A River Runs Through It: In the Douro, land of Port

A River Runs Through It

by Mary Bailey

“Would you like to come to the Douro?” said the email.

I did that little dance you do when you get good news.

The Douro is the birthplace of Port, a wine made by fortifying the full-bodied, intensely-flavoured wines produced in the region midway through fermentation, originally to help the wines survive the sea voyage to Britain. The sweet, robust, higher alcohol wines were a hit and a new category of wine was born. That’s the short story of course. Now the region is becoming known for unfortified wines—reds, rosé whites, even sparkling wine.

The Douro has been on my list for decades. The quality of the wines, the landscape, the history, captivating. Can you ever really understand a wine region unless you go there, until you see it, touch it, feel it?

After an informative few days in Porto experiencing Taylor’s Port, I meet the group at the São Leonardo de Galafura viewpoint where we have lunch beside the jaw-dropping view of the Douro. The drive upriver is on a multi-lane auto-estrada complete with dramatic bridges spanning the river, a far cry from when the trip took weeks by donkey cart. A trip so daunting few British wine merchants travelled there. They stayed in Porto and the winegrowers stayed in the Douro.

People have been making wine in the Douro for over 2000 years. It is the oldest demarcated wine region; its limits defined in 1756 by the Marquis of Pombal. Ancient stone walls called socalos carved by hand out of the slate, the newer, wider terraced patamares, and modern vertical plantings co-exist, creating a visual history of wine growing. Broken down socalos (called murtórios) tell the story of phylloxera, families dying out and sons going off to war.

It’s a compelling landscape, mesmerizingly beautiful, shaped by people and recognized with a Unesco World Heritage designation in 2001.

It’s springtime in the Duoro and apparently that means kid. For lunch.

The food on this trip is rustic and delicious. We taste several versions of caldo verde, the Portuguese cabbage soup; bean dishes; roasted kid (baby goat); salt cod, giant roasted chunks of it; Swiss chard-like greens, braised; lovely fresh salads of tomato, onion and crisp greens with sprightly Portuguese olive oil; eggy custards including crème caramel and Portuguese tarts (of course!). Really good oranges, often picked a few minutes before. An amazing raw milk sheep’s cheese called Azeitão.

The almond trees have just finished blooming; oranges and lemons hang from branches; olive trees display young silver leaves and buds are beginning to break on vines. It’s glorious.

Over lunch we taste the wine from Bulas, a family producer who makes both unfortified wines and Ports. The white is the biggest surprise, with good acidity and pleasing fruity flavours. I talk over lunch with Joana Duarte, the winemaker at Bulas, trying to learn to pronounce the local white grape varietes in the wine (Viosinho, Códega de Larinho, Rabigato and Moreno). Over the next week we will taste consistently high-quality whites with freshness, personality and length. Whether simple or complex, the quality level is spot on.

Growers are relying on the local white varieties, which are so well adapted to the growing conditions. Rabigato and Arinto for instance, retain acidity in the heat, meaning natural freshness in the wines. Dorinto, remarkably drought resistant, makes citrusy, juicy whites. Viosinho is considered by some to be the great white grape of the Douro, capable of producing long-lived, full-bodied aromatic wines, even if historically it was unpopular due to low yields.

That afternoon we visit the local wine cooperative of Vila Real. We taste lovely wines and check out the colourful commemorative labels for the annual Villa Real Road Race. It’s always good to be reminded that cooperative doesn’t mean low quality or boring wines. In fact, here, it’s the exact opposite. Nuno Ferreira Borges, grape grower and export director, and his father Jaime Ferreira Borges, retired co-op director and grape grower, talk about the work their members are doing in the vineyards to keep the quality high.

Time honoured techniques are held in high regard (hand picking, foot treading) yet there is no lack of science or technology or new ideas. Nor is the Douro isolated any more. Pretty much every winemaker I talked to has done vintages in Australia, France, the US. This makes for fascinating conversation and really interesting wines. The Portuguese way of regulating the trade, called the beneficio, leaves plenty of beautiful grapes for making white, rosé and red.

Nowhere is the conversation more interesting than with Dirk Niepoort. He makes exceptional wines in the family business (five generations) and he was the first to make high-quality unfortified wines in the Douro in 1987.

“Dirk was the first to see the Douro as a place for all wines, not just Port,” says Simone Duarte, organizer of a major Portuguese tasting in Brazil. And he is one of wine’s great iconoclasts. Dirk has a lot to say. “Who cares who declares; Portuguese will rule in the next five years, then we’ll F&%* it up basically; Port likes excessive situations: we should not think about the Port trade, we should think about the Douro; make Port snobbish and increase the prices; I forgot to mention Canada, it’s the country we have increased the sales the most in the past five years.”

And my favourite Dirkism: “Wines taste really good when they’re young, then not good. Then 30 years down the road it’s amazing again.”

After a guided tasting with Dirk we have lunch on the terrace at their (spectacular) Quinta de Nápoles winery where the unfiltered wines are made. It’s a perfect day, sunny, warm, not a cloud in the sky, the only day we’ll have like this. Lunch is winding down. In front of me is a glass of Redoma 2014. Maybe it’s the weather; maybe it’s a Douro state of mind. But when I take a sip, it’s a religious experience.

Rita and Pedro Figueiredo, the affable ringleaders of our little group, put together a tasting at the Vila Real Town Hall. The mayor was there along with several of Rita and Pedro’s friends; up and coming winemakers. Of special note was Montel, an organic producer with one delicious red wine; viticulturalist Álvaro Martinho, whose cheeky rock ’n roll swagger is reflected in the name of his wine, Mafarrico (translation, naughty boy) and the sublime wines of Marta Casanova of Quinta da Côrte.

Our last winery visit is to the charming Quinta da Casa Amarela where we taste and visit with Laura and Gil Regueiro, owners of the charming family property. The 10-yr old Tawny is a favourite, unique too—it ages in cask in the Duoro, not by the sea in Porto. And, if you like, you could stay here and take part in the harvest, food-treading the wine in the lagares.

We have the last dinner at Cais da Villa whose menu is a contemporary take of classic Portuguese dishes. We taste Vertice Gouveio, a traditional method sparkling wine (espumante) made by Caves Transmontanas. It is beautiful, refined, and, kind of familiar. Here’s why. The project started out as a collaboration with Jack Davies from the Schramsberg Vineyards in California and two Portuguese winemakers, João Carvalho Maia and Celso Pereira. The wine possessed the ethereal quality that is characteristic of Schramsberg, with its elegant small bubble and long finish. Another surprise—to fall in love with a sparkling wine in the Douro?

During the tasting at Niepoort, Dirk mused that Port was kind of old fashioned. “Imagine having to wait so long to drink something, will people really do that anymore?” he asked. I was sitting in Dirk’s Bar in the Yeatman Hotel. In came a group of 20-somethings, animated, chatty, going out to the terrace to smoke. They were drinking something red in an ice bucket. Curious, I asked the server what it was. “Oh, a Ruby Port,” she replied.

A sign that all is bright for Port’s future? We hope so. Even if Dirk is right, the Douro is eternal.