The Wine-growing Alto DouroWorld Heritage
Armando Mansilha
Alberto Aroso
Assunção Monteiro
Bianchi Aguiar
Jorge Ferreira
The Dutch took from the sea the land that gives them nourishment;
the duriense tore it inch by inch from a Nature as rough as the sea.
“João de Araújo Correia”
Preface
The recent inclusion of the Alto Douro Vinhateiro (Wine-growing Alto Douro) in the list of places classified by UNESCO as World Heritage, is a distinction which the region, in general, and UTAD, particularly, are very proud of. Not only because it has to do with the formal recognition of a gigantic and grandiose undertaking, which nature and the duriense “fabricated” throughout the centuries, but also because UTAD contributed, in very diverse forms, for it to come about.
Since its foundation, still as a Polytechnic School, our Institution has always given special attention to the Douro, placing its human resources as well as technical and scientific competencies at the disposal of regional development. In this way, throughout the past twenty-five years, UTAD has had a decisive role in the production and diffusion of knowledge in areas as diverse as wine-growing, enology, economic botany and animal medicine, geology, economics, rural sociology and tourism.
The challenges and the opportunities that now present themselves with the recognition of the Douro as World Heritage are vast and demand redoubled attention and availability on the part of UTAD. The preservation and valorisation of this cultural landscape, evolving and alive, for which we are all responsible, puts intellectual and scientific investment under obligation, not only in the traditional sectors, but also in new dominions, like the ordering of territory, urbanism, the restoration of the patrimony, landscape architecture, the environment and the natural resources, cultural animation or, yet, the NTIC. To this end, we will make efforts towards the creation of the Centro de Estudos do Alto Douro Vinhateiro – CEADV (the Centre for studies of Alto Douro Wine Growing), an interdisciplinary structure of a technical, scientific and cultural character which will allow us to secure, in an articulated and co-ordinated form, the lines of research already developed, to open new employment prospects and to launch new projects.
Professor Armando Mascarenhas Ferreira
(Chancellor of UTAD)
The Wine-growing Alto Douro
World Heritage
The Dutch took from the sea the land that gives them nourishment;
the duriense tore it inch by inch from a Nature as rough as the sea.
“João de Araújo Correia”
Oh! Blessed region!
Oh! Privileged land!
Where work is honour
And titles are the hoe.
“Bandeira de Toro”
António Cabral: Duriense Cultural Heritage
Braga Amaral: Douro – The Wrath of the Waters
Francisco Gouveia: Douro: The Stairway to Heaven
Fátima Bento: God… Man created the Douro
Mário Fernandes: Tourism, the next challenge
Mesquita Montes: Marquis will you return?
Marco Aurélio: Photographs
Daniel Bastos: Port Wine
Noel Magalhães: Photographs
Mário Mendes: Prayer up the river
Alberto Aroso: The history of the Douro Rail
Assunção Monteiro: The Douro immortalised by authors
The Douro Demarcated Region
Bianchi de Aguiar: Candidacy for World Heritage
Jorge Ferreira: The Douro and its Region
Armando Marsilha: Author
–
Editor
Camilo de Araújo Correia: The End of Harvest
Ilda Pinto Ribeiro: Douro
João de Araújo Correia: The old woman of the iron pots
I had a nightmare!
And as a consequence, the magazine Alto Douro Vinhateiro (The Wine-growing Douro) I present you with now, and hopefully biannually, was born.
Nightmare indeed, faced with hard times such as these, with no subsidies whatsoever, distanced from literary gatherings and far away from Friends’ Associations, Institutions, Organisations and light years from any political ‘gang’; publishing a high quality magazine such as this is not only extremely risky but also truly heroic.
Our thanks to those who supported and encouraged us, to those who insisted on being present, and to those others who were unselfishly willing to help us.
Together with our love for the Douro, these were the people who made the publishing of this magazine possible and which we hope will contribute to the grandeur of the Douro Demarcated Region.
Therefore, the magazine which is to be named THE WINE-GROWING DOURO is to be published biannually, each edition focusing directly or indirectly on a duriense (from the Douro) issue, making known new writers and defying established taboos, as well as providing everyone with better knowledge of the virtues of the Douro and its People.
But now, I leave you with a warning, the Douro can only be known when experienced, visited, observed – The Douro cannot be described, cannot be sung, cannot be drawn.
The Douro is felt and experienced.
We meant to publish the first issue on 14th December 2002, on the first anniversary of the World Heritage Award to Wine-growing in the Alto Douro, whilst at the same time celebrate the 70th Anniversary of the Casa do Douro, the publication of the Institutional Reform of the Demarcated Region and last but not least the 65th Anniversary of the Notícias do Douro (a regional newspaper).
These are dates and facts which bear much relevance on one of the most beautiful and unequalled Regions in the world.
We therefore chose the Douro World Heritage as the main theme of this magazine and as a background, the course of action taken for candidacy by Professor Bianchi Aguiar. The introduction is by Professor Braga da Cruz, and the sponsor is the D. Afonso Henriques Association. We also include unpublished texts rich in historical content such as:
- The Douro and its region, by Father Jorge Ferreira
- Port Wine – The Douro Demarcated Region, by Professor Daniel Bastos
- The History of the Douro Rail by Eng. Alberto Aroso
- The Douro Immortalised by Writers by Professor Assunção Morais Monteiro
And then some more:
- Duriense Cultural Landscape – written by Dr António Cabral
- Verses by Ilda Pinto Ribeiro – Francisco Gouveia and Mário Mendes
- Tourism, the next challenge – written by Eng. Mário Fernandes
- The Old Woman of the Iron Pots – written by Dr João Araújo Correia
- Marquis will you return? – written by Eng. Mesquita Montes
- The end of the Grape Harvest – written by Dr Camilo de Araújo Correia
- Stairway to Heaven – written by Eng. Francisco Gouveia
- God created the World – written by Professor Fátima Bento
- The Wrath of the Waters – written by Braga Amaral
- Tourism and Mass Media – by the author
Considering our effort, we are sure to please all those who might purchase and read this magazine.
In the ensuing issues, dedicated to the quintas in the Douro Region, the Wines, the companies and many others, we will try to do even better.
To everyone, absolutely everyone, our DEEPEST GRATITUDE.
Don’t allow yourself to die before you experience it.
The Douro cannot be described, cannot be sung, cannot be drawn.
The Douro is felt and experienced.
The Douro is another world
Douro
Heaven on Earth
The Douro has, above all, deep magic for all those who have sensitivity…
The Douro immortalised by the writers
Professor Maria da Assunção Morais Monteiro
(University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro)
The Douro, and by that we mean not only the river but also the region that surrounds its banks, has inspired several authors, who have written texts of rare beauty, in prose as well as in verse.
Countless are those who were born in the Douro region or in other regions of Portugal, that became dazzled by the beautiful landscape and/or the hard life-style of those who work on the slopes and terraces on the banks of the Douro. In this article, due to shortage of space, we will only refer to some of the many authors who wrote about the Douro and its region. Among them, we will mention Eça de Queirós, Domingos Monteiro, João de Araújo Correia, Alves Redol, Miguel Torga, Agustina Bessa-Luís, Francisco Gouveia, António Cabral and José Saramago.
However, it is important to say that it is not only writers who leave written testaments of their enthusiasm for the Douro. Several plastic artists have also recognised the picturesque richness of this beautiful patchwork region and have immortalised it on their canvasses. One of them, Nuno Castelo, is worthy of mention due to the way in which he expressed his view of the Douro. Not only did he translate the reality of the duriense in his works but also left his written testimony. This artist, who has several paintings of this region, its people and the wine produced here, sees the Douro as a “never-ending source of inspiration”. He said:
“The plastic richness of the Douro lies in its assorted contrasts: valleys, deep canyons, uncountable and Dantesque precipices, abysses, boulders, terraces, mountains, scarps, plateaux, dams, settlements, etc., allied to the unequalled chromatic richness allow us to regard the Douro as an unfailing source of inspiration, as a colossal painting where all artistic tendencies can be framed according to the creator’s impetus and imagination…” (1)
Moving on to the writers, we will begin with Eça de Queirós, the most secularly distant from us – we need only recall his novel A Cidade e as Serras, written in the late 19th century. Before the description of the famous ascent up one of the Douro’s slope, from the train station to the Casa de Tormes, we have a passage where the main character seems sensitive to the pleasant smell and to the surrounding landscape of terraces, a palace like house and the traditional rabelo boats of the Douro. So, when Jacinto and his friend Zé Fernandes are travelling by train from Paris to Portugal, upon nearing Régua, Zé Fernandes shakes his friend and says:
“- Wake up, man! We’re in your homeland! (…)
- So, it’s Portugal, is it?… It smells good.
- Of course it does, you fool! (…) Look at the river!
We were chugging along the slope of a mountain, over cliffs that ended in large terraces covered with vineyards. Down below lay, a glistening white manor house of opulent repose,
with a little white-washed chapel in the middle of a garden of seasoned orange trees. Along the river, where the murky, slow-moving waters did not even break against the rocks, a boat in full sail laden with casks made its way steadily.” (2)
Later, when Jacinto left the train station (now called Aregos, but also known as Tormes because of its literary reference) for Santa Cruz do Douro, where the Eça de Queirós Foundation is found today, the narrator points out that “soon all our wretchedness will be forgotten when faced with the unique beauty of those blessed mountains.” (3)
But Eça de Queirós does not only mention this region in his fictional work. In his letters to his wife, D. Emilia, when talking about the house in Santa Cruz do Douro, he makes reference to the beautiful landscape and to the difficulty in walking in the steep hills. In a letter dated 28th May 1892, Eça de Queirós wrote:
“Right in front of the house, the hill goes down to the Douro; right behind the house, the hill goes up until the top, where there is a chapel. Everything that surrounds me is worthy of mention: the vegetation, the freshness, the water, the shadows, the beautiful sights – but to venture there you almost need to go on all fours.” (4)
This is the beauty of the physical landscape seen by newcomers who are thinking about walks and holidays. However, there are authors that are sensitive to many other important aspects of this region and choose to talk about them in their works.
One of them, Domingos Monteiro, in the short story, A Vinha da Maldição, points out the activities related to wine production as well as the difficulties of those who toil in the vineyards of the Douro. In a dialogue between a mother and a son, he says that those who can complain are
“those who work the land, prune the vineyard, carry the baskets into the lagar (wine press), tread the grapes, etc., etc., and all this for a song.” (5)
Another writer, João de Araújo Correia, in Passos Perdidos – a collection of chronicles published in the periodical press – presents very suggestive texts about the region and about everything connected to it.
Araújo Correia, a man as well as a writer from the Douro, draws our attention not only to the natural beauty but also to the extinction of some species, to the harsh conditions of life, to the lack of labourers, to the agriculture which is unprofitable, to the abandoned lands and to many other problems that we can find in his fictional works.
He also refers to the richness of the gastronomy and to the abundance of fish in what he calls “my river”.
The issue of the extinction of some species led João de Araújo Correia to strongly criticise Portuguese disinterest in regards to this matter:
“In Portugal no one cares about the species. It doesn’t matter whether they live or die.” (6)
The same author numbers species that are gradually disappearing, namely the eel, the lamprey and the shad, which he considers “the jewels of the traditional fisheries up the river Douro”.
If we leave the riverside behind and travel further on towards the hills, the growing shortage of game becomes evident. There are no hares, no partridges, no rabbits and João de Araújo Correia goes further when he says that:
“Any game that we eat today, by miracle, will be a mythical animal tomorrow, kin to the Dragon, the Hydra and the Centaur.” (7)
The same almost happens with the fruits. The author regrets the replacement of some consecrated varieties and the extinction of some species like the wild plum typical of this region. When talking about the apple, he mentions the smell and the taste of the traditional malápio, declaring in a critical tone:
“He, who has never tasted the malápio of the Douro, doesn’t know the apple of Paradise. But, where is that blessed fruit? The pêro (another variety of apple) with an ineffable smell and taste, left no sprout for grafting. It was replaced by the wild esmolfe, a good pêro, but lacking in the noble refinement of the malápio of the Douro.” (8)
The complaints go on in relation to the beaked cherry which was replaced by the French cherry. And even the flowers, as for example, the slim calyx carnations, were replaced by others “so thick, that they don’t fit in the chalice”.
The same thing happened with other plants: the carvalhas [a variety of potatoes], the wild thyme, the mallow, the violet, the sunflower, etc..
