The Douro demarcated region was created by a royal charter of 10 September 1756. It is the oldest demarcated and regulated wine region in the world, and for two centuries almost everything made there was port.
1756
The charter was signed in the name of King José I and created the Companhia Geral da Agricultura das Vinhas do Alto Douro. The man behind it was Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, secretary of state, later Marquis of Pombal.
The problem was commercial. Prices had fallen and what was being sold to the British merchants was adulterated, among other things with elderberry for colour.
The company took the trade monopoly and the authority to separate feitoria wine, for export, from ramo wine, for domestic consumption.
The granite markers
The demarcation was cut into stone. In 1758, 201 markers were set along the boundary of the feitoria area. In 1761 another 134 were added.
That makes 335 in all, each carrying the word Feitoria and the date. They are granite, in a region that is almost entirely schist. Many are still standing, and the Museu do Douro surveyed them in 2006, at the 250th anniversary of the demarcation.
Three sub-regions
The Serra do Marão rises above 1,400 metres and stops the clouds coming off the Atlantic. Hence the cold winters and dry summers, and rainfall dropping from 1,200 millimetres in the west to 380 in the east.
Baixo Corgo lies west of the river Corgo, starting at Peso da Régua. It is the smallest and the wettest, with 45,000 hectares of territory and 13,204 of vineyard.
Cima Corgo is organised around Pinhão, with 95,000 hectares and 20,427 of vineyard. It is where most single quinta ports come from.
Douro Superior runs east to the Spanish border. It is the largest, at 110,000 hectares, and the one with the least vineyard, 10,077.
The region covers around 250,000 hectares in all, with 43,700 of vineyard and 20,000 growers averaging 2.2 hectares each.
Socalcos, patamares and vinha ao alto
The soil is pre-Ordovician schist, which absorbs heat through the day and gives it back at night. The old terraces, socalcos, are narrow and irregular, held up by dry stone schist walls, with one or two rows of vines on each. No machine goes in there.
In the late 1960s came the patamares, earth platforms with a sloped bank and no wall, at 3,000 to 3,500 vines per hectare. Vinha ao alto plants the rows straight up the slope instead of across it, carries 4,500 to 5,000 vines and allows work by winch on gradients up to 40 per cent.
In December 2001 UNESCO listed the Alto Douro Vinhateiro as World Heritage: 24,600 classified hectares and a buffer zone of 225,400.
The benefício
Not all Douro fruit can become port. Every parcel is scored on age of the vines, altitude, aspect, gradient, soil, grape varieties and productivity.
The score gives a letter. Above 1,200 points is A. Below 399 is F.
The letter sets how much must from that parcel may be fortified in a given harvest. That allowance is the benefício, it changes every year, and what is left over is made as still wine.
The grapes
In 1981, João Nicolau de Almeida presented a study of the region's grape varieties at Ramos Pinto. He picked five reds and three whites.
The reds: Touriga Nacional, Touriga Franca, Tinta Roriz, Tinta Barroca and Tinto Cão. The whites: Rabigato, Viosinho and Arinto.
Touriga Franca went by Touriga Francesa for years and is a cross of Touriga Nacional with Mourisco Tinto. Jancis Robinson described it as the Cabernet Franc to Touriga Nacional's Cabernet Sauvignon.
Tinta Roriz is the same grape Spain calls Tempranillo and the Alentejo calls Aragonez. Tinto Cão has been documented in the Douro since the sixteenth century and yields so little that it came close to disappearing.
1952
Fernando Nicolau de Almeida went to Bordeaux in 1950 to study its fermentations. What he brought back was the cooling of the must, which was not done in Portugal.
In 1952 he vinified fruit from Quinta do Vale Meão, in Douro Superior, for Casa Ferreirinha. There were no temperature controlled vats, so he had a double walled tank built and packed the cavity with ice. The ice came from Matosinhos. On the distance to the estate he left a line that stuck: it is harder to get to Meão than to Luanda.
Out of that came Barca Velha, the first Douro red made with the ambition of a serious table wine. It is not declared every year; in the years that fall short it goes out as Reserva Especial Ferreirinha. Nicolau de Almeida worked until 1987, and eight harvests were declared in his time.
Reading a Douro label
The Douro appellation for still wines was only created and regulated in 1982, 226 years after the demarcation that made port famous.
The sub-region rarely appears on the label. The name of the quinta almost always does, and the quinta tells you where you are. Régua for Baixo Corgo, Pinhão for Cima Corgo, Foz Côa for Douro Superior. Baixo Corgo gives reds with less alcohol and more acidity, Douro Superior the most concentrated.
Between the two houses, in Chiado and in Alfama, the wine list carries twenty Douro wines, reds and fortifieds. The two lists differ. Tables can be booked here.