#drinkport | “Getting ‘Schooled’ in Port”
In the first #drinkport podcast episode of 2025, I head to London (virtually) to chat with ‘Port Geek’ Adam Odor, a wine educator and U.K. ambassador for Symington Family Estates' School of Port initiative.
School of Port is an educational platform that runs bespoke workshops for wine trade professionals and is an incredible resource for all-things Port wine. I like to think of it as the official Port authority.
Join me for a conversation over Port with Adam as we chat about his background, his work with School of Port, and more.
Read highlights from our discussion below (edited for clarity):
Q: If you could invite anyone — living or dead — to a dinner party, who would you choose?
A: It would probably be the late Tim Stanley-Clarke, who is not really known outside of the wine trade, but he used to be the absolute Port connoisseur, and expert. He used to be the ambassador for the Symington Family Estates brands that I also worked with here in the U.K.
He passed away in 2017 before I joined the wine trade, so I never had the privilege of meeting him. But whenever I speak to colleagues in the wine trade, whether they’re in hospitality or are wine journalists who had the fortune of meeting him, it's an overall positive experience.
Everyone was delighted to be in his company. He is the typical Port character and a true hero of mine. It would be a very long conversation about Port, life, and the Douro.
Q: What brought you to London?
A: I was born and raised in Hungary, which has zero connection to Port wine, strangely enough. I grew up behind the Iron Curtain. I spent my teenage years in the 90s in a society that was just opening up and freedom was in the air. I grew up with American culture — I soaked up everything that was popular in the U.S. during the 90s. So, “Pulp Fiction,” anything that was Quentin Tarantino, and several actors and directors like Nicolas Cage and John Travolta. It was a fantastic education. It’s how I learned English, pretty much.
In my 20s, I had a sense of adventure and wanted to see what was beyond the borders. I wanted to go somewhere where people speak English and London was the closest option. Despite my love of American culture, this little corner of Western Europe, England was more accessible. By that time, Hungary was part of the European Union.
So I ended up in London, unbeknownst to me, the capital of the wine trade.
At that time, my original profession was in hospitality and that was followed by a career in property inspections which was a lucrative career. But wine has always been important to me in my life.
Q: Did you have an ‘aha’ moment when you knew you wanted to pursue a career in wine?
A: I had an aha moment sipping a glass of wine, which funny enough, was a Hungarian wine — a beautiful red wine from the southern part of Hungary, a beautiful Cabernet Franc. That made me realize that there's a lot more to wine than meets the eye.
And that started my journey back in 2011 when I did my first wine educational course, and then I made a career change.
I took my next WSET course which made me wonder about how people created value in the wine trade. I wondered how I could be part of this interesting group of people who were working with wine, from producer to people in the retail environment.
There was no course about how to be a wine merchant, but during the pandemic (and with my wife’s permission), I transitioned from property guy to wine trade person.
Q: So what was it about Port wine that caught your interest?
A: A lot of things in my life started with a book. I read a book by Ben Hawkins called “Real Men Drink Port.” The interesting thing about the book is that there isn't anything technical about Port mine — it doesn't talk about soil types, etc. It talks about the characters who work with Port — the producers (the shippers, as they were called) and the people in the trade. It explored situations about the emotions that Port evokes and that really hooked me into connecting it with the otherwise fantastic drink in the bottle.
We live in a golden age of wine drinking when you consider that nearly 99 percent of wine you find on shelves in the U.S. or elsewhere is good quality wine.
From a technical point of view, it's perfectly made. All the wines are very good.
And as with most things in my life, when I get hooked on a subject, more books and courses follow. Before I knew it, I was running out of books and courses. And that's when School of Port came in.
Q: What do you think is the best entry-level Port wine for Americans?
Q: A good reserve ruby. So without going into very much specifics, Graham’s Six Grapes is the best way to introduce people to Port. Because even at an entry-level, it offers you such complexity that it just blows your mind… so much flavor in one sip of wine.