The biological strain of vines are also disappearing mainly because they are being replaced by others. Sadly he affirmed:
“The extinction of species cannot be helped, no one does anything to ease the agony of the biological strains.” (9)
João de Araújo Correia does not spare those who make full wine from grapes of poor quality and considers it an act of treason against the Douro and damaging to the future. On 21st November 1964, he wrote:
“Betraying the Douro within itself, by producing full wine with bad biological strains and worse soil – it’s to eat today and starve tomorrow. It’s to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. Port wine, renowned all over the world, will only keep its good name if it remains unique.” (10)
But despite the efforts made by the Parque Natural do Douro Internacional, it is not only the fauna and the flora that are fading away. Words are falling into disuse, and there are some waning verbs. On 15th August 1964, João de Araújo Correia wrote:
“And the terminology, piece by piece, of agricultural tools? It would be a colourful dictionary. Try getting the first ethnologist to listen to the last owner of an ox-cart, say the name of each part of his cart. Wander through the fields, where you
will still find waning but very charming verbs, such as arrendar, suchear and chasquiçar. (11)
The author draws our attention to the different ways of seeing the landscape: from the tourist’s perspective and the local inhabitant’s. The tourist merely sees the region in a superficial way and has an erroneous idea of it because one has to walk around the region in order to really know it:
“The tourist that travels only by car through my wine-growing country, without leaving the road, and glances at the terraces covered in vineyards, can hardly know how impassable the paths in each freguesia (a small town locality) are. Each corner tricks him with perfect fairness.” (12)
The people are sensitive to the colours, the sounds, the very silence of some places, the smells, and certainly, to an impressive landscape but they don’t always quite understand how hard it is to walk along the paths hidden between the grapevines. The situation becomes more complicated when goods must be carried. Araújo Correia wrote:
“Going down from Galafura to Covelinhas, from one obstacle to another, is a task for the medieval man. It is not a task for the contemporary man. Trudging up that path, under the noon sun, bearing a cross represented by a basket heavy under the weight of grapes or figs, with only the strength of chest and feet…” (13)
The article Filoxera – included in Passos Perdidos – is also worthy of mention due to its contribution to the history of wine-growing in the Douro. In it the author mentions this epidemic “that reduced the Portuguese vineyards to skeletons – namely the vineyards of the duriense”. Araújo Correia laments that the lands remain uncultivated because, in his point of view, this soil could produce almonds and olive oil.
A question which is raised a lot nowadays, is on how to make way for progress without changing the natural features of the landscape. The author, João de Araújo Correia, also focused on this issue when he wrote:
“Those who adapted to motor-cars were lucky. To widen here, to level out or to dig out there, they were able to adhere to petrol shamelessly, that is, without a break for poetry or picturesqueness. (…) The others, those who did not adapt, have humpbacks which bear old age of a thousand years.” (14)
It is because of the difficulties of transportation, along with the lack of manual labour, that many lands are left, abandoned and uncultivated. According to Araújo Correia, the farmer who used to go to the market to sell his goods, today goes there to buy them. The reasons for this are that; there are no labourers to work the lands, there is no attempt to prevent rural migration and inland desertification is progressively growing. That is why even the tools used in the region will be destroyed and eventually disappear, unless we build a museum where they can be kept. As far back as 1964, João de Araújo Correia had already expressed the need for an Ethnographical Museum of the Douro. He wrote:
“Mouldering barrels on the farms… the ox cart, which used to transport the nectar to the river or to the train station, will soon end up in the fireplace, or if someone intervenes, in the Ethnographical Museum. This museum ought to be gathering these useless implements utilised in the antique vine-industry. Almudes [containers for measuring wine], churns, must containers, cask gauges, knives, wine-removing pumps, tasting goblets – off we go to the museum, your time has come.” (15)
Of all the fictional works of João de Araújo Correia, many other references could have been made, but we have only quoted texts taken from Passos Perdidos because of their journalistic nature and because they document the concerns of a writer attentive to everything that
went on in his region.
Although the writer Alves Redol wasn’t born in this region, he was able to appreciate its natural beauty as well as the difficulties of those who work here and he transposed this into his works. The three volumes of Ciclo Port-Wine: Horizonte Cerrado (1949), Os Homens e as Sombras (1951) and Vindima de Sangue (1953)), allow for his neo-realistic in character concerns to manifest themselves, which mark his work. In them he focuses on the hard conditions of work, the difficulty in cultivating the soil, the various stages of wine production, the lack of outflow of goods, the lack of profit, the falsification of Port wine, the groups of vintage workers, the interests of the English and not only… The odd popular saying related to the vine-industry comes up, such as “poda em Março é vindima no regaço” (16) [when you prune the vineyards in March, it is a sign that you will have a good harvest].
In Ciclo Port-Win, Alves Redol hoped to draw attention to and pay tribute to the men of the Douro, those who work relentlessly, and who heroically, are able to produce the Port wine on the steep hills that have difficult accesses.
We will now speak about another writer, more recent and born in the Douro region. Miguel Torga eternalised this region by making several spatial references in his poems and diary entries, as well as in his narrative fiction (in the short stories and in the novel Vindima).
When Miguel Torga talks about the banks of the Douro, where the vineyards that give full wine are grown, he points out its beauty as well as the effort demanded of those who toil on the terraced lands. He wrote in Diário XII:
“S. Leonardo de Galafura, 8th April 1977 – honoured Douro. The marvel of a landscape that stops being so because it is measureless. It isn’t a scenery for eyes to gaze upon: it’s a surpluss of nature. Terraces that are strides for colossal men when climbing up the slopes; structures, colours and variations that no sculptor, painter or musician can translate; sky-lines that extend beyond the reasonable thresholds of sight.” (17)
It is fitting to point out that S. Leonardo de Galafura is a hill with a little chapel at the top, from where we can see, down below, the river Douro and the surrounding vineyards, that dazzle the eyes and have an impressive combination of smells. Torga was so touched by the landscape’s beauty and smell that he immortalised this hill in a poem published in Diário IX. The figure of the Saint, who is metaphorically the captain of a “ship of boulders” ploughing through “a sea of must”, is used to calmly take delight in the typical smells of the region, just as Torga himself proved to be sensitive to the beauty and aromas of the landscape. Here is an extract:
“S. Leonardo de Galafura
At the bow of a ship of boulders,
Sailing in a sweet sea of must,
Captain of his ship’s
Command post,
S. Leonardo continues to plough through
The waves
Of eternity,
Without haste of arriving at his destination.
Moored and happy in the human quay.
It is in anticipated disillusionment
That he heads for the heavenly quay.
There he will not have terraces
Nor vineyards
In the iris of the dazzled eyes;
(…) So he gently nears
The blessedness.
Slowly the rabelo boat goes forward
Beneath his sailor’s feet.
And for every extra hour he spends on the journey
Is another gulp of smell
Of land and lavender!”
Many other poems and passages could be quoted, given that the Douro River was for Torga a part of his life.
The importance that the Douro had for this writer is apparent in another metaphor, which translates life and inner pulsation, vital to the people of a region in which he included himself:
“It’s my true carotid, that river” (18)
The idea of the Douro as a blood vessel
is used again in the short story Vindima, this time through the comparison with a vein:
“the Douro appeared down at the bottom, way below, like an open vein slowly leaking in the Cyclopean body of the hills.”(19)
Agustina Bessa-Luís is another writer associated with the Douro, which serves as the setting for one of her better known works – Vale Abraão – and that in turn inspired the film director Manuel de Oliveira to produce a film with that very title. But what then is this Vale Abraão? She writes:
“in the bend that leads the river (…) upon leaving Régua, a river valley with sweet-smelling wines, that stretches in the direction of the city of Lamego, district to which it belongs, until the medicinal waters of Cambres. This is Vale Abraão, with its farms and shady spots(…).” (20)
When the writer speaks about the valley, the Douro River is always given as a point of reference because it has a constant and underlying presence in the novel. There is a watery path and a set of aspects linked to the region, such as the hard work, the manor houses in decay, the changes in the way tasks were carried out and so many other aspects familiar to those who live on quintas along the Douro.
Francisco Gouveia is another writer who cares deeply about the reality of the duriense and about its inhabitants. In his book, A Lenda do Douro, the author intended “to pay homage to those who had helped to build the world of the duriense with either the pen or with the hoe” (21). In another novel, Há Névoa no Rio (pedaços do percurso secular de um duriense) (22) – Douro, May 1995 – dedicated to his grandfather António, who “soaked the hills of the Douro in sweat”, the story begins with this very river and its importance for the main character is enhanced.
The river is “his companion and friend”,
“almost his cradle, father and teacher.” (23)
Another of Francisco Gouveia’s works written in verse, called Livro dos Poemas Pobres, includes texts in which he talks about the river and the people
that work on its banks. Other poems worthy of mention are “Douro”, “Douro que por lá passa” and “Douro intemporal” (24).
António Cabral, who was also born in the duriense region, wrote poetry about the Douro. His poem “Aqui, Douro” (25), published in Novos Poemas Durienses, is regarded as one of the finest in terms of grasping this region’s characterisation. Here is a short excerpt:
“Here, Douro.
The Paradise
Of wine and sweat.
From a river, in Summer, bony and scrawny,
like people,
when the soul leaks through the pores;
a muddied river, soil coloured,
so the soul can be whole;
River of the great floods,
Of the final embrace
Of trunks of men, trees and dreams.”
Further on there are expressions like “Paradise of the strong water-coloured vineyards / that enter the eyes upon green waves.” Then the grape harvest and the atmosphere that surrounds that time are mentioned:
“Golden paradise of harvest!
Then the Douro is golden.
Gold in the sun that leaves everything in flames;
the clusters and clouds of dust
startled by the horse’s hooves
and by the lorries, clattering up the hill.
Gold in women’s chatter
who harvest the grapes and ideas;
a certain gold in men’s silence
that carry the baskets in disciplined single file.
Still golden upon returning from work,
to the sound of a drum, of a concertina.
Gold perhaps in the goblets of those who
came from far to watch out the window.”
The same writer, António Cabral, in his novel A Noiva de Caná, introduces a setting on a duriense quinta, with all the activities related to wine production, where there is no lack of harvest. The character Miguel says:
“Alto Douro where wine has a soul,
A man-given soul,
When they dream and toil,
When the soil sings in their hand.”
This novel allows for a textual liaison with the biblical passage known as the wedding feast of Kana, where Jesus turned water into wine, so that it could be served to the guests.
Like the turning of water into wine, a similar kind of miracle occurs in the Douro. Carried out with human effort, wine is extracted from a river valley with schistose soil on lands that are hot and hard to cultivate.
We will end off with an extract taken from the novel Viagem a Portugal (27), by the Portuguese writer José Saramago who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998. In this book, the author mentions the disparities in the beauty of the landscape, the colour, the smell, the comradeship and the fraternity.
And so we come to an end in the words of José Saramago:
“The world is not well organised. It is no longer that old story of what some lack and others have in abundance; but rather it is the serious offence of not bringing to this road all the Portuguese from here and there, so that their eyes could behold the wonderful image of these slopes cultivated into terraces. They lie covered from top to bottom with vineyards, the holding walls outline the contours of the hill, and the colours, how will the traveller in a quick prose, say what these colours are? It is the garden of the Solar de Mateus (the Manor House of Mateus) spreading out towards the distant horizon; it is the forest near the Tuela River; it is a painting that no one can paint; it is a symphony; an opera; it is the unspeakable. That is why I wanted to see an endless parade of countrymen along this road, going down to Peso da Régua, stopping to give the grape-gatherers up the hill a helping hand, accepting or asking for a bunch of grapes, smelling the must in the lagares, immersing arms in them to then be removed reddened by the soil’s blood. The traveller experiences dreamy contemplation and hopes to be excused, because they are their brethren.”
Notes:
1 “A visão que o Douro me transmite” in Terra Feita Voz, nº 3, 1999, pp. 89-93.
2 in A Cidade e as Serras, Lisboa, Ed. “Livros do Brasil”, s/d., pp. 129-130.
3 Idem, p.135
4 In QUEIRÓS, Eça de, Correspondência (Organização de Guillherme de Castilho), Lisboa, IN-CM, 2 vol.s, pp. 232-233.
5 In A VINHA DA MALDIÇÃO e outras histórias quase verdadeiras, s/local, Sociedade de Expansão Cultural, 1969, p. 126.
6 V. “Litania” in Passos Perdidos, Lisboa, Portugália Editora, [1967], p. 234.
7 Idem, p. 235.
8 Idem, p. 236.
9 Idem, p. 237.
10 “Terras Malditas” in op. cit., p. 243-247.
11 “Poesia Agrária” in op. cit., p. 194.
12 “Caminhos rurais” in op. cit., p. 186.
13 Idem, p. 187.
14 Idem, p. 188.
15 “Poesia Agrária” in op. cit., pp. 193-194.
16 In Vindima de Sangue (Ciclo port wine – III), 3ª ed., Lisboa, Publicações Europa-América, 1975, p. 69.
17 Diário XII, 3ª edição revista, Coimbra, Ed. do Autor, 1986, pp. 176-177.
18 Diário II, 4ª edição revista, Coimbra, Ed. do Autor, 1977, p. 53.
19 In Contos da Montanha, 6ª edição revista, Coimbra, Ed. do Autor, 1982, p. 175.
20 BESSA-Luís, Vale Abraão, 2ª edição, Lisboa, Guimarães Editores, 1993, p. 7.
21 In A Lenda do Douro, Ed. do Autor, 1997, p. 3.
22 Porto, Soc. Edit. N. B. D.., 1998.
23 Há Nevoa no Rio (pedaços do percurso secular de um duriense), Porto, Soc. Edit. N. B. D.., 1998, p. 9.
24 In Livro dos Poemas Pobres, Porto, Editalma, 2000, pp. 103, 105 e 107, respectivamente.
25 In Novos Poemas Durienses, Vila Real, Livros do Nordeste, 1993, p. 32.
26 In A Noiva de Caná, Lisboa, Editorial Notícias, 1995, p. 204.
27 Viagem a Portugal, Lisboa, Círculo de Leitores, 1981, p. 28.
Cultural landscape of the Douro
Guerra Junqueiro felt the call of the infinite in the chapels found at the top of the steep duriense mountains, leaving him dazzled. In Os Simples, considered by the author to be his best work, the poem As Ermidas (26 metrical compositions of eleven-syllabic verses, written from 1890-1891) stands out for its touching vision of holiness and for the contrast established with his cunning compositions of A Velhice do Padre Eterno, in which the Catholic church is severely criticised. The poem starts like this:
“Little white chapels under wounded blues,
I see you from far away with devotion,
As white nests resting
There on those craggy arid mountains,
Where there is neither water nor bread germinates.”
