longer wine traditions, especially in Douro, than most all of my other regions and many New World regions in general. (Even other places in Portugal, like Alentejo, can go back a long way, but that’s not really close to the same.) This has positive consequences for image and results.

In Douro, Portugal, thanks to Port, is used to being on the world stage, as I discussed in my first reports. It is used to having a classic region to boast about, one with traditions going back centuries. Many Port producers are used to walking hand-in-hand with other great producers. For example, there is the group First Families of Wine (Primum Familiae Vini), of which the Symingtons are a part. That means a lot of people have a long history studying terroir, grapes, how things work. So, Portugal always seemed more mature as a market and wine culture than my other regions.

And then there is the overall culture and personality. Portugal is just fun and friendly. It’s laid back for the most part. It has plenty of focus on food, wine, and music. It just feels good. It’s relaxing compared to a lot of other places. Many locations near the sea are also atmospheric. There is plenty of history, too, although on that count my Greek friends may claim first place. And I don’t think you have to worry about terrorist attacks on the Portuguese. Everyone seems to like them!

 

 

5. What do you believe your readers did not understand about the challenges you faced as a wine critic … and what brought you the most happiness in your career as a wine journalist/reviewer?

Easy part: “Most happiness” was meeting a lot of nice, new people and discovering some fascinating new wine regions and wines. How can I ever forget Alvaro Castro and his donkey, not to mention his Touriga Nacional? I will always, as well, be drinking things like Xinomavro, Assyrtiko, Moschofilero and Malagousia. Those are just quick examples. I could spend another few hours here, but let’s aim for some brevity. ●• I would never have encountered some of these wines without a reason to encounter them.

I was always into diversity of wines. Portugal lets that happen. It’s not just Douro and Port. From the beginning, in fact, I insisted on making it clear I wasn’t going to just review Douro. I heard from some Alentejo producers about the difficulty they had in getting major wine critics to come down and leave Douro. That’s too bad, because there is a lot to like in a lot of regions. Some were a taste I acquired a little later, some were great in the beginning, but it’s not just about Douro and never was.

The biggest challenge is methodology. I had a lot of clear ideas on how I wanted to do things. I was not always able to fulfil them. Why? The sheer volume of wine made it impossible. I heard someone on Facebook say he liked to only review things after sitting with them for 3 or 4 days. Well, you can reserve that for occasional great things or wines like Ports, but you cannot spend 3 or 4 days on every wine if you’re trying to get timely reports out on new vintages and thousands of wines. So, some compromises become inevitable. I didn’t always like that. In fact, I came to hate it. On my last tasting trip to PT for the Wine Advocate, I tasted just under 1,000 wines in about 3 weeks (and then I got Covid, or totals would have increased).

A second challenge comes from the economics of journalism these days. Some people actually do more, but even what I did is going far too fast in terms of how I liked to do things at home. But I couldn’t get approval to go even to each one of my key regions (Portugal, Greece, New York, Virginia) every year, let alone make multiple trips to Portugal in a single year. I never got approval to go to Eastern Europe, for another example. So, I had to get some work done while opportunity presented itself. Being in the country is important. I can’t squander that moment. Greece particularly suffered, I feel. I should have been there much more. Economics, alas, is an issue with most every wine site.

Of course, there are advantages to that frenetic tasting process, aside from saving travel dollars, as alluded to already. First, you get to see everything in a short window, which is better for comparisons than just tasting things that dribble across the desk. Plus, there is timeliness. You get access to the wines at the right time and get to produce a substantial view of them. Everything’s a compromise. There is no perfect answer. But on the whole, I would say I don’t want to do those massive tasting trips anymore. Happily, I don’t have to.

Ultimately, let me be blunt—increasingly for trips like I just described, this was a brutal amount of work, no pleasure. I had pretty much no fun. I’m not partying at night, or at all. I would hear people always go on social media, “Some job! Wish I had a job like that.” Yeah, having been a lawyer, I understand that perspective too. There are worse jobs than wine tasting for sure. But this is hard work, not play. It’s not like being a tourist, seeing a couple of wineries a day, breaking it up with lunch and having a nap. I would come back from every trip rather exhausted.

 

6. Now that you’re retired from the Wine Advocate, do you see yourself ever getting involved with a new wine writing adventure? What facets do you miss the most?

I just did a major tasting for Wine Future/ViniPortugal in Coimbra. Seminars, speeches, that’s mostly what I see doing on an occasional basis, not a full-time one. If I wind up doing articles, they will be one-off feature pieces. I have no need to do anything I don’t want to do.

