Hunts

Hunt Constantino Vinhos Lda

The business run by Thomas Newman of Dartmouth, Devon, England, as early as 1503, was importing wine from Portugal to England. The famous Hunt Roope & Co. Ltd whose origins go back to 1650 and centre round the old Devon and Dartmouth families of Newman, Roope, Holdworth, Hunt and Teage. The wine was being bartered for salted cod brought to England by Devon fishermen, thus the Newman link with Newfoundland was established. In 1679, the company expanded and went into partnership with the Roopes, another family of Dartmouth merchants. According to legend, in the fall of 1679, a Newman's ship loaded with port wine from Oporto, en route to London, was chased by a French privateer and blown off course, prompting the captain to steer for Newman's plantation in St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada. The port remained at St. John's over the winter, and when it was brought to London in the spring, its quality was found to have greatly improved. By 1700, the partnership was known as Robert Newman & Co. They further expanded in 1711 when they opened business premises in Oporto to handle fish. A descendant, John Newman, was sending his own fishing vessels to Newfoundland. By mid-17th century, the Newman family was firmly involved in the fishery trade and marketing cod to Portugal. They set up trading centres in Newfoundland and located an office at Harbor Briton. The success of this office led them to establish further offices at St John’s and Little Bay. With its own fleet of vessels, it was transporting port wine from Portugal to Newfoundland where it was stored for maturing and eventual distribution to the Americas as well as back to England. This inspired Newman's to send large quantities of its port wine to Newfoundland each year to mature. This tradition was maintained until 1997. By 1735, they had developed further partnership arrangements with the Holdsworth family of Dartmouth and the Olive family of Poole, who were involved in the port wine trade under the name of Hunt, Roope & Co, and became known as Newman, Roope & Co.

Thereafter it went through numerous name changes as partners died and marriages brought in new family names. By far the bulk of the surviving correspondence is addressed to Hunt, Roope, Newman & Co at Oporto. Hunt also made Single Quinta Vintage Port from Quinta da Eira Velha which belong to the Newman family. This quinta was bought by Cable Roope in 1893 but they had bought its wine since 1809.

The records relate to the following company names; Hunt, Newman, Roope and Co; Hunt, Roope and Co; Hunt, Roope, Teage and Co; John Newman and Co; Newman and Co; Newman, Hunt and Co; Newman, Hunt and Lyon; Newman and Land; Newman, Land, Hunt and Co; Newman and Roope; Robert Newman and Co.

Ferreira bought the firm of Hunt, Roope & Co in 1956, but the Newman family retained the Quinta da Eira Velha and in 1958 Ferreira bought another port wine house, Constantinos, and merged the two to Hunt Constantiono Vinhos SA.

Tuke Holdsworth is a very old and respected Port house. ‘It has perhaps the longest and most romantic history of any firm in Porto’, according to Windham Fletcher, renowned Port expert. The old brand Tuke Holdsworth, traditional for Hunt & Roope Ports was kept and the quinta which supply Tuke with its vintage port is still in the owner’s i.e. in Sogrape’s hand since they bought it in 1986.

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