All over the region of the Alto Douro the little chapels on the top of the mountains draw our attention and the tourists are doubly touched. Firstly, by the landscape that we can admire – looking outwards. Secondly, by peeping through an opening in the facade, appealing mystery is present in religious images and yesteryear vows – looking inwards.
“Wounded blues” stretch forth in the vineyards covering the steep slopes, a reason for happiness and for uncertainty, gathering obscurely signalling fulfilled promise, where they murmur restlessness.
The duriense, including those who don’t usually go to church, have special esteem for these little suggestive chapels and don’t deny a donation to keep them in good repair. They visit the chapels frequently, mainly on Sunday afternoons, and then the neighbouring square usually teems with cars and out come the cameras that from a chosen crag, zoom in on enchantments. The elderly remember the old song made popular throughout the region: “Do not scorn the little church / that you see alone / lost far away (…)”. Lovers, picking up marigolds or engraving names and dates on a juniper log or where the rock face is smooth, hear the spirit of this song in their blood. And it promises:
“I shall come in pilgrimage
to Our Lady of Assumption
with a flower in my hair
and two in my heart.”
A guide-book on the little duriense chapels, including the popular poetry surrounding them, still has to be written. But there are also phenomenon, legends of enchanted Moorish women that live in caves and crags nearby S. Leonardo; and they still do, that I can assure you.
Wine-growing Alto Douro
Anthem
I
Alto Douro, fair hills,
Where the river is a loving embrace:
Thus were the vineyards born
Making this wine the best.
We sing to the vitality of life,
An embrace that God embosomed,
From whence this heavenly drink comes,
This dream that the world had.
Chorus
Wine from the Douro,
Messenger of the sun and pleasure.
Port wine
Man’s strength, woman’s scent.
The older it is
The more it renews the certainty of emotion:
To have your soul singing with another soul,
To have a river beating in your heart.
II
Alto Douro where the wine has a soul,
A spirit given by men,
When they dream and toil,
When the soil sings in their hand.
Alto Douro where the wine has a face:
Immortal look given by the schist.
To know wine from the Douro
Is to know where Portugal is.
Text and Anthem by António Cabral Dr.
Douro
Oh Douro, my land, my chosen muse
Of my lyrical chant, inspiration,
My heart is lost to you
In that endless longing which draws me closer to you.
My land of mountains and vineyards
In an infinite range of green,
Of almond trees, fields and olive trees
Of a river, its sublime beauty.
I soon unveiled your secrets
Happily living days of joy
That continue to exhilarate my Autumn.
And, one day when Parcae carries me off,
Your splendour will still kindle
The darkness of my last sleep
Ilda Pinto Ribeiro
Tourism in the Douro
Now – A True RealityTourism in the Douro
A vital reality for the region
The Solar da Rede – Actividades Turísticas e Agrícolas, Ltd., concessionaire for 15 years of the Solar da Rede, plans to put into action a project for tourism and agriculture on that property, which groups the Quinta da Rede and the Quinta da Peixota, with a total of about 37 hectares, 27 of which are vineyards and the rest are woodlands, orchards and a social area of 8 lodgings, where the Solar da Rede and the Casa da Quinta da Peixota stand prominently.
The Casa da Rede, Solar dos Alpoins or Solar da Rede, as it is best known, is situated in the freguesia (a small locality)of Santa Cristina in the municipality of Mesão Frio, on a steep slope of the river Douro, in the area of Rede, and is connected to the national road by means of a traditional stone-paved roadway, surrounded by walls, cypress trees and vineyards. According to Correia de Azevedo, in his book Brasões e Casas Brasonadas do Douro, it is “one of the oldest subleases in Portugal, that Prince D. Afonso, son of the king D. João II, renewed in 1484 to Lopo de Queirós, Lord of the Casa da Rede”!
In Património Artístico da Região Duriense, the same author considers it a remarkable example of civil architecture of the late 18th century, with a majestic facade facing West over a wide terrace shielded by a commodious balcony supported by balusters, from which one can enjoy a beautiful view over a romantic garden, the river and a vine covered valley. On the noble floor, there are eleven windows in a row, set in a cut out granite ashlar and the verandas are of wrought iron. On the ground floor, there are large barred doors and windows: in the middle rests an exquisite fountain where the water flows through two stone gargoyles. At the centre of the eaves is a triangular fronton on which a coat-of-arms carved in stone is embedded: shields are split in half, the first bears the coat-of-arms of the Borges and the second that of the Cabrais’.
On the right, attached to the house sits the chapel of invocation to St. Sebastian, with its altar carved in gold, covered with beautiful four-coloured tiles and with adornments in rocaille style, forming panels with religious and profane motifs.
In the interior, its great halls with oak ceilings, have a magnificent mural decor of well-preserved 18th century tiles.
Its granite portico is of unusual majesty, giving us the impression of a triumphal open ceiling arch, adorned with four griffins, with the heads and wings of an eagle and bodies of a lion, preparing for a flight of giants.
Along the balusters of the terrace, on a level slightly lower, is a pleasant rectangular romantic garden covering an area almost the same as that of the house and where hedges divide it into geometrical portions.
Before being sold to the previous owners, who had it restored under the guidance of the Director of the Museum of Lamego, the Casa da Rede belonged to the advisor José Maria Alpoim Cerqueira Borges Cabral, in whose homage a monument was raised in front of the City Hall of Mesão Frio.
It is on this real estate of relevant architectural value, that the Solar da Rede, Ltd. intends not only to set up a charming hotel with about a dozen rooms but also to renovate an architectural rural setting of seven houses as well as the house at Quinta da Peixota, in order to build twenty two more rooms and suites. In terms of infrastructures for recreation/amusement, there is a swimming-pool, a tennis court, a romantic garden, woods and a riverside pier at the Casa da Rede, which is a mere hundred metres from the complex. Besides all this, other various recreational facilities are under construction at the Quinta do Douro, which will make use of its wine, olive oil, fruits and horticultural productions.
It is hoped to both produce and bottle Port and Douro wines grown in the twenty seven hectares of vineyard, as well as to make a profit from the other productions – olive oil, dried fruits, red fruits, fresh vegetables, etc.
It is our belief that the bringing about of this project will have a strong impact on the economy of the municipality of Mesão Frio, especially on making smaller businesses more dynamic and qualified, namely in the production of quality food and handicrafts.
But…
It is not worth hiding the truth of the facts – tourism in the Douro Demarcated Region has been done incoherently, with no aims, with no main planning. So, one could conclude that there has been no real tourism in the Douro, except on one’s own account and more or less drifting.
Many were the associations, groups and even conveyances drawn up to carry through the possibility of tourism in the Douro.
All failed, leaving …the intentions…along the way… Now, one can catch a glimpse of a light at the end of the tunnel with the appearance of a man – Mário Ferreira – who, by allying the economic aspect to the emotional one, is developing remarkable work in tourism in the Douro. He has an ambitious plan but perfectly within his reach – to improve the quality of tourism in the Douro in all its aspects.
Vintage House Hotel
Location
Pinhão – Douro – Portugal
The hotel is situated approximately 120 km east of the city of Oporto, and is accessible by road (1 hour and 45 minutes), by the panoramic railway Linha do Douro or by ferry boat. The hotel is located on the edge of the bank of the Douro River, surrounded by and facing the most famous vineyards of Port wine, in the heart the oldest Demarcated Region of the world.
It is situated on the lands of a former quinta dating back to the 18th century.
The old house was restored with great accuracy and sensitivity so as to preserve the regional architecture and to offer all the comfort of a modern hotel facility.
All rooms and public areas face the river Douro as well as the slopes covered with terraced vineyards, the ideal landscape for all those who want to relax in the middle of natural tranquillity.
For all those who are interested in Port Wine, guided tours and wine tasting can be organised at the hotel or at one of the existing quintas in the region.
With the Solar da Rede, the Vintage Hotel in Pinhão is giving the region a seal of magnificence.
It owns a fleet of boats, helicopters and… the results are evident… The rest, the great writer João Araújo Correia, already used to say:
Decline of small villages
… Master builders, master barbers, master carpenters, tailors of blessed scissors have been absorbed by the tentacles of urbanism. Only those who can barely dig have remained in the villages, that is; before immigrating.
The owners of quintas and casais (smaller farmhouses) complain of this rural exodus. But it does him no good to complain. If the nobleman fled from the land, where his parents and grandparents lived, to go vegetate in a city, how can he demand that his workers settle on that land?
The noble estates, that shone so much from the light of chandeliers, are graves for phantoms. Mice have taken over… They are falling to pieces, hiding larvae. It is dreadful to see that in my hometown, Canelas do Douro, such good houses are uninhabited.
The viaticum has been given to the small village in Portugal. Today, when comfort and recreation of civilisation go everywhere, nobody wants to live in the countryside. There are inheritors of great rural estates who prefer a dead existence in a drawer in a sky-scraper to the enjoyment of these rural estates. He is the lord of apartment three on the sixth floor. May it suit him well.
If things carry on this way, soon our beautiful country of such perfect rural life, will be reduced to industrial centres. The rest will be forest, pasture and some chemical cornfield. Nothing else.
By
João de Araújo Correia
22-10-66
In- Horas Mortas
Publisher’s note: Here we have transcribed the final part of the chronicle Decadência das Aldeias by João de Araújo Correia, certain that it will echo in the tourism that is practised nowadays in the most varied expressions of the constructive spirit.
The Academia do Vinho offers you contact with the world of wines, by promoting Wine Courses, enrolment in the Clube Vintage and in all events organised by the Academia.
As an alternative, its entirely central location in relation to the region makes it the ideal starting point to explore the surrounding beauty by visiting places of great historical and cultural interest, whether by car, by train, by boat or in a 4×4 vehicle.
Services:
43 bedrooms with bathrooms en suite – 2 deluxe Suites, 5 Junior Suites, 36 Premier Rooms
Restaurante Rabelo with a capacity for 75 people
The Library Bar
Living room by the Library Bar
Sala Inglesa – video games room, pool and TV
Swimming pool and tennis court
Function rooms:
The Vintage Room with a capacity for 80 people
2 meeting rooms Duquesa e Duque de Bragança with 40m2 each; Banquet room Salão do Rio with a maximum capacity for 200 seated people – 250 m2
Lodge – a wine shop with a tasting room. Available for tasting and special dinners
Business room – to offer assistance at meetings and congresses
Rooms:
Air-conditioning with independent controls
Private phones with direct access
Television with video incorporated and satellite radio
Private safes in the bedroom
Facilities for people with disabilities
Rooms for non-smokers
Date of inauguration:
4 th July 1998
Member Relais & Chateaux
Since 1st December 2000
The Vintage House Relais & Chateaux was elected one of the 31 best new hotels in the world by the magazine Condé Nast Traveller, in May 1999.
A friend of challenge but much more of a friend of the Douro or he would not have descendants in Tabuaço. Mário Ferreira not only wants to improve the high quality of tourism in the region, but as he also mentions, to divulge Port wine by commercialising it and promoting the potential of tourism beyond the borders of the Douro Demarcated Region. To do so, he is dedicating himself to increasing the numbers of tourists, welcoming them nobly and with the greatest amount of comfort and service.
He has a saying that; in order to harvest it is necessary to sow, and the sowing has been obvious in virtue of the results obtained.
Tourism, the next challenge
Eng. Mário Fernandes
The history of the Douro is full of examples of perseverance, greatness and, above all, victories over a large number of obstacles, difficulties and challenges.
Taking a superficial inventory of a view of the region, starting with the valley, what comes to mind are the hard conditions
in agricultural production: the lack of water, the steep slopes, the shortage and poorness of the soil. However, with effort and intelligence, the duriense knew how to build an amazing landscape where the cultivation of vineyards prevails, the true support of a lasting and maintainable economic activity. Remaining in our memories are the plagues that fell over the vineyards, namely the phylloxera (a species of plant louse that attacks vines), that in the second half of the 19th century destroyed almost a third of the plantations. This heightens the perseverance of those who once again gave the land its just value and proceeded with the hard work on the terraces, which are painted and dressed in endless beauty all year long and give us the unequalled taste of a wine unique to the world – Port wine.
Let’s talk about the river – hard to sail and sometimes unbridgeable. The duriense dared to face it, managed to command it and made it the first means of communication in the region. With subtlety and art, they created and shaped a boat, the rabelo, ready to master the dangerous points although some of them, according to navigational maps, were unsurpassable. With strength and tenacity they overcame those obstacles. Among them, the strong head-winds at Valeira that can symbolise the determination of the Man of the Douro in overcoming afflictions, no matter how big they seem.
The construction of the railway was another challenge. The dimension of the necessary resources and the adversity of this enterprise certainly served as incentive to its execution. It was an undertaking worthy of note and great importance for the duriense population, for at the time it proved to be a stable transport alternative to the waterway.
Then it was necessary to take advantage of the resources of a river that still had a lot to offer. The exploitation of hydroelectricity of the Douro came about with the construction of hydro-electric power stations along the course of the river. The river, which was already the nucleus of the area, became
a source of revenue for the country. The greatness of the task became, throughout time, worthy of national pride. As an integral part of the exploitation of hydroelectricity of the river, the building of dams began. The irregularity and turbulence of the discharges that created difficulties in navigation gave way to calm, constant waters and, consequently, became favourable to modern navigation of boats of great dimensions. To allow for the transposition of the dams, navigational locks were built; equipment of great prominence in the field of engineering and witness to a far reaching strategic vision.
