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 occurred in the 20th century.
More recently, a new generation of winemakers has reexamined Portugal’s land, grapes, and history, and these efforts are being recognized by the broader wine industry and consumers. Although the country’s wine evolution continues, Portuguese wine has never been more exciting, or delicious, than it is today.
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
Hello, I was curious about the date of phylloxera being discovered in the Douro valley stated as 1862. From other sources I am seeing the first European encounter with phylloxera as being in southern France and in 1863. Could anyone shine any light on this? Thank you
Hey James! Great question. The answer here lies in the movement of information in the 19th century. Phylloxera arrived in Europe in the 1850s via American plant specimens and started to take over. That being said, the "discovery" of phylloxera is written as a Franco-centric history, since they were a very prominent country at the time. Its first recorded event in Portugal was in 1862 in the Douro but that flies under the radar due to the prominence of France.
Complicating this story is that Phylloxera's "discovery" isn't when the louse arrives, but rather the point at which European growers actually identified the cause of the problems they were experiencing in the vineyards. The actual arrival date is somewhat difficult to correctly ascertain and ignorance of the source of the threat is part of why there were a number of inflection points during the mid-19th century. The story is often told (by the French) that it arrived in Europe in the Southern Rhône and spread from there, which is clearly just one of probably several arrival places. It did spread through Eastern France from there but, as noted here, was in Douro by the 1860s.
It's worth noting that the guide above indicates that it arrived later in Madeira, which is actually also not quite right. The peak years of production loss on Madeira were the 1870s (the entire 1877 harvest on Madeira is recorded to be somewhere around 100 casks). Its arrival on Madeira would seem to me to be unlikely to come via France. Thomas Leacock was fighting phylloxera in the São João vineyard by smearing a mix of resin and turpentine on vines and roots and published papers to that effect as early as 1872. It's worth noting that his method was an environmental nightmare, ridiculously expensive, and extremely labor intensive and thus totally impractical... but it actually did work!