With just over twenty years of age, Rita Marques is a producer and oenologist in the Douro region, but possibly not for long. “There are so many places I would like to get to know and work in. I have an objective of making a wine in New Zealand as well as in South Africa, two countries in which I loved living and that have a great potential”. In her CV, Rita has internships in Niepoort in the Douro region, as well as in California and Bordeux where she was a student of Denis Dubourdieu, an oenologist with “a more scientific vision” of the vines and the wine, who she considers to be her greatest influence.

For the wine that she produces, Rita created the brand Conceito. She started with red wine and Vintage Port, and the following year created the Rosé and the white. In the 2007 harvest, the Conceito white and bastardo wines started a murmur in the wine world. The white wine achieved great national and international classifications and the bastardo wine was introduced, a wine that brings back one of the most traditional castes of the Douro, and with very different colour and texture to the other wines in the region.

Rita Marques admits that it motivates her “to see what she does being well accepted” but she considers this recognition to be excessive as she has not yet created “wines that justify it”. “Nor have I demonstrated consistency which I think is fundamental in recognising someone’s work. I see myself as being in a phase of learning, following my own path. I think that my wines have got better and I believe that they will continue to do so as I myself get a greater knowledge of the region”.

About her wines all being produced in the sub-region of the Douro Superior, which does not yet have the same prestige as the Cima and Baixo Corgo sub-regions, Rita believes that “the Douro still has to define its own typicality, it’s a very vast region with various distinct zones”. “The zone where I am now can deliver good wines, probably even great wines, but they will not be your typical great Douro wines which we are all used to, they will have a different profile, they will be fresher”.