The navigability of the river was seen as a new opportunity for development and as an open door to Europe in terms of tourism and of transportation of goods. The choice of work contractor to build a stable and secure pier on the Douro was, in virtue of this difficult challenge, a choice well made. However, the Douro presented exceptional conditions for tourism which demanded the construction of ports, wharves and marinas with big dimensions and good quality. Despite the great floods that frequently surprise us and cause so many problems, an indispensable network of fluvial structures was implemented in a short space of time. The endowment of equipment for leisure and free time activities to those structures in order to attract the riverside inhabitants, was made as a compliment to a touristic project still in expansion.
Finally, we will discuss the candidacy of the Alto Douro wine region to World Heritage. The complexity and the delicacy of the procedure didn’t inhibit the duriense. The success of the initiative represents the certification of the international recognition of the Douro area. The classification of the Alto Douro wine region as World Heritage is a very important element in the strategy of promoting tourism and it is a stimulant for new business ventures in tourism.
The people from the Douro, used to winning challenges and overcoming obstacles, will certainly continue the laborious task of asserting their area and their potential. It is important to define a strategy and a sustained policy of development of the area.
We know that wine will always be one of the fundamental pillars of regional development, and it is an activity in an advanced stage of development, controlled and protected by solid regional institutions from, its production to its commercialisation.
The time has come to bet firmly on a model for tourist development that privileges quality. Tourism, which involves several sectors, can promote the creation of new companies and provide the source of business that will benefit the local economy.
The recent evolution in this area allows us to be optimistic about the future, in spite of the lack of basic conditions and the need for new initiatives, which should come from both the business and public sectors. Both fluvial and rural tourism, the manor-houses, the hotel enterprises, the restaurants, as well as, the Cultural Routes, the Port Wine Route,
the Archaeological Park of Foz Côa and the Museum of the Douro are recent features of dynamism and development in tourism in this region.
In this region, there is a trade mark, a valuable historical and cultural heritage, unparalleled natural beauty. There are also authentic and genuine products but the region is lacking in some structures and the ability of strategic analysis to seek markets and to create business opportunities.
This is the next challenge that the duriense have to face.
The Douro will always be the result of the effort and sweat of its people. The duriense have never had manna from heaven, but nor have they been poor bakers… Thus, I believe in a brilliant future for the Douro.
João de Araújo Correia
The old woman of the iron pots
Under a big load of pots, so big that it hid the sun, the old woman trudged bare foot without tripping, plodding along stone paths that stretched out from Candelária, climbing up and down hills, lazily, till she reached the fair ground. The old frail women that made socks or ran their fingers over the beads of their rosaries on the windowed balconies of the manor-houses saw her going by, passing through villages like a beaten south-wind mist. Hardly had they caught sight of that fugitive shadow than they put their needles or rosaries in their laps, simply to tell one another or their maids; “There comes the woman of the iron pots,” so joyously that their corpselike faces unwrinkled. How much older than me this woman is! I was merely a girl, and I already used to see her going by as old as she is today, under her iron pots, to the fair of the twenty-fifth. And, look, how she flies! She’s here, she’s in Panóias.
The fair of the twenty-fifth had been vigorous when Panóias was head of the municipality, head of jurisdiction and an abounding and clean town, like no other. Every month, cloth merchants from very far away, goldsmiths from the city of Oporto, saddlers from Penafiel, confectioners from Resende, shoemakers from Lamego, clog-makers from Penude, swine herders from nearby and big dealers from the four corners the earth would gather there. The town was abundantly supplied for the month’s expenses. They wore new clothes before the old ones had become too shabby, the women adorned themselves with gold necklaces and earrings, they saddled a donkey with wasteful luxury, filled their cheeks with light crisp cakes, pampered their feet before heading off to church, wore tough cordovan leather shoes on the trail of rustic goods, soled their clogs in iron for when it was muddy, ordered lean meat for barbecuing or salting, and even bought, for no reason, bric-a-brac to put on top of the chest of drawers between paper flowers, in front of the oratories.
On the eve of the twenty-fifth, the old woman of the iron pots looked for her usual spot, she swept it very well, marked it off with two stiff sticks and fastened two strings horizontally to two old rings, fixed on the wall of a wealthy house. She separated her wares: mugs, pitchers, pots, dripping-pans, casseroles, bowls, objects to use in the kitchen, for either a poor man or a rich man – on one side. Vases for flowers with adornments that shone from a dark bottom; amphorae with thin necks, like the necks of virgins who die early; squat, funereal urns with two hanging handles – slender or joyless objects, used to charm young girls or to draw dark shadows – on another side. Saucepans for the kids, everything that is sold to grown-ups, but on a smaller scale, she put them in front on a board, so that they could easily be seen.
They went through the fair, step by step, women from yesteryear, ladies from the court withdrawn in the province, faint small creatures that made curtsies, left and right, thinking they might be at the palace, reverberated in mirrors, the great public square, where the polished copper basins and the pieces of handicraft of the tinsmith twinkled in the sun. Young noblemen wearing shawl-wraps on their thin shoulders flirted with the girls, from town and from abroad, gently daring in soft voices. Heavy peasants wearing jackets, boots and spurs cast serious looks upon what was wanting at home or on the farm – pots that could fill twenty-five bowls, baskets for the grape harvest, iron bars and shovels, locks for the gates on the property, wraps for the working people. Girls from the people, very ladylike, used to sewing, weaving and taking care of the silkworm, stopped, enchanted in front of knickknacks and trifle filled tents. They bought needles, pins and glass beads.
With so many customers in sight, the old woman of the iron pots did not need to sing out her frail merchandise. The noblemen would choose a vase to offer a dressmaker. The peasant would buy a casserole and an iron pot to offer his, who had stayed at home, by the fireplace. He would pay, saying to the old woman; “Hey, woman, this is a bargain!” The clay shaped into so many different forms passed from the trembling hands of the saleswoman to the steady hands of the girls and land owners. Everything disappeared. By three in the afternoon the old woman was already dismantling the rings and the two strings from the pillars with which she had marked the spot; and, weightless as she was because her flesh was not a burden, she set off once again, heading for Candelária.
Poor old woman! The boys playing outdoors in the villages that she passed, mocked her because she had sunken eyes under wrinkled eyelids, a crooked toothless mouth and soil coloured skin. They feared her, and, as if it were an exorcism, they shouted out in unison: Ugly, Ugly, Ugly, Ugly, Ugly, Ugly… Crooked-mouth, Crooked-mouth, Crooked-mouth, Crooked-mouth…
She did not bother. She did not even look back. Plod…plod…, her dry bare feet hardly touched the stones of the side-paths. On she went, like a black rag pulled by the wind.
She was very ugly. Once, Morgado do Muro, a womaniser, appeared in front of the tent, stared at her and cried out: “What a hideous woman!”
She blushed under the pewter of many years, taking that awful word as a compliment; very confused, she thanked him: “In your eyes, Sir, and in the eyes of those who wish me well.”
Morgado laughed and told her to choose one of the best adorned jars and put it down on his score. Paying with half a pound, he said:
“Keep the change, woman!”
We can say that, for generations, nobody ever heard more than those words: in your eyes, Sir and in the eyes of those who wish me well.
She made and unmade business with wet monosyllables in droplets of saliva from her husky mouth.
No one recalled having seen her young, or chatty like all girls who use their voices to lure. Single, married or a widow – no one knew. Even her baptismal name, possibly beautiful, no one knew. They called her: hey, auntie; hey, auntie of the iron pots!
The fair of the twenty-fifth was over, we could say that. The vineyards that had provided for Panóias had withered. Noblemen and peasants, those who were not brave enough to hang themselves, went abroad. Women no longer sowed flax or cared for the silkworm. They became brutish, under manure baskets, helping their husbands in the sterile harvest filled with a devilish sickness.
Panóias was no longer a town.
The railway, drilling the Douro, passed it by at a distance and went to stimulate peoples that had never dreamed of making progress.
Panóias declined. The pillory was used for the construction of a shed. Mulberry trees, whose shade refreshed the fair, were decapitated for the fireplace. The poor people’s quarters were no longer whitewashed. The well-off houses, under the responsibility of ragged tenants, crumbled and tumbled down every winter. The fair – so to speak – was over. The big fairs scattered out here and there, all over Portugal. They fled from Panóais, as if it were a plague. How could they not run away? If any trader ventured towards that excommunicated land, everyone knew he would be stabbed and robbed.
The fair was over. In a manner of speaking, because the old woman of the iron pots insisted on being present every month. On the deserted ground – no longer was there the shade of the pillory – the old woman set up her business just like in the golden days. She did not sell a mug but, without complaint, by three in the afternoon she would fasten a set of iron pots with a thin rope, padding the pottery with ferns, here and there, so that they would not break. She would ask a passer-by to help her, for pity’s sake, put the huge load on her white nape and, without a word of thanks, she would set off once more.
These useless steps lasted years and years. Only those with the moss of old age on their faces could remember the fair at Panóias. They used to say: it was on the twenty-fifth! It fell from the sky like a mallet. The country folk, the energy of the world, gathered together in flocks. From Oporto upward there was no other market. That woman of the iron pots, forgotten by God, is from that time. There isn’t a month that she isn’t here. It seems that she comes to remind us, on behalf of the devil, of the time when we were rich. What mockery! Ha! What nonsense! There isn’t anything that doesn’t come to an end… On the twenty-fifth, last January, as you know, there was a thick coating of frost. The rural workers, whose grimy clothes were falling to pieces, penetrated the fair ground, on their way to work, their clogs making such a commotion on the muddy stones. When they neared the tent filled with crockery, they stopped in astonishment. The old woman was lying in an obscene position. The workers laughed out heartily. Then they moved towards her. She was stiff. One of them used a three-clapped pocket knife to cut a string that darkened the tanned neck of the dead body. He pulled the end of the stained ribbon and out of the woman’s body came a little bag. They opened it and removed half a gold pound from within.
It was lucky for them that they had something with which to appease their hunger that icy morning.
João de Araújo Correia
Contos Bárbaros
Of the Douro,
the countless wine labels of Port Wine are also an integral part and whose allotted samples clearly show the unmistakable taste of those who imagine them throughout the ages, fashions and tastes…
Some of those left unpublished are examples of many others …
THE WINE LABELS
THE EPOCH
THE DOURO
PORT WINE
A small sample
of a big collection
of wine labels
of
Port Wine
the sorcery of wine labels
the magic of Port Wine
the imagination of men
the sorcery
of the
wine labels
goes on and will go on
forever
Tabuaço
Municipality of the vineyard,
Of the vine,
of the landscape
and of the heritage
Romanic Douro
A glass for Port wine
by Siza Vieira
THE DOURO AND ITS REGION
Jorge Ferreira
In 1950, Miguel Torga characterized the Demarcated Region of Alto Douro in the brief opuscule – Portugal – by describing the telluric and cultural characteristics of this small rectangle with wide open doors to the sea. He premonitorily stated that “the Doiro, river and region, is certainly the most serious reality we have”. He was then certainly far from imagining that his description embodied in the promontory of S. Leonardo de Galafura would, deservedly be acknowledge by UNESCO as World Heritage, 50 years later. It was the last title of honour granted to the Douro by the World Heritage Centre during an annual meeting, which took place in Helsinki in December 14 2001. We know now that the sustenance bases of the proposals presented bore in mind the characteristics of the living evolving cultural landscape of the Alto Douro, based primarily on the strong potentials of economic nature, extending to the production of Port and Douro wine, as well as to cultural and leisure tourism, which is more and more progressive and done by natives and foreigners who visit us.
So, it came about that in a short period of time, between 1996 and 2001, the river Douro, in its way across Portugal, was granted on three occasions the title of World Heritage by UNESCO. At the river mouth, before being engulfed in the salty waters of the ocean, in the historic areas of Oporto and Vila Nova de Gaia, there, close to the Ribeira, where a row of houses clutters on either banks in an architecturally multicoloured waterfall. Further up, close to the border, in the vast valley of the Côa – a Douro’s tributary – with the Palaeolithic richness of the incomparable rock engravings, and finally, in the emblematic Demarcated Region like a crown jewel, the circumscribed area of the winegrowing Douro, as it was registered.
Curiously, the European cultural institutions, at the end of the century, confirmed the impressions that the author of Diários gathered throughout his life, when journeying in his carding wool boots through lanes and hillocks during the hunting season and armed with all the adequate instruments for this purpose.
We haven’t managed to disclose someone who, shielded in the real values of supraregionalism, was capable of visioning an arch of complementarity in the three distinct areas, because we have been ancestrally closed in the cocoon of the regional interests. Energy and human resources continue to be wasted, putting in unilateral perspective the Demarcated Region according to the belvedere we are in.
The river is not only the path that wonders, zigzagging through hills and valleys, running between extremely abrupt slopes or splint amidst pinnacle large crags that diminish it along its course to the mouth. The river is the matrical root, where, as time went by, successive generations were modelled, shaving the slopes and raising landings. And the landscape’s architecture raised on both banks, climbing up the mountainous slopes, granting it monumentality. And a new landscape mirrors itself in the river’s waters, thus refreshing and ennobling the region by it identified.
