Look closely enough at the fabric of nearly any major wine region around the world and you’ll find the threads of history intertwined with those of innovation and change. In some regions, however, the warp and weft of tradition and modernity are more tangled than they are harmonious.
“The Douro is one of the oldest wine regions in the world when you speak of Port,” says Miguel Roquette of Quinta do Crasto, “but in terms of dry wines, we are perhaps the youngest wine region in the world.”
Officially demarcated as a defined area of wine quality in a process that began in 1754, the Douro was perhaps the second officially demarcated wine region in the world, after Hungary’s Tokaj region received a classification by royal decree in 1737.
On the other hand, apart from the demijohns of table wine that most farmers would have made for themselves and their families since time immemorial, the existence of dry table wines in the region dates back to the 1950s if we’re being strict about things (the first vintage of the famous Barca Velha was 1952).
But really, the early 1990s marks the real emergence of dry red (followed soon after by white) wines in the region for the first time.
It’s worth noting that only in the late 1980s did local laws change to permit a vineyard owner to bottle his or her own wines. Up until that point, the Port-centric production laws of the region required wine to be transported in bulk to a “shipper,” one of the few companies authorized to bottle and ship wines. Before that legal change, the idea of a small, independent Douro wine producer had been almost unthinkable for more than 100 years.
Evening sun plays across the autumn colors on a terraced hillside of vines in the Douro
In the 40 years following that change, and the 30 years since the rise of dry table wines, the Douro has gone through a massive transformation. During that period the global interest in Port wine seems to have declined significantly, with a drop in sales volume of more than 30% between the year 2000 and today.
A focus on higher-priced, higher-quality products has helped keep revenues for Port companies growing slightly, but many growers and producers have dramatically shifted their production away from Port, to the point that commonly 85% to 90% of a given winery’s production will now be dry table wines.
This represents a seismic level of change in a remarkably short period of time, and one whose aftershocks continue to reverberate through the culture and structure of the Portuguese wine industry. The Douro is coming to grips with what it now is and what it might become, and not everyone is on the same page.
Vast Opportunity
Before I visited the Douro for the first time last autumn, I made sure I knew facts and figures about the region. I was aware that it was… large. But, as I have found many times in my travels over the years, the difference between intellectual understanding and visceral appreciation can be significant.
Twice the size of Bordeaux or Mendoza, seven times bigger than Champagne, the Douro is a very large region (though not as big as Alentejo, which has four times the area overall, and twice as many vineyard acres).
The closest size comparison for American wine might would be the Paso Robles appellation which comes within 4,000 acres of matching the Douro’s 618,000 acre expanse. But unlike Paso Robles, which contains roughly 40,000 acres of vineyard, the Douro hosts 111,000.
A typical, massive terraced hillside in the Douro
What makes the Douro seem so large, not to mention jaw-droppingly beautiful, is the fact that the majority of that acreage is tucked along the steep mountainous sides of the Douro River valley and the various fractal branchings of side valleys that wander off from the main river course.
With an average vineyard slope of 30% and the steepest approaching 70%, the roughly 140,000 different vineyards in the region have been…
Source : https://www.vinography.com/2024/10/dealing-with-change-in-the-douro
