This timeline is designed to give an overview of the history of Port wine, from the signing of the Treaty of Windsor in 1386 to the present day.
The timeline is currently in an early draft. Errors and omissions (both of a technical and historic nature) are welcome.
Using the timeline. The timeline is interactive: you can scroll backwards and forwards either by clicking and dragging; using the scroll wheel of your mouse; or by using the arrow keys on your keyboard. This site should work in most commonly encountered browsers which support Javascript, although modern browsers (such as Opera, Firefox and Chrome) seem to be most effective.
The main sources for the dates below are Richard Mayson's Port and the Douro; James Suckling's Vintage Port; and the websites of the shippers and quintas. Anyone with an interest in Port is strongly encouraged to buy both books.
For those who wish to reuse the data (which is released under a Creative Commons licence) may download the XML for the declarations, shippers, quintas, and other dates. The timeline technology is the Smilie Widgets Timeline which is Copyright, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Contributors 2006-2009. Typefaces are by Jos Buivenga.