Douro, river and region is, indeed, a very serious reality.
In the last quarter of the 19th century, with the innovations brought by the Industrial Revolution, the railway tracks that go along most of the river’s course, as well as along its tributaries and the net of roads torn in the macadam by the “Estado Novo”, the violent and tragic river became no longer the only road where the famous rabelo boats, loaded with wine and other food products came down to Oporto.
Today, only alongside the Ribeira quay in Oporto, or in the small estuary of Régua, can we catch a glimpse of the silhouette of a rabelo with unfurled sail, carrying three or four aligned barrels, showing visiting tourists the most important toil in the daily life of the Douro man.
If there is a region where man “has transformed each ravine in a windowsill of hope and each drop of sweat in a drop of sweetness”, he did it in this hidden corner of the northeast. Here, everything was born different. The natural factors that bound it, the hilly nature of the relief, the schist soil, the climate with its Mediterranean vegetation, have conditioned human action throughout time. As Orlando Ribeiro very well states: “it was the man by transforming…the dense forests that covered the slopes of the Douro in the vineyards where Port is born, and spread later on, after the phylloxera plague, the olive trees and the almond trees in all lowlands that brought a bigger reinforcement to the region’s meridional location”. Besides, our renowned geographers Amorim Girão and Vergílio Taborda had already pronounced themselves about the meritorious influence of the human hand in the production of the generous table wine. And Taborda was even more decisive: “one can state it was the vineyard, the making and the commerce of the Port wine that made the Alto Douro. Above the differences which separate the population from both banks of the river, and what may unite them to the neighbours of high Trás-os-Montes and Beira, is the link to this special way of occupying the soil and the economical solidarity”.
And a new landscape was born, monumental in its architecture, which frames the river, projecting itself in both banks, from Barqueiros until the lands of Barca de Alva.
But it was Miguel Torga who incarnated best the telluric sense of the region and immortalising it in literary watercolour: “Throughout all year long, no possible blessing mitigates the crucifixion of suffering. In the summer, a forge’s heat welds the schist and transforms the current in a hallucination of lava moving; during the winter, even the eyes of the vines weep from the cold. Beauty exists all year long, because wherever there is a boat’s sail and an Olympus stairway, there it beauty. But beauty itself must be understood.
It isn’t just climbing to the stubbles of Lagoaça, contemplate the abyss and stop in ecstasy. It isn’t peeping from S. Salvador do Mundo the Cachão da Valeira and feel a shiver. It’s not climbing down from Sabrosa to Pinhão, pause in S. Cristóvão and open one’s mouth in astonishment. It’s not going to S. Leonardo de Galafura or to the belvedere of S. Bras, to look at the kaleidoscope, and feel bewildered. It’s to understand the whole significance of the tragedy, from the temptation of the set to the conviction of Prometheus, to the clamour of he choir.”
From the most fragrant wine of Lamego (1532) to the most liquorish one of the Companhia (1756)
Although winegrowing dates back from immemorial times, at least from the Roman presence, having commercially evolved during the Dark Age
when national and international fairs appeared along with the development of the boroughs granted with Charter by the King, only in the 16th century did the cultivation and commerce of wines begin to gain some regional economical importance. The two main regional areas were in Lamego and Moncorvo. The afonsina town, a bishop’s see since the Suevos, became the main cultural centre of all the Alto Douro, or Cima Douro as it used to be named. Shielded by the administrative and cultural organization of the Church, the surrounding populations benefited from the favouring conditions of the urban environment as the first developing centre of the regional economy.
The testimony written by Rui Fernandes between 1531 and 1532 in Descrição do terreno em roda da cidade de Lamego em duas léguas…(Description of the areas around the town of Lamego in a couple of miles…) allows us to draw a very rigorous portrait of what the wine production was like in his region. From his words, we can infer that the geographical area around Lamego dedicated itself to wine production reached 306.700 almudes. Each almude corresponded to 25 litres, and each cask had 20 almudes, thus having a total of 15.000 casks annually. But this isn’t the only information given by this illustrious inhabitant of Lamego. These wines “are the most excellent and more lasting wines one can find in the realm, and the most fragrant, because there are wines 4, 5 or 6 years old, and the older they are, the more excellent and fragrant …”
He also states that it was very varied, because the grapes came from many stocks, adapted to the terrain and climate’s characteristics where they were grown: grapevine for a warmer climate and grapevines for a colder climate. And the description specifies in detail the variety of the stocks: bastardo, trincadente, agudelho, Alcaro de Sousa (or malvasia), catelão, verdelho preto and branco, among others.
It is curious how the quoted author defines the wines of Lamego as “the most fragrant and excellent”. Like in other European regions, among us, the wine starts being appreciated by its characteristics in relation to the age and aroma: some wines were “fragrant” and much more appreciated when older: 4, 5, 6 years old.
Historically, it is licit to state that with the “production and commerce of the wines of Lamego”, the Alto Douro, river, wine and region became important.
Already in the 17th century, the range of production enlarges, expanding through the Douro slopes up to the river Tua, giving origin to the wines “ Riba Pinhão”, “Riba Douro” or “Cima do Douro”, being the fine wines classified according to their lands of origin.
In the course of this century, several factors converge so that the winegrowing of the Alto Douro gains an important role in the national economy. In 1638, when Cristiano Kopke decides to create a firm in Oporto dedicated to the trade of exporting wines, the Douro was already a lively region.
People in the neighbouring plateaus start settling for the first time in the valley to make there their investments. The wine and the vineyards of the Douro gain a growing economical importance and give origin to an “issue” with which the state powers would have to confront.
Between 1642 and 1648, the décima (tax of 10 per cent of production) charged by the Oporto Town Hall to the wines proceeding from the Alto Douro served as a fuse for riotings of producers and tradesmen.
Incidents of this sort were constant in the region’s history and of its most important product which, depending on the political and economical conjuncture, were repeated in the course of the following centuries, leading to the signing of the International Treaty of Methueen between Portugal and England in 1703, to the foundation of the Companhia Geral da Agricultura das Vinhas do Alto Douro by the Marquis in 1756 and to its extinction, firstly in 1834 and definitely in 1865.
The founding of the Companhia Geral da Agricultura das Vinhas do Alto Douro ( 1756)
With the reinforcement of the English colony’s commercial power in Oporto, which lead to the founding of the Feitoria in 1627, thus enlarging its power with other wines, and by exchanging with other commercial products, wine was seen as a product of re-exchange. The Douro and its region entered an euphoric phase in the production of generous wine. From then on, the history of the Alto Douro is identified with that of the Port wine. It was then that the slopes facing the sun and neighbours of the Douro and its tributaries, local aristocrats, Oporto tradesmen, peasants, handcrafters and tradesmen, monasteries and vicars invested in the extensive vineyards. The hills, waste lands, plantations of chestnut-trees and cereal fields are all covered with gravel, farms are erected, wine-presses are built, the river traffic is intensified. With the entrance of the 18th century, the nobles, not the ones from the royal family and the Religious Orders are the holders of the large farms in the Douro, in fact, they were the holders of the land before the region became famous for its winegrowing. Some of those nobles bragged they belonged to the military religious orders like the Ordem de Cristo, Aviz or Malta.
In the mean time, if the apparently polemic Treaty with England was beneficial to the commercial production, such development ended up harming the Douro’s viticulture. On one side, the preference for the Portuguese wine was leading to the elimination of the French and Spanish wines from the market, on the other side the Douro’s wine was confronted with other Portuguese wines proceeding from Madeira, Algarve, Colares and Dão. In these circumstances, the Douro wine producers experienced the threat of losing the preference given by the English markets, as it was later confirmed.
There was an eminent and threatening crisis in the population of the Douro who worked laboriously in the farms of the main owners.
Amidst the commercial euphoria from the 17th century, many producers and exporters were drawn to the dazzling easy business. They began using all sorts of fraudulent artifices to profit in the exchange of products. There were even those who added elderberry to make the precious nectar more coloured. Leading to a worst situation, England and France decided to restart their commercial bondage. The convergence of all these circumstances of exogenous and endogenous matter relative to the wine production ended up creating major barriers to the commerce of the Douro wine. The English consumer realized the commercial trap he was involved with the loss of quality of the Port wine. The excellent beverage the English doctors used to prescribe in the second half of the 17th century as a tonic for fragile stomachs is now proscribed for being considered poisonous for the same qualities that previously recommended it.
The immoderate ambition for easy profit of the various agents in charge for the commerce, mixing, adulterating in a thousand ways the genuine Port wine, produced in the slopes of the Alto Douro and transported by the rabelos, ploughing through the river’s muddy waters, is in the origin of a crisis difficult to evaluate.
Precisely when the Port wine achieved credibility in the international market, a deep commotion falls on its good name. With the growing difficulties, the accusations of the wine’s forgery among producers and tradesmen also increased.
With this conjuncture, it’s easy to conclude that in the middle of the 18th century, the circumstances are of bad omen to the Douro’s wine producers. It is seen that the supply and demand law does not work. The production of noble an ordinary wines in uneven quantities (the last in bigger quantity) doesn’t favour the product’s quality and neither that of the producers.
In the last years of the 1st half of the 18th century, the wines accumulate in the farms’ warehouses and those who can sell them, don’t profit enough to pay the expenses, ending up abandoning the farms.
Chaos settles among the producers in the Douro and the tradesmen in Gaia. It’s urgent to unite efforts to save the business, that is, to save the Douro. It’s then that three messianic characters interested in the region appear: Dr. Luiz Belza de Andrade, an important wine producer, Dr. Frei João Mansilha, a Dominican,
native from St Miguel de Lobrigos and D. Bartolomeu Pancarbo, Spanish tradesman living in Oporto since 1751. They decide that, to put an end to the crisis, they have to present the matter to D. José’s Prime Minister, the Marquis of Pombal.
The solution to the serious problems, which abased in the Douro, according to the proponents, was the creation of a company that “ would patronize with the wine’s reputation, the cultivation of the vineyard, so that when the Commerce became profitable, it could reward the farming and, all predicted with such deliberation, so that the high prices didn’t make the consumption impossible, nor the selling at low prices led to the abandonment of the culture.” The main idea was the creation of a major commercial company with guaranteed monopoly, aimed mainly to the Brazilian market.
The Companhia Geral da Agricultura das Vinhas do Alto Douro was accepted by Pombal with the proper political safety clause, through royal warrant of 10th September 1756. It was the beginning of the Demarcated Region, the first in the wine history.
Pombal’s intention in founding the Company, was firstly to assure the State’s interest in an economical sector that represented half of the national exports. Under the statutary principles which administered it, the company would also be embraced by the principles of the protectionist philosophy common to all companies founded by him. Underlying the principles of general character, the aims were:
- to protect the wines for export;
- to preserve and guarantee the quality of the Douro’s wines;
- to diminuish the English commerce control;
- to promote the winegrowing in Douro, making it capable of supplanting the competition of other producing areas.
To accomplish all the proponents’arguments, it was necessary to send deputies to study the region, to choose the best productive areas, hierarchize each of the most fit parcels for commerce – wines of factory, embark and cargo.
It’s known that all agents and social stratos of Oporto didn’t equally accept the founding of the Companhia. The rioting of February 23rd 1757 was the living expression of the opposition led by an adverse movement and proved that there were disorders and forgery deeds in the commerce of the Douro wine.
With the political changes occurred in the realm during the implement of liberalism, the Pombal’s institution held on the first shocks, but was hit by the Decree of 1834 by Mouzinho da Silveira. The political and social changings that go through liberalism also reflect in the Douro with parade of riots and counter riots in the urban centres, as well as in the villages and the small towns of the province.
Fontes Pereira de Melo announced a new era for the Douro wine, which, due to its high quality, “has to be taken to all markets; for this, strength to remove all obstaclesthat the legislation imposes on it is needed.” The appearance of a vine’s disease – the oidium – which in a brief period of time spread through the entire region, left many farmers in misery and reduced the crop to half.
In the political spheres of the Parliament opposite interests are played, some defending free trade, others a restrictive legislation. The situation is controversial. In 1865, Fontes Pereira de Melo signed a decreet where the restrictive measures were abolished, thus extinguishing the Companhia, and turning it into a mere commercial company. Simultaneously, it is decreeted the freedom to export any wines which would pay the same taxes through the pier of Douro.
The plague of the phylloxera (1872 – 1890)
Paradoxically, after the abolishment of the regulating functions of the Companhia, the Douro meets a new outbreak of financial recovery which is prolonged until the last decade of the 19th century. In 1880, exportations almost doubled the registrations verified fifteen years before, though not all wines sold to European markets were from the Douro producers. The law of economical liberalism was predominant. Wines of the most varied origin left from the pier of the Douro’s mouth, paying the same taxes and being registered with the same brand.
The building of the Douro’s train tracks, in the period of a decade, transformed deeply the notions of time and space that had separated for centuries the distances from the coast to the inland. The millenary isolation of the Douro’s valley was shortened. It was in this picture of optimism, resulting from transformations in the means of communication and the promising situations of commerce and production that the Douro had to engage in the biggest battle ever. In 20 years time, to be more precise, between 1872 and 1890, the terrible plague of philloxera mourned all the Demarcated Region, leaving at sight the “funerals”, marks of its destroying action still not profited today on both banks of the river. Days of anguish were lived, trying desperately
to overcome the situation. Some used chemical procedures (lime, oil and pitch), others prayed for divine help, organizing contrition processions, as narrated in the Jornal da Régua in July 10th 1880: “On Sunday there was a contrition procession promoted by the inhabitants of Cambres, to beg for divine protection against the damages caused by the phylloxera.
