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Portugal is a country of vinous extremes. It has a diverse array of terroirs and grape varieties and an ancient winemaking history. Yet its story is often oversimplified, with a focus on the massive success of Portuguese fortified wines and the industrial upheaval that took place in the 20th century.
This guide focuses on Portugal’s dry wines. While it includes a general discussion of the country’s history, geography, climate, wine law, grapes, and regions, information relevant only to Portuguese fortified wines is omitted and will be addressed in a future expert guide to fortified wine.
Wine has been made in Portugal for thousands of years. Phoenician amphorae have been found along the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts of Portugal in settlements that date back as far as 800 BCE. The legacy of the western Phoenicians is felt in Portugal even today, especially in Alentejo, where amphora (known locally as talha) winemaking still thrives.
Starting around 200 BCE, Portugal was conquered by the Roman Empire, and the Romans expanded winemaking efforts. They planted heavily in Lusitania, a Roman district that extended from the Tagus River to the Douro River. The Romans also likely introduced the first serious plantings of vinifera in Gallaecia, the Roman administrative district that covered the area from the Douro River north to the Atlantic.
After the fall of the Roman Empire, Portugal was briefly occupied by Germanic tribes before being assimilated into the Islamic empire in the eighth century CE. Despite Islam’s prohibition on alcohol, wine production did not suffer significantly.
In general, the northern part of Portugal was planted by the Cistercians, and the southern aspect was planted by the Phoenicians and expanded on and commercialized by the Romans. Notably, this divide between northern and southern Portugal is still felt deeply today. Those in the north and those in the south follow separate football teams, drink different beer, and rarely drink the other’s wines. This divide also highlights the remarkably minor distinctions between northern Portugal and Spanish Galicia, which have tremendous cultural similarities. The Galician language is much closer to modern-day Portuguese than it is to Spanish.
The event that cemented Portugal as a wine-producing powerhouse in Europe was the Reconquista, or the Christian “retaking” of Spain and Portugal in the 11th and 12th centuries CE. As devout Christian practice spread across the Iberian Peninsula, the production of wine went from a matter of gastronomic and commercial desirability to a religious and social necessity.
To facilitate the expansion of wine production in Portugal as Christian immigration and conversion swelled, the first king of Portugal, Afonso Henriques (the son of Henry of Burgundy), relied on the expertise of the Cistercian monks. The Cistercian order was founded in 1098, and the monks quickly developed a reputation as some of Europe’s greatest farmers and craftsmen. The order entered Portugal in 1153 and spread along its Atlantic and northern borders, instilling its style of intensive viticulture and land management here, as it famously did in northern Europe. The network of the Cistercian order remained strong in Portugal well into the 19th century, continuing to support the progress of viticultural ideas and materials.
During the Reconquista, while monastic land ownership and wine production remained important, land was also distributed to the new nobility of Portugal. Often, land was given to knights as a reward, with the stipulation that one-fifth of the harvest be given to the kingdom as tax. These estates were called quintas, a name still used for wineries and vineyards in Portugal.
Portugal was arguably Europe’s first maritime colonial power. The Portuguese discovered the Canary Islands in 1336 (soon after, they ceded the territory to Spain), followed by Madeira in 1419 and the Azores in 1427. Planting grapevines was part of settling these areas. The islands, like Portugal, were strategically located between Europe, western Africa, and the Americas, and they would later become crucial harbors not just in Portugal’s maritime endeavors but for all of Europe. While Portugal’s colonial footprint shrank substantially in the 16th and 17th centuries, Portuguese wine remained part of the global colonial economy for centuries afterward, and the wines evolved to fit this global trade.
The evolution that occurred was largely that of fortification, or the addition of distilled spirit, first as a preservative to help the wines survive long maritime journeys, then as a stylistic preference for creating the rich, mellow, sweet wines that dominated the fine-wine market in the 18th and 19th centuries. The Douro River valley and Madeira are the most famous sources of these wines today, but historically the Azores, Carcavelos, and Setúbal were major producers of fortified wines as well.
Gradually, in these isolated, provincial areas where wine was made mostly for local consumption, vast commercial enterprises were developed, and they were run by what were essentially some of the world’s first multinational corporations. Shipping companies, primarily of British and Dutch origin, were created to purchase massive quantities of grapes or finished wines and to consolidate, fortify, and age the wines themselves.