I’m not ever working for a company full-time again. I like regaining my independence. That’s point one. And I’m not ever putting up with big deadlines for hundreds of wines again. That’s point two. I might miss traveling around the world, but frankly, I was typically so busy that it will be a lot easier to just take a vacation! So, I’m not going to be missing much. I’m glad to be done with it.

 

7. Which individual was your most influential mentor in the world of wine, and how did they inspire you?

Well, Robert Parker gave me a big break, of course, but I always had a very diverse view of wine. I eventually absorbed a lot of perspectives. I think as time has gone on, for instance, I’ve moved more and more to fresher wines and also consume more light and fresh whites than ever. That’s from listening to other viewpoints and also from tasting a lot of things, a combination. Everyone has a place and a contribution. Ultimately, you have to taste to have a viewpoint make sense, to have a basis for rejecting or accepting it. So, get busy people.

 

8. What is the greatest challenge facing the Port trade today? What about the Douro wine trade? And Portugal overall, by comparison to other European countries wines?

My thoughts for the Port trade are referenced in answer to #10, and it is the same answer in each case: health concerns. Neo-Prohibitionism will not affect wine first, but it will affect wine. You even have wineries like Leitz in Germany and Oceano in California plunging into no-alcohol products. And the wine producers, I suspect, who will be most prominently in the cross-hairs will be high-alcohol producers. And the people who are the highest alcohol producers in the wine trade are people making fortifieds. I guess we’ll see where this goes, but I’m not sure I see a good end to this.

The situation for Portugal overall is a bit different, although no wine producer is going to be immune from concerns about health. Let’s go back to the beginning and pretend those issues don’t exist. It’s hard to tell how important they are going to be, in any event.
That’s all projection.

In the beginning, I was swarmed by Portuguese asking what they had to do to succeed in America. My answer then and now was: Stay the course. There are no quick fixes.
Develop an identity. Cultivate it. Slow and steady wins the race.

As I’ve said, I’ve always been into wine diversity, I’ve always been eclectic. Then I did emerging regions to boot. So, no one knows better than I do that the wine world is vast these days and diverse (that was the theme of my Coimbra speech). That in turn means that consumers have lots of choices, a bewildering number actually. It sure isn’t like the terrain I saw when I began my wine obsession circa 1980. The question today is not who is making good wine, but who isn’t?

That means that it is hard for any one region that hasn’t been long established to suddenly break in and take over. I remember how Australia swamped the USA. I doubt that will ever happen again. Slow and steady wins. Douro has a bit more of an identity thanks to history and Port, but I can see other regions in Portugal able to make their own statements, like Vinho Verde, Dão, Bairrada and Alentejo. Work hard, focus on marketing, tastings, schmoozing. Personal contact is important. Again, slow and steady wins—don’t look for a big burst, and definitely don’t disdain things that create small but steady gains.

 

 

9. From your esteemed vantage point, what would you suggest to small wine producers in Portugal who would like to get established in the American marketplace?

It’s not always so easy. See answer to #8 above. Tastings, marketing. BE HERE. It’s also good to be active on social media and actually talk to possible consumers without a hard sell, but if you’re not here meeting people, it becomes ever harder. Of course, that also means having a decent importer helps. They aren’t always so easy to come by, but they are gold when you have them.

 

10. What can the industry do to improve the promotion and education of Port wine and grow market share in the ever-evolving global beverage marketplace? Can you expand on that to include Portuguese wine as a whole, if you feel a different strategy would be beneficial?

I’m not sure there are lots of avenues left to try other than doubling down. I see some innovations in the field like, um, Pink Port. That may help your bank account, but it doesn’t help Port.

Here’s the truth: Port was a niche wine when I started getting into wine circa 1980. It has its fanatics. (I hear there is this Hersh guy, for instance.) But as a fortified drink, it is always going to be a niche wine. Now, you add increasing health concerns in the modern era with alcohol. Indeed, a cherry on top for benefits from quitting my reviewing job means I too am happy about not having alcohol in my mouth all the time. So, I am by no means playing down concerns.

I hear lots of people talking about drinking less. If they aren’t now, they will be. The drumbeat concerning health is getting very loud. Fortified wines with their potent alcohol levels may become even less in fashion, not more. It’s going to take a lot of marketing and tastings just to stay even. That’s my feeling, not that I can prove it. I don’t think there is any magic solution.

One thing I have suggested and written about is to make Vintage Port more available. In other words, stop pretending it can only be made in certain years, for instance. Keep it in people’s view all the time. Out of sight, out of mind. Make it a constant. But that’s a very small issue in the bigger picture here.