The procession left Cambres, carrying in a splendorous way, the image of Senhor dos Passos, and walked up to Senhora dos Remédios, in Lamego. The penitents were about 3.000 and one could see that most of them were ladies.”
The resulting effects of such catastrophe by the destruction of the vineyards made the production drop to a third of the previous numbers. The affected area allowed the establishment of the vineyards of the Douro Superior in the Demarcated Region, including the areas of the Alto and Baixo Corgo. In deep misery, employers and workers face one of the most difficult moments in the history of the Winegrowing Country.
It’s in this context of generalized calamity and devastation that the figures of the Baron of Forrester and D. Antónia Adelaide Ferreirinha emerge. In a fit of untamed courage, exclusive glory of heroes, they decide to invest in the purchase of farms, some of which with hundreds of hectares of vineyards, as if perceiving better days for the Port wine.
In different ways, one and the other are creditors of esteem and admiration from all people of the Douro due to the activity developed in the middle of the 19th century on behalf of the Demarcated Region. Hated by tradesman and politician of that period, and even by remarkable public figures, their worthy action, never deserved approval from their detractors. Camilo Castelo Branco referring to the sadly tragic wreckage of Valeira, on which both took part, wrote in one of his works: his death was “one of the most remarkable revenges of the river Douro”.
But others joined and still reflect the front of their farms in the greenish waters of the river and open their sunny gates to socialize with the friends who visit them.The Douro is indeed a serious thing.
Return to protectionism
As popular wisdom usually says “even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea” and the Douro returns again to the winegrowing dynamism in an effort for renewal. In Ilustração Portuguesa, Vieira da Silva published an article under the title “O Douro da Crise e da Fome”, in 1906, where one recalls the bitter living of those remote times: “When the ravaging invasion of the phylloxera, passing through the lands of the Douro like the Lord’s rage towards the Vergéis of Canãa, reduced all region
into a desolated wasteland, the farmer hoping for better, tried to proceed to the resurrection of the dead vineyard (…). He mortgaged his lands, his existing and forthcoming crops, he asked help to all entities and to all means, from the banker to the usurer, from the tradesman who speculates to the moneylender who bails the pawns. Afterwards, prepared with money, he consumed all in the implements of his furrows, and for a long time there was in this region an immense and indescribable activity never seen before.
From the deep valleys to its most inaccessible mountain ridges, from the easily arable land on which the algae of the Douro accumulated in successive torrents, to the most ungrateful hummus that only by great effort made everything rebirth from the aridness of dead things. Life, with all its powerful and creative energy began to eviscerate itself in new fruits, in a new wealth.
This renewing wave of productive capacity that blew over the entire region was only stopped by the rivalry of the French and the Spanish wines in the foreign markets, still controlled by the English.
In fact, the difficulties of out letting of wines of the market were of exogenous nature.
The horizon darkened again and a new crisis threatened to fall over the Douro.
Experience told us it would reunite efforts from all intervenients of the Demarcated Region in defence of the genuineness of the Douro wines, guaranteed by the Companhia of Pombal, though against the interests of the exporters who were only worried with profit and never primed for the quality of the product.
In this situation it is not surprising that the producers insisted in returning to the protectionism, that is, returning to the “Companhia”.
The most attentive producers were aware that the Port Wine brand, which had gained fame in the world thanks to the English market, was going through a compromising commercial phase: in and out of the country several fakes and forgeries were made, which altered substantially its characteristics.
To the British consumer Port wine “strengthens and makes one happy like nothing else”, expression inspired in the book of Wisdom: “ wine makes a man’s heart happy”.
A known and travelled tradesman of Oporto, Alfredo Meneres, wrote around 1908: «Everywhere generous table-wine are sold as “Port”… There are Portuguese travellers who, when trading in South Africa, bumped into wines labelled as Portuguese, but whose origin is “Californian Port”».
The Douro crisis reached levels of national crisis, not only from the Douro pier, but also
from other parts of the country, thousands of casks were embarked as being of “Port” origin.
There is a genuine insurrection of the “duriense” people, through demonstrations, publications, leaflets, newspaper articles, raising publicly against this as a way of protest.
A well-known deputy, Teixeira de Sousa, published in an opuscule – “A questão do Douro” (The Douro issue) – all the pronounced speeches at the Court, in defence of the wines from the Demarcated Region.
The crisis becomes a national fact that can not be ignored by the political power.
D. Carlos’s Prime Minister, João Franco, takes his responsibilities by publishing legal certificates defending the region, with which one could protect and control the Douro wines’ quality. The Comissão de Viticultura Duriense (The Douro Winegrowing Comission), in representation of the Douro farmers, was face to face with other national institutions, from Lisbon and Oporto, which had greater influence over the Government’s Authority. In spite of João Franco’s good will (revealed with the publication of a set of decrees related to the production, selling, export and control of national wines, through the demarcation of a new area of the generous wines, the resolution of the Douro pier and Leixões harbour’s exclusivity to the Douro wines and the exclusiveness of the brand “Porto” concerning the generous wines of the Douro region), the historical Demarcated Region was still stuck with the lack of a comprehensive legislation. The so-called Comissão da Viticultura do Douro did not manage to prevent the chaos in which the Port wine’s segment had plunged. It was no wonder the farmers were impatient, hoping for better days. Not even the governments of the First Republic were able to answer the contestation that was spreading throughout the region.
The founding of the Casa do Douro (1931)
In the grey set that involves the Douro at the beginnings of the century, the Minister of Culture Antão de Carvalho, one of the strenuous defender of the cause of the Region, who in an effort to match the longings of thousands of duriense producers had the courage to attack the problem at its beginning. Nevertheless, it was necessary to wait for the new regime out of the “Estado Novo” so that the “Paladinos do Douro” saw their longings of returning to the old functions attributed by the Marquis de Pombal to the Companhia Geral da Agricultura das Vinhas do Alto Douro.
The conditions for the founding of the Casa do Douro were settled, event that took place on the 18th November 1931.
Vouching the heroic and persistent boldness of this man from the Douro, a magnificent statue was raised in memory of Antão de Carvalho honourably guarding the marmoreal building, as to remind the forthcoming the founding of such glorious institution.
The Casa do Douro, as institution for the duriense farming, is the congregation of all associates in the neighbouring municipalities and federates throughout the whole region, in a union of wine producers of the Douro region. It took over all the regulating and disciplinary functions in relation to the production and commerce of the Douro wines: with the extinction of the established institutions, the Casa do Douro would take over the control of wine, mainly the authorization of the growing of vineyards, the fettling of minimum prices for acquisition of wine one could “benefit” each year, its distribution by the wine producers, the exclusiveness of brandy, etc. One could say it was asking too much.
According to the opinion of the Conselho Superior de Viticultura, a dependent organ of the state, some attributions were restricted to it to satisfy the ambitions of the exporters of Port wine who always defended freedom of production and of commerce, supported by the Associação Comercial do Porto.
In this way, according to the institution of Casa do Douro, the government responds pleasantly, not as an estate imposition to the social and regional reivindications of farmers. The confrontation with the Associação Comercial do Porto would be inevitable, just as the following years confirmed. Actually, that institution struggled for “the entire independence between production, manufacturing and export of Port wine”; “ the Casa do Douro can not have attributions nor faculties of tradesman”. As a matter of fact, it was in an environment of hostility that the relations between both institutions extended in the history of the Casa do Douro.
In spite of the vicissitudes coming from the history course that affect the institutions, the Casa do Douro was able, for a long period of time, to answer to the challenges of the new times through the conquest of the big international markets of the liquorish wine.
The “Revolução dos Cravos”, whose militaries dared controlling the Casa do Douro and in Gaia threatened with nationalisations, did not oppose to a production never before achieved in the last quarter of the century. With time, things were solved with some changings, pleasing the wine producers and the responsible institutions, increasing the wine production activity of the region, rejoicing the population. In 1997, under governamental decision, the Comissão Interprofissional composed equally by deputies of the Casa do Douro and the Associação dos Exportadores de Vinho do Porto starts acting.
Simultaneously, tourism promotes the First Route of the Port Wine and the Douro is promoted to World Heritage. Two major events, whose effects are being noticed now by the thousands of national and international tourists
who every year go up the waters of the Douro, from the pier of Ribeira (Oporto) to Pocinho, astonished with the landscape scenery.
Premonitory were the words of Sant’Anna Dionísio, in Alto Douro Ignoto: Pascal, mystic and geometer wrote one day: “ The rivers are roads that walk”. Today he would certainly say: “ The rivers are weights that go up”.
Freixo de Numão –
The only co-operative cellar of the Demarcated Region of the Douro whose production is placed in the good reserve, red and white wines, Port and liquorish, besides an excellent olive-oil – CASA GRANDE – derived from an ecological extraction system.
Freixo de Numão Cooperativa
The co-operatives have a major role in the maintenance and continuing of very rich traditions nowadays. Since the Palaeolithic, that this region attracts adventurous people who left the mark of their presence in several archaeological testimonies, which are visible still today. The knowledge of well producing the best olive oils and wines in the world will also remain in history perpetuated through several generations.
The Cooperativa de Freixo de Numão has an area of production of 1.025 hectares where it produces 3.000 casks of Port wine and 3.000 of D.O.C. Douro wine.
“Vingaço” total and smashing. Prolonged fermentation in stainless steel wine vats during 15 days.
The main stocks are:
Turiga Franca 75% – Tinta Roriz 10% – Tinta Barroca 10% – Others 5%
Castelo Velho –Special Reserve
In the higher terraces of the Douro slopes, impregnated with schist, where the thermal amplitude is more variable and the pluviometric falls are above normal, the recommended “noble” stocks (Touriga Nacional, Touriga Franca, Tinta Roriz and Tinta Barroca) made into wine according to classic procedures adapted to the new technologies, are responsible for the famous “nectar” coloured as rubies, with brownish shades, where the secondary and sometimes tertiary aromas give us evidence of a prolonged probation period in bottles and that makes it one of the best DOCs.
Escorna Bois
The vineyards in terraces, in the single granitical stain in the area, together with the flourished almond trees, give a shade of vigour which characterizes this landscape where the savage, the beautiful and the timid associate in an incomparable painting in the Douro Region.
In a lower elevation, though confined to this one, there is the area of Escorna de Bois from where this excellent wine is.
A VQPRD by excellency – Cabeço do Lobo
Cabeço do Lobo is a VQPRD consumption wine of desirable quality typical of the regional, white or red wines originated from the Douro.
Colodreira
The vineyard was introduced in this region in the 1st century A.D. by the Romans who settled here in many places, having as goal the mining, the gold deposits, the garum of fishes of fresh water and the production and commerce of quality wine taking into account the large amount of winepresses and small winepresses made in the rocks, by the large number of dolium where the precious liquid, adored by the Emperors subjects, was stored.
It’s in the place of COLODREIRA that is registered the oldest winepress, composed by a manual squeezer and a small reception sink.
Maybe it was here that the precious nectar, we today name Port wine, was tasted for the first time.
Numantinu – liquorish appetizer wine
NUMANTINU is a liquorish wine produced from the selection of the finest stocks, where Malvasia Rei and Malvasia Fina predominate. This liquorish wine is an appetizer by excellence and it should be tasted before the meals.
Olive oil – Casa Grande
Recognizing the olive oil potential of the region and the increase of value the olive oil production brings to the consumer, the Cooperativa de Freixo Numão has created an olive production section with all the necessary means for the rendered services to its olive oil production members. The recently inaugurated olive press uses the ecological system for olive oil extraction. This Wine and Olive producers co-operative, aware of the evolution needs and demands of the market is conveniently equipped with sophisticated implements that allow typical and authentic products. It ensures the continuing of the tradition but with a higher quality control.
Mesão Frio
The noblest village of Portugal
Finally we are rightfully World Heritage. Such fact honours us, but it makes us responsible to do better now and in the future. We proudly answer for Mesão Frio. Besides and as a dedication tribute, pawn of work and bitterness for not being able to do more and better for Mesão Frio; I would like to, at least, in memory of the past and as testimony of the present, to transmit to the forthcoming the flame of the localism. We want to deservedly continue to be the most Villa village of Portugal. In that quality, as symbol of the natural, the beautiful and the most typical, Mesão Frio will travel the world as World Heritage. As proof of what was stated we invite you to visit us and challenge you to do it as soon as possible. You will never regret it.
The Mayor
Marco António Peres Teixeira da Silva Dr.
IT’S
TIME
TO
SAY,
“MARQUIS, WILL YOU RETURN”?
Text
António Mesquita Montes (Eng.)
Years ago, in gatherings of the Vinegrowing Sector, it was said that the Douro was the first Demarcated Region of the World. But Virgílio Dantas and Mário Fregoni, both outstanding leaders of international institutions of viticulture, got involved in a hard controversy. Mário Fregoni, an Italian professor at the University of Rome, affirmed that the region of “Quianti”, in the north of Italy, should be considered the first Demarcated Region of the World because it was from the time of the Médicis. Both of them dealt with the reasons and deduced from the facts – and nowadays it is accepted by all – that although Quianti was the first winemaking region to be demarcated, the Douro was, without any doubt, the first region, in 1756, to be demarcated and regulated.
