Douro Valley: Portugal's Best-Known Wine Region

by Nancy Parode

If your local wine shop is like mine, you've noticed that the Portuguese wine section grows larger every month. Wines from Portugal are becoming more and more popular. At the heart of this surge in popularity is the Douro wine region, known for centuries as the home of Port wines. Today, the Douro Valley is also famous for its excellent unfortified wines, particularly reds.

History
Wine and the Douro region have been linked together since Roman times. As in the rest of western Europe, medieval monks expanded wine production in the Douro, planting vines on the area's steep slopes. The Douro's history changed forever in 1703, when the Treaty of Methwen, or Methuen, was signed by Portugal and England. This treaty gave Portuguese buyers access to English textiles at preferred duty rates. In return, English Port wine importers received similar preferential treatment. In 1756, the world's first regional wine classification system was developed for Port wines. This classification system divided the Douro wine region into three subregions, Baixo Corgo, Cima Corgo and Douro Superior.

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Much has been written about the rise of the Port shippers, the impact of oidium and phylloxera on Port wine production and the growth and consolidation of the Port wine industry. These events definitely affected all of the growers and producers in the Douro, but the development of individual wine estates, or quintas, and the entry of Portugal into the European Union (then the EC) in 1986 have had, perhaps, the largest impacts of all on the development of the Douro wine industry.

By 1880, the Portuguese wine industry was almost completely devastated by oidium (powdery mildew), phylloxera and bad science. The government did not permit replanting with New World rootstock until 1883, when it was painfully obvious that other methods of eradicating the destructive phylloxera aphid did not work. This delay in replanting put Portugal at a disadvantage and demand for wine fell accordingly.

At this time, the famed Dona Antónia Adelaide Ferreira began buying up wine estates in the Douro River region. By the time she died in 1896, Dona Antónia owned 30 quintas and was the guiding force behind Ferreira Port, the company that bears her name. Today, most of Dona Antónia's wine estates have been sold to individual owners, and many of them are operated by her descendants. (Ferreira Port is now owned by Sogrape, Portugal's biggest wine producer.)