It is no surprise that, given the international emphasis of certain Portuguese wine regions, Portugal was one of the first European countries to be exposed to the onslaught of American viticultural diseases that reached Europe in the mid-19th century. Oidium (powdery mildew) arrived in Portugal in 1845, downy mildew followed soon after, and phylloxera was first discovered in the Douro valley in 1862.
Phylloxera was slow to spread across the country, however, not reaching southern Alentejo, northern Vinho Verde, or the islands of Madeira and the Azores until the 1890s. Portuguese farmers were quick to adopt new methods to combat the aphid, and, by the late 1890s, American rootstock was widely embraced as an effective solution to the problem. The Portuguese government refocused on concerns about wine overproduction as early as 1895.
The exception to this was in the Azores. In the islands’ cool, humid climate, powdery mildew was an especially onerous problem, and the extremely rugged vineyards on many of the islands made replanting costly. This, combined with the near simultaneous decline of the whaling industry (of which the Azores were an important hub), caused economic devastation and severe depopulation on the islands. While the rest of Portugal recovered from phylloxera in a matter of decades or even years, the wine industry in the Azores is only now becoming more stable.
There were also several areas in Portugal where phylloxera never became particularly pernicious. Vineyards planted in sandy soils along the Atlantic coast, most famously in Colares, survived unscathed. Other areas, such as the most mountainous zones of Alentejo, Dão, and Trás-os-Montes, were so physically isolated and irregularly planted that phylloxera had a limited impact. As a result, Portugal has one of the greatest collections of centenarian and own-rooted vines in Europe.
Portugal had a distinct experience with fascism in the 20th century. The somewhat ironically named Estado Novo (New State) turned the country inward and aimed to stabilize and streamline—yet not modernize—the Portuguese economy. In the wine industry, this meant protecting, further regulating, and heavily taxing the established players of the Port and Madeira industries. António de Oliveira Salazar, Portugal’s prime minister from 1932 to 1968, addressed the wine industry early in his time in government. In 1933, he created the Grémio dos Exportadores de Vinho do Porto (Exporter’s Guild). All Port producers had to belong to the guild, and it required each producer to have over 150,000 liters of Port in reserve and a lodge to age it, basically outlawing the production of Port by smaller growers. Major Portuguese wine companies during this era, including Sogrape (Mateus), José Maria da Fonseca (Lancers), and Aveleda (Casal Garcia), followed a similar model: buy cheap grapes from thousands of tiny farmers and commercialize the wines at a mass scale under large brands.
Wine regions that did not adhere to this corporate model were considered inefficient, and state-owned cooperatives were often created. Strict regulations made them more or less the only legal source of wine from these regions. In other areas, where the land was considered valuable for other endeavors, commercial vineyards were simply outlawed. Most vineyards in Alentejo, for example, were ripped up in favor of wheat, olive, and cork production. Today, many of the oldest vineyards of Alentejo are surrounded by olive and cork trees, planted to hide the vines from state inspectors.
Salazar actively resisted the creation of modern infrastructure in rural Portugal, and, even into the late 1970s, much of the Portuguese interior lacked electricity and modern plumbing. Modern pension and social services programs were never created for rural citizens. The legacy of this underdevelopment and economic isolation continues today. In many areas, vineyards are mostly worked by elderly people who have lived off the land their entire lives.
In regions such as Vinho Verde, Douro, and Madeira, most wine is still made by large companies that do not grow grapes. Even though the laws that mandated co-op production in areas including Dão have been repealed, it remains more common to farm grapes and sell them to the cooperative. The model of estate production of wine, from vine to bottle, is still being re-established in Portugal, and many of the longest-standing estates are just two generations old.
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Portugal formally joined the European Union in 1986, greatly expanding Portuguese winemakers’ access to investment and modern winemaking equipment. Alentejo, largely a blank slate after the policies of the Salazar regime, was an area of particularly substantial investment and replanting.
For a period, it seemed that Portugal’s future would depend on the continued success of the fortified wine industry, along with large quantities of rich red wine from mostly French varieties in its southern interior. In the past 20 years, however, each of these sectors has peaked and begun to decline. Meanwhile, there is a renewed global interest in terroir-driven, distinctive wines. The established producers of the Portuguese wine industry have experimented with making ambitious, classically structured table wines to compete with wines from regions such as Burgundy, Bordeaux, and Barolo.