In spite of that, the Douro gained, along its history, enormous prestige and respect among the viticulture community due to many other peculiar features, as its distinguished structure and the regulation of the wine products here produced. The regular visits made by the responsible and technicians from other demarcated regions in the World confirm this fact.
The Demarcated Douro Region organisation was always subject for conferences and seminars and it always caught the attention and curiosity of presents from all over the world.
About it, in his Ph. D. Dissertation at the Coimbra University, Vital Moreira says that it is curious to notice that it was precisely with the most autocratic governments – the government of Marquis of Pombal in 1756 and the government of Salazar in 1932 – that the Demarcated Region attained, with the motto “the Douro only wants to be ruled by itself”, professional autonomous administration and self-regulation systems which lasted more than two centuries. These systems were only stopped between 1865 and 1907, period in which the principle of production and trade freedom supplanted the principle of a market administratively controlled that had always existed. This fact was, during that period, another disaster to the Douro, which led to unstoppable crisis. Only João Franco, in 1907, put an end to this with the foundation of the Viticultural Committee for the Douro Region and the return to the administrative self-regulation.
A fact that clearly shows us the importance that the Port Wine already had during that time is that the Douro, a viticultural region with its own organization and regulation, was born less than a year after Lisbon’s earthquake, which happened on 1st November 1755. Although the main government’s worry was the reconstruction of the totally devastated Lisbon downtown and the resolution of serious social problems due to the earthquake, the Marquis was able to pay attention to other matters like the ones which followed the Port Wine serious crisis and led to the decrease of exports, abasement of prices and its external discredit.
It is well known that the institutional way that was followed to establish the Company, in 1756, for the purpose of the demarcation of the Region and the controlled production and trade didn’t come, according to Vital Moreira, from the Marquis. Beleza de Andrade was its impeller and Father Mansilha, another ideologist for the Region, was the Kingdom’s authorized representative, who helped to take such decision.
The Companhia was largely able to control the Region and its wines. It also had a private judge with exclusive civil or penal right, which was never seen at any whine-growing region before. Nowadays, who visits the Casa da Companhia, here at Peso da Régua, finds the Sala do Tribunal, a courtroom where the lawbreakers were judged.
On the walls of the Port Wine Institute atrium we can find evidence of the Douro Region capacity of organization, which is stated through several allusions. The first one represents the Marquis of Pombal and the foundation of the Companhia Geral da Agricultura das Vinhas do Alto Douro, in 1756; the second painting, recalls João Franco, represents the region in 1907, the Port designation guarantee and the foundation of the Viticultural Committee for the Douro Region; another one illustrates Alves Pedrosa, who established the Entreposto de Gaia; lastly, there’s also an allusion to Sebastião Ramires, who founded the Casa do Douro, the Port Wine Shippers Guild and the Port Wine Institute, in 1932.
Vital Moreira says that “all those dates have two elements in common: the principle
recognition of the Port Wine official regulation and the acknowledgement of self-regulation capability through attribution of public competence to local professional organisations, mostly to winegrowing institutions”.
In a convenient footnote he adds: “the mentioned iconography is a hymn to the regulative principle with ostensive omission of the non regulative measures and of the statesmen responsible for the measures: Silva Carvalho in 1834 and Fontes Pereira in 1865.”
Although the regulative principle that exists in the Douro for so many years may seem inadequate, it’s just a winegrower’s claim. Already back in 1932 Camilo Bernardes said, emphatically: “the Douro winemakers don’t want a free production, but a controlled one. Because of that, they have enough moral authority to demand the trade control of their noble product”. And so initiated the must contingency to benefit in each grape harvest, the benefit distribution based on the vineyards register in order to regulate production and the Law of the Terço on the exporters’ activity which allowed only to export a third of the whole stock they have at their disposal.
In 1983 the negotiation for the admittance of Portugal in the European Community began. The study of the consequences due to the application of the European Regulation to the several departments of Portuguese Economy started and the Port Wine was, with no doubt, one of the hardest departments. After endless meetings of the Portuguese delegation with the Brussels “technocrats”, we always ended concluding that it was impossible to apply lineally to the Douro and Port Wine the Community’s regulation because this Region has countless specificities.
But, after all, due to its prestige and deserved respect, the Douro won and convinced. Brussels acknowledged the Douro’s characteristics and the Community was forced to include an endless series of derogations in its Regulations, an achievement that no other demarcated region was able to make so far. Even the French demarcated region “Vin Doux Naturel” is only capable to aspirate to make it.
Thanks to the derogations we managed to obtain: a controlled generous must production; its distribution according to a specific register; more than one denomination of origin in the same plot of land; in order to have denomination of origin, must need to have, at least, 11% of alcohol volume; a recognized Warehouse out of the region where wine can be stored; bottling process obligatorily done in the Region or Warehouse; Law of the Terço continuity; a recognized Agency to control the wine production and another one to sell it.
But… and there is always a but, we were always told that all of this would go on while all operators got along and the reasons that justified such derogations were not depreciated.
Let’s take a look around and do the “contrition act”.
Do we, Douro winegrowers, have a clear conscience in presence of a new analysis of those derogations?
The Governments, only with the intention to innovate, “clumsy” promoted the latest institutional alteration to the Region, without taking into consideration its traditions. Aren’t Governments disturbed with the fact that they replaced an institution with decades for another one that will last not even a single decade?
It is vital to stop to think. The forthcoming season, done the harvest, is favourable to meditation… and there’s no time to lose in order to take decisions.
We need to put our hand to the means the law already confirms. But the 1932 motto “the Douro just wants to be ruled by itself” can’t be forgotten.
António Mesquita Montes, (Eng.)
Peso da Régua, October 2002
Camilo de Araújo Correia
The end of the
grape harvest
The story that I’m going to tell you happened about forty years ago. It will seem to you, as it seems to me, that it happened a long, long time ago.
I felt extremely happy when I was invited to stay some days at Quinta da Torre Velha, a large Quinta (farm house and property), away from everything, marked by a large river bend.
It took three hours by train and one more mounted on a horse across an enormous olive grove to arrive there. Those three hours in the carriage would be a torture. In those calm days, journeys were so entertaining that today I remind them for comfort. People felt the train as being a union track. They spoke about everything carelessly and tried everyone else’s lunch normally. Sometimes, sounding out of tune, some gentlemen were totally immersed in the newspaper or in the landscape, sitting next to a lady similar to a puppet. The railway stations looked like an oasis in the waste land next to a river that was violent like a wild horse. As soon as the train stopped, people were in a rush with their goods, till a Leaviii… nggg… It goes to Barca!” was heard. The train left covered with smoke clouds and last moment advices that were shout and gesticulated.
An avenue of leafy plane trees came to receive us at the Quinta da Torre Velha majestic gate. On the left a graceful chapel marked the silence of those far lands. But soon we were attacked by noises coming from a full chicken house. Dogs attentive barking to intrusions caused those noises. People ran to their doors in order to happily receive our joy of arriving.
At that time the administrator of the Quinta was Mr. Bastos. He had been the administrator for many years and he would be it for many more.
Throughout my entire life I never met anyone like Mr. Bastos. Behind round yellow metal glasses were his myopic eyes attentive to all that happened and his cold mouth was capable of laughing at the most unexpected humour moments. He was as naturally kind as he was authoritarian. His personal honesty and discipline, which he imposed on himself and on the ones who depended on him, were his weapons in the thorny management of that quinta located in the Douro’s extreme.
Entering the graceful office, which was also the Post Office, was enough to evaluate Mr. Bastos’s economical and methodical temperament. Pencils and tiny eraser pieces so small that were hard to pick; old newspapers and papers from the most various provenances waited, piled up, new uses; cans and small ones, bottles and small ones kept everything essential to run an office in those times. Everything was always, always in its place. Sitting at his desk or walking around all day, at a snail’s pace, Mr. Bastos spent most of his time at the office. The foremen came at the wicket gate asking questions or orders, all of this after a loud “May I come in, Mr. Bastos?” Mr. Bastos answered them even if he was completely from behind. Impassive, Mr. Bastos.
Along the year the Quinta da Torre Velha offered a job to many people. To many and all kind of people. There appeared migrant workers from God knows where and running away from God knows what… But most of them asked the mediators, or directly by writing to Mr. Bastos, for a job. Those letters were incredible, from the handwriting till the spelling, without having any kind of syntax. I remember one of them: “mista bastos we ah ‘ere to ask you to werk at the greipe ‘arvest and akcept us to karry the bascets, tis me sebastiao and me cusin madeu.” Mr. Bastos understood everything perfectly and answered them when needed. “You may come. Bastos.” Only.
On payday, late afternoon, the square in front of the office was lively. Men smoked, sullen, cigarettes of “Holandês” tobacco and “Toro” cigarette paper. The women talked loudly about old subjects or chewed dark bread crusts.
The payment continued invariably like this:
– Tomaz!
– Ready, Mr. Bastos!
– Here is your money. So many days paid so much… This much. Less the allowance (bread, tobacco, brandy)…This much. Count it…
After some seconds of mental verification they answered:
– It’s correct, Mr. Bastos. With your permission.
In that grape harvest the payment routine was broken like this:
– Paulino!
– Ready, Mr. Bastos!
– Here is your money. So many days paid so much… This much. Less the allowance… this much. Count it…
– Mr. Bastos, you gave me five escudos less.
– I did not. Those five escudos are for that fart in the supervisor’s face when you were tightening the press. Get lost.
And Paulino left without making a remark and promised, maybe, not to make the same mistake again.
In Histórias na palma da mão
THE DOURO,
A JOURNEY OF SECRETS
Institute for the Navigability of the Douro
A message
The Douro’s inscription on the List of World Heritage Properties increased the fame of the winegrowing region and the Douro’s entire basin.
Tourism was the most benefited activity. This area’s development leads to the growth of many other activities as wine production, craftwork, gastronomy, hotel business, etc.
It is in the area of tourism, more specifically river tourism, that the Institute for the Navigability of the Douro develops its activity, promoting and stimulating the navigation of the Douro’s navigable way.
This way includes the navigation channel areas, the five damns, the quays, the levelled ground, port areas and its accesses, from the sea to river Agueda’s mouth.
The tourist river navigation can be made all along the Douro’s navigable way (210 Km). Excellent results were obtained in this area due to the Douro’s exceptional landscape, environment preservation and the existence of the largest damns of the world. This river, navigable all year long, links two world heritage cities – Oporto and Salamanca.
The IND, with the local governments, is providing the River Douro with the needed infrastructures in order to provide an easier and safer navigation – quays with leisure structures to the population, fluvinas and platforms to assist leisure and sport activities, VHF communications, night lighting, etc.
In spite of the awkwardness resulting of the pier incertitude, commercial navigation (essentially granites) constitutes an important value to the inland by creating jobs in difficult areas.
The presentation of this award to the Douro brings advantages but also responsibilities. It’s necessary to correct urbanistic errors and to eliminate garbage heap and waste dumps, which constitute real landscape aggressions.
All the IND activity has environmental concerns in order to improve the population’s living conditions and preserve the heritage and ecological balance. Only this way a sustained growth of the region can be achieved.
Institute for the Navigability of the Douro
The Director – Adriana Granate Costa (Dr).
SUBVIDOURO, C.R.L.
Centre of Use of Winegrowing By-Products of the Demarcated Douro Region
An Essential Company for the Country
Strategic For the Demarcated Douro Region
Vital For the Production and Merit of the Generous Table Wine
Head-Office
Telefax
Factory
Telephone
Technical Services
UNESCO’s decision to distinguish the Douro, a winegrowing Region, with the award of “WORLD CULTURAL HERITAGE” is perhaps the biggest and most significant economic and cultural promotion ever made on a world scale. Its consequences have been very obvious on tourism.
However, internally, it seems that the initial euphoria of many people is now giving way to a certain disappointment, indecision, hesitation and confusion, attitudes of those who are no longer fully aware of their obligations, even if tacitly accepted. There is no idea of what plans, projects and actions the local authorities, regional Associations and usual investors have, capable of, on a short term basis, leading to a necessary and so wanted economic, cultural and social development, a natural consequence of the UNESCO’s award. Living examples of what we have affirmed are the countless garbage heaps and dumps that proliferate along our main national roads, the hill and forests that were burnt in last summer forest fires and so much disrespect to the landscape and environment of the region.
SUBVIDOURO – Centre of Use of Vineyard and Wine By-Products – is, at present, a Company specialised and equipped to transform the residues of the viticultural economy into valuable products and will cooperate dynamically towards bettering the environment and increasing the economic and social development of the Region. This change will become an essential aspect of good winemaking practices, specially in what concerns to the essential reduction of solid waste and its negative consequences, the significant import reduction of additives as, for example, tartaric acid and cream of tartar (potassium bitartrate).
In a near past we were seen as being a black and negative point in the Douro landscape. Now, the project of modernization and enlargement in course is almost concluded with the support of the P.O.E.’s SIME plan, in the ambit of the III QCA, in which, in 2003, resurfacing, adjustment and forestation work will be carried out, complemented with the measurement, control and supervision of smoke and gas emission to the atmosphere. Thanks to this project we are able to take, before the people of the Douro, the commitment to become, in a short term, a Company that protects the environment and is completely integrated into the Douro’s beautiful landscape. We will also give impetus to the economic development, not only for the developed entrepreneurial activity, but mainly for the jobs we are creating.
We produce, prefer, promote and defend the regional products!
We will fight for the Alto Douro World Heritage but, before anything else, for a Douro to the durienses and a land where they feel well and are able to enjoy life!
