Portuguese wine region aims to cultivate recognition
Baltimoresun | 24-09-2006
PINHAO, Portugal // It produces great wines and its landscapes are among the most arresting on the Iberian peninsula, but the Douro River valley isn't well known outside Portugal.
The region in northern Portugal, known mainly for its syrupy port wine, is marking its 250th anniversary as the world's first legally demarcated wine region - and vintners think it's time to heave the Douro's other wines into the big time. In September, heavy bunches of grapes as sweet as jam dangle in vineyards that stretch dozens of miles down the valley. Terraces of vines follow the contours of the land, rippling back from the river that runs from Spain to the Portuguese city of Porto on the Atlantic coast.
On steep slopes of scree and powdery soil, where the midday sun can make hand-built slate walls too hot to touch, the stillness is broken only by the occasional distant barking of dogs and the drowsy hum of insects.
Despite its enchanting vistas, the Douro region carries neither the glamour nor the prominence of Bordeaux, Tuscany or Spain's Rioja.
"Portugal has had problems making inroads into the international wine world. People think Portugal isn't a country that produces $10 bottles of wine," admits Pedro Silva Reis, president of local winemaker Real Companhia Velha.
Richard Mayson, a British wine expert who has written extensively about the Douro, says the key lies in changing perceptions of the region.
"It's all a question of image. It's an old problem in Portugal - appalling marketing," Mayson said. "There's really some extremely good wine there."
Producers are developing rich table wines that they hope to piggyback on the fame of port.
"A new wave of winemakers has come through, and they're trying new things. There's an ongoing revolution," Silva Reis said.
The first written references to wine from this region date from the mid-17th century.
In the 18th century, the export business boomed as England sought out alternatives to French wine whose supply was uncertain because of trade disputes and war.
However, the success was threatened by unscrupulous producers selling lower-quality wine under fake Douro labels, so on Sept. 10, 1756, a royal charter demarcated a Douro wine region. The charter created the Real Companhia Velha to police the trade - it switched to its own production in the mid-1800s and now is the valley's largest vineyard owner.
More than 300 granite pillars were set in the soil to stake out the Douro. Vineyards, called quintas, were catalogued, and production was logged in a pioneering program that took several years to complete.
By 1799, wine from the Douro made up more than half of Portugal's total exports.
The thinly populated region is still important for Portugal. Its 106,000 acres of vineyards produce about 70 percent of Portuguese wine exports, worth more than $512 million annually.
Winemaking is a way of life in Pinhao, a village at the heart of the Douro reached by sinewy roads flanked by sheer drops, about 180 miles from Lisbon.
"Go into a bank, a shoe shop or a butcher's around here, and you'll hear people talking about wine. It's in our blood," said 34-year-old Alvaro Martinho, one of Real Companhia Velha's team of young wine experts and the third generation of his family in the trade.
More than three centuries of tradition, however, began to work against the Douro.
Reluctance to change methods handed from father to son, coupled with the fatalism of those who work the land, meant the region fell out of step with trends in the global drinks market.
"There was a fear of change. The Douro forgot to modernize," Silva Reis said.
Now, Martinho and his colleagues regularly travel abroad to pick up new ideas. They are also trying out largely forgotten varieties of local grapes and new blends of table wines in their fight for more space on foreign store shelves.
There are dozens of grape varieties here that can't be found in any other country, among them tinta barroca, tinta roriz, touriga nacional, tinto cao, rufete and bastardo.
"When we plant new vines now, we do it with a type of customer and market niche in mind," Silva Reis said. "Before, we just planted the vines and left it all in God's hands."
Amid the fickleness of beverage fashions, the Douro wines need to capture foreign drinkers' imagination by showing them the region's beauty, Silva Reis said.
Authorities agree and hope to rev up the modest local tourism industry.