A shift in the underlying structure of the Portuguese wine industry has also begun, as the lack of regulation and relatively low costs of table wine production are allowing small farmers around the country to vinify and commercialize their own wines. Today, families who have been working their land and growing grapes for centuries are making their own wines, and, in the process, revealing indigenous varieties and traditional styles of winemaking that were previously unknown to the rest of the wine world.
In the 21st century, Portuguese wine production and exportation has shifted dramatically, from a focus on high-quality fortified and bulk still wine production, to an emphasis on small-scale, artisanal still wine production.
These changes are evident in the Portuguese wine landscape, with land under vine shrinking dramatically, from 246,000 hectares (608,000 acres) of vineyards in 2000 to 192,000 hectares (474,500 acres) in 2018, and registered wineries increasing, from 841 in 2011 to 1,364 in 2020.
The value of exports has also risen steadily, growing from US$817 million in 2015 to US$994 million in 2022. Today, Portugal is the ninth largest exporter of wine in the world, following Germany. This increase has overwhelmingly come from still wine. In 2002, fortified wines represented about one-third of Portuguese wine exports by volume and two-thirds by value. By 2011, fortified wine accounted for just under 50% of export value, and that percentage has been steadily decreasing since.
Although small, Portugal has an astoundingly diversity of climatic conditions and geologic formations. It features some of Europe’s mildest and warmest growing seasons, lowest- and highest-elevation vineyards, and poorest and richest soils. The rugged geography of the country also caused it to be both internally disconnected and isolated from the outside world for most of its history, leading to the development of various winemaking cultures as well as well-preserved ancient vineyards and vinous traditions.
This section includes generalizations around climate, yet climate change is causing conditions to shift. Maritime climates are becoming less reliably mild as ocean temperatures rise, and the diurnal swings of continental climates are becoming less extreme as nighttime temperatures rise faster than daytime temperatures. Growing seasons are also becoming drier, and rains that typically arrived in September are now much more sporadic or absent altogether.
Western Portugal is dominated by the Atlantic Ocean. Between Lisbon and Porto, the continental shelf nearly disappears, creating one of the deepest and coldest coastlines in Europe. The ocean constantly brings cold, humid air onto the mainland, while mountains to the east trap that air on the coast, insulate the region from extreme temperature swings, and create consistent morning fog. This stretch of land also sits on a giant vein of calcareous clay, with pockets of deep sand. The regions of Lisboa and Bairrada (Beira Atlântico) are located here.
North of Porto, the continental shelf extends farther into the ocean, slightly weakening the maritime influence of the coastline on Vinho Verde. The presence of mountains to the east, which have much higher peaks than the mountains farther south, results in a more extreme rain shadow and one of the wettest growing regions in Europe. The mountains of Vinho Verde are made mostly of granite, but there are veins of schist and sedimentary limestone at lower elevations.
East of the coast and north of the Tagus River, elevation rises dramatically. Giant granitic mountains dominate the interior of northern Portugal, with veins of schist at lower elevations. In the far north, vineyards can be found at over 1,000 meters (3,300 feet) in elevation. The soils of the mountains tend to be extremely poor, especially on the high slopes, and hydric stress is both a benefit and a challenge.
Historically, most of the highly regarded wine from the northern interior came from the mountains. In this area, there are subtle ocean influences, but grapes are protected from excessive moisture. Large diurnal temperature swings encourage ripeness, balanced acidity, and a more prominent fruit expression.
South of the Tagus River, the mountains of northern Portugal gradually recede. Here, in the vast savannah of Alentejo, subtle rolling planes and rich red clay soils provide perfect conditions for a diverse range of agricultural products, including grains, most of the world’s cork trees, and livestock.
Closer to the coast, or where larger hills or mountains allow for exposure to ocean breezes, there are viticultural areas yielding some of the most famous wines in the country. Even in these areas, however, extremely high temperatures are not uncommon during the growing season. The heat and rich soils tend to produce luscious and soft wines. Most of this area is within Alentejo, but regions at its periphery, such as Setúbal, Tejo, and Algarve, share many of its characteristics.
Portugal includes Madeira and the Azores, two of the three major Atlantic island archipelagoes that produce grapes. Despite being about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) apart, these islands share important qualities that make them exciting wine regions: an extreme maritime climate and volcanic soils.
Madeira and the Azores are temperate, with high levels of moisture and temperatures typically between 10 and 25 degrees Celsius (50 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit), occasionally higher in recent years. This results in long growing seasons and moderate levels of alcohol (in Madeira, this refers to base wines).
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Compiled by _____ (April 2024)
Edited by Stacy Ladenburger