SUBVIDOURO
By the Administration
The President,
Aníbal Augusto dos Santos Ferreira (Dr.)
Douro, a convergence of desires
Telephone
The Interprofessional
The Demarked Region of Douro has, nowadays, three organisms that protect their source denomination. The Interprofissional Comisson, the Casa do Douro and the Instituto do Vinho do Porto (Port Wine Institute). These last two were created in 1932 and 1933, respectively. The Interprofissional Comisson of The Demarked Region of Douro was created in 1995.
The ancestral aspiration of the Region is to regulate itself, in order to make its voice heard, giving shape, close the Government’s decision centre, to the resolution of its anxieties and apprehensions. This desideratum went promptly into collision, not only with the autism of the central power, with different purposes of the regionals, but also with the obstacles that sometimes cannot be transposed from the opposition of interests between the Farmers (Production) and the Merchants (Commerce).
It was this question and, mostly, its sharpness which created the bigger difficulties to the statements of the self regulation: it was this question which let the central power, which took advantage of it, to carry out its objectives of supremacy upon the region, which always sustained, unfortunately until now, with indexes of income per capita and other indicatives of development much beneath the national average, only and just because the income engendered is seldom reinvested in the region.
All this comes in reference to projected and already most commented Institutional Reformation of the Demarked Region of Douro. Basically it is about the fuse in a single Organism the three existent, raising a new Organism and letting the Casa do Douro dashed to the role of the Farmer’s Association.
It’s in this question of the creation of a new Organism that the Durienses and the professions must be attentive, because what is in stake is conclusive for the future of the Region. It has to do first with the fact the new Organism is really new; secondly, with the grade of conflict which exists at the moment of the Reformation between professions; third, with the type of Interprofessionalism that the new Organism is going to shelter. And the factors aren’t autonomous from each other.
Let’s see the first: either the new Organism truly assumes itself as new, taking advantage of the previous what works well but integrating in a dynamic and enterprising model, or the new Organism restrains itself in accumulating functions and competences which belonged to others, keeping their routines, their warmth, their little niches of power, their inadequacies.
On the other hand, either the new Organism assumes itself essentially interprofessional , with the pacification of the conflict between the professions, where the state only has a suppletive role and with a tendency to disappear, or it assumes itself essentially pertaining to the state, which will happen if the conflict between the professions functions as the certification, superintendence and even patrimonial management is subjugated to the State criterion.
The democratic period we are living in advises, I would say, it imposes a new Organism essentially interprofessional with the progressive extinguishment of the State’s role and with a real administrative and financial autonomy which does not set obstacles to a competent, free and responsible management.
There will be someone who thinks that the essentially governmental model serves better the Douro and the Durienses and, for that, lets foment the misunderstanding between the professions or discredit the Interprofessional.
With that model all the evolution and progress that the Region has recently been conquered would be compromised.
As some said, the State is not impartial and the most powerful are always those who are closer to the State and to the way of influencing it.
In a Region which has about 40.000 winegrowers and, from those approximately 31.000 are cultivating patches of vine plantation inferior to a hectare, it’s essential to the State that a interprofessional model essentially for the new Organism, acting in a pacifier and conciliatory way, the only way to achieve autonomy and independence in the deliberations of the Port Wine and Douro’s sector, helping with that, solidifying the development and the social tranquillity.
So, it’s absolutely necessary, to preserve the interests of all Durienses, with special meaning for those who have less, that the Institutional Reformation in course may be a definite consecration of the Interprofessional model.
Luciano Vilhena Pereira
Peso da Régua, October 12, 2002
In Régua In
in service for Douro
visitors of the IPRAL
demarked Region of Investments & Projects
buy and sell of all kind
of rustic and urban properties
in the Demarked Region.
Headquarters
in the city of Oporto
and
Filial
The Douro in the city of Peso da Régua
with high quality, refined /AV Ovar /
luxury and excellent CC BARRETOS
comfort.
HOTEL RÉGUA
UP RIVER
Let me go,
up the river
against the stream
that man dared to rule.
River-serpent – that charmed me.
which I would like to sing.
Blue river of green and red wines
(tears and men’s sweat –
God’s Blood ).
River of hopes.
River of fragrances, of nectars,
of memories, of nostalgy,
of dreams,
of sadness and joy.
Mirror of the sky.
Let me go,
up the river
delight the senses
in the Dionysian gardens
of tacked with olive-trees,
Listen to the silence
in the flight of the kites.
In the scream of the herons
which snipe the air,
it seems I can hear,
and I can’t forget
the formerly screams,
from another navigate,
in pair handles
of longing memory.
It’s necessary to go,
up the river,
to love the sweat and the blood
which wrote such poem.
Polychromic epic poem
of a people, which between cries, laughs
and tiredness,
the pain and despair,
with the strength of its harms,
created life
which sprouts from schist,
In rosaries of wine-stocks,
in the touched communion
of the daily bread.
Let me go,
up the river.
Impels me the desire and the dream,
in search of the douríades
to inspire me,
in the fertility of the soil,
in the spume of the waters,
in the fragrance of the musts,
In the sweat of the body remains
of dreams and fantasy,
and tired in the humbleness
of rising this altar
of God,
wonder of the world,
patrimony of mankind.
Prayer
I raise this wine glass
in prayer of mercy.
Blessed the people.
Blessed the soil.
Blessed God.
Blessed the people
that, from the blood and sweat,
made this nectar
and placed the sun
in this glass.
Blessed the soil,
schistose and warm,
which sprouted
this mystery:
this wine.
Blessed God
who gave us this grace
of living here
and can taste it.
The History of the Douro Rail
In December 1887 the first train arrived at Barca D`Alva. It was then concluded the Douro rail, a work of huge importance, only comparable to the demolition of the “Cachão da Valeira”, which turned the river Douro navigable till the Spanish border. It meant a huge investment for the country, not only for the innumerable works, from bridges to important tunnels and viaducts, which were necessary to build this railway, as also by the big sacrifice of work and human lives implied by the construction. As a result of that sacrifice, this track brought the development to the Alto Douro and later, with the narrow tracks, to Trás-os-Montes Region.
Station of São Bento
Although trains to Douro leave from São Bento, the Douro rail only starts in Ermesinde. The Station of São Bento, one of the most beautiful buildings and one of the main monuments of Oporto City, was built in the place where the Avé Maria’s Convent used to be. Built up in granite, the entrance hall is its “ex-libris”, because it is filled with wealthy tiles panels, where the main landmarks of the Portuguese history are illustrated. With eight rails, which immerse in a long tunnel up to Fontaínhas, this station is the starting place for many destinations, from which the Douro still stands out.
The branch line Ermesinde – Penafiel was the first to be inaugurated. The Cerimony of Inauguration took place in the 30th July, 1875 and was honoured by His Excellency the Counsellor Andrade Corvo, minister of the Foreign Affairs who, on that day, was representing the Minister of Public Works, because he was indisposed.
Station of Amarante
Still in the same year, in the 20th December, the Douro rail arrived Caíde, running into a big obstacle, the Tapada de D. Luíz, which was only overcomed with the construction of the first standard work of the rail, the tunnel of Caíde with 1086 metres of extension. It was then, in September 15, 1878 that the trains could reach Juncal, going through Vila Meã, Livração and Marco de Canaveses,
The Livração station, also known as Caldas de Canaveses would later become
the starting point of the Tâmega rail which, after crossing Amarante and visiting Celorico de Basto, reached Arco de Baúlhe. The outline of this rail develops on the right bank of the river Tâmega, escorted with a marvellous landscape of the Marão and Alvão mountains and of Senhora da Graça, when crossing Mondim de Basto. However, it’s an extraordinarily sinuous outline, with curves and counter-curves of a very reduced ray. It’s said this happened due to the difference between the constructors’ languages, who were English and of the Portuguese workers. When the last asked which way should the course go, the Englishmen who didn’t understand, simply said, “Yes, Yes!” – and so the Portuguese workers concluded: -“Ah! Another “s”!”.
At the present, this rail is only opened until Amarante, being used several times a day by a small railbus Nohab, which still carries passengers.
Railbus NOHAB
– Tâmega rail
At Juncal another problem appeared in the construction of the rail. However, the persistence and the strength of will of the workers cut the biggest tunnel of this railway: the tunnel of Juncal, the second biggest of Portugal, with 1621 metres of length and all covered inside in squared stone. Is said that the Gallician jobber who cut it through wanted to receive the money quickly, before the tunnel entrance could crumble down, however it is still safe and stable today.
On July 15, 1879 the first train to the small town of Régua arrived. On that summer day, a triumphantly whistling train appeared in Salgueiral, filling this small village with joy.
This event was shared in all the duriense region, because at that time Régua was already the heart of this region.
The Town-halls were full of ornaments to receive the banquet and the ball. The streets were ornamented with flags and green leaves. At the ceremony three Ministers were present: Saraiva de Carvalho – Public Works; Adriano Machado – Justice and João Crisóstomo de Abreu – War. It was no longer necessary to cross the old and tortuous Pombalina road through Alto de Quintela, in the slow and inconvenient diligences.
The section of rail between Juncal and Régua meets the right bank of the Douro river shortly before arriving at Mosteirô and after a long going down from the way out of the tunnel from Juncal. As the train goes through Pala, the place where there is one of the biggest viaduct of the rail, with 195 metres of extension, our sight gets dazzled with the splendour of the river and hills sowed with houses, pine-trees and orange-trees. From this point on, this magnificent “golden river”, joins the rail, exchanging of bank in Ferradosa. A few kilometres after Mosteirô we arrive at Caldas de Aregos, also known as “Tormes” which the distinguished writer Eça de Queirós immortalized in his novel “A Cidade e as Serras”. After the tunnel of Porto de Rei, upon which an enormous plantation of cork-trees ornamented with small polished stones of granite extends and of another tunnel rebuked in stone, the train overcomes a defile between high hills which revolve the, till then, calm waters of the Douro
in a strong foaming force: it’s the Ponto da Murta. At the stone slope of the opposite bank, we can find an image which represents Nossa Senhora da Boa Viagem, to whom the ancient and brave sailors, who climbed up the river, asked for protection in the most critical areas and more difficult to overcome. Since the construction of the dams, the waters of the river travel through this valley in a wonderful peacefulness and passivity.
City of Régua
From Barqueiros the landscape grows lively. The first charming vine plantations are sighted; we arrive at the Wine-growing Country”.
After crossing Caldas de Moledo comes Régua, small town in the past. The first houses, which were softly blown by the steam of the engines belong to the place of Godim.
Suddenly, after a long tunnel torn in a slope with many houses and buildings, we enter the magnificent Station of Régua, place of departure and arrival of visitors and merchandise, among them the famous generous wine which goes towards Vila Nova de Gaia.
From the Station of Régua the train leaves to Chaves by the Corgo rail, which was concluded in August 28th , 1921. This railway of remarkable beauty, starts the slope to Vila Real in the confluence of the Corgo with the Douro, on the left slope through a very sinuous course, with curves of very reduced ray and a very accentuated pendent in the metric standard measure. The Corgo Valley appears, at a certain time, as a double sinuous and deep precipice. Planted terraces of vine-plantations cut out the slopes of this valley. In the winter, next to the vintage, the slopes change, standing coloured in golden and reddish shades.
Nowadays, trains only go to Vila Real, because the remaining part of the track until Chaves was closed.
Station of Vila Real
The most beautiful part of the journey starts upwards Régua, among crags and terraces cultivated with large vineyard and full of quintas, always keeping up the river that gives name to this rail. On April 21st , 1880 the rail reached Ferrão and some months later, on July 1st , the arrival of the trains to Pinhão was celebrated.
After passing through the bridge over the Corgo river, we immerge in an ocean of large vineyards cultivated in the steep slopes
which go aside the river. Here and there the houses and wine-cellars of the quintas appear. After the tunnel of Pedra Caldeira and the Ribeira of Temilobos in the opposite bank , we see Covelinhas and Folgosa do Douro. During the stopping-place of the train in Covelinhas we can admire the Quinta dos Frades, nicknamed for having belonged to the Cistercian Monastery of Santa Maria de Salzedas.
Proceeding the journey and after going through the little wayside-station of Gouvinhas, the train arrives Ferrão. On this brief stop we can appreciate the Quinta of São Luíz and the small chapel of Nossa Senhora do Castro, which patiently blesses all that pass by. Curva da Cachucha, Chanceleiros … Pinhão.
The small town of Pinhão is the heart of the “wine-growing country” and it owes its development to the train. Placed under the confluence of the river Douro with the river Pinhão, it has the Railway Station as main building.
Ornamented with gorgeous panels of tiles which describe the production of the Port Wine in its different stages, as well as some of the most remarkable landscapes of the region, the station is an obligatory stopping-place for all those who visit the region.
Station of Pinhão
Continuing the march, we go up river on a seducing landscape of slopes in terraces cultivated with large vineyards, decorated with olive-trees and almond-trees.
The farewell of Pinhão is done having at sight the Quinta das Carvalhas. Then, the train crosses the Bridge of Roncão, riverside that names the existing Quinta. Cotas, Castedo, Quinta de Roriz, Quinta de Malvedos and at distance the small village of Foz-Tua.
Past the bridge of river Tua, we can see the magistral beginning of the Tua rail, we enter in a “ravine” of small houses and here, suddenly, the train delays smoothly its march until it stops. That’s the Station of Tua, inaugurated on September 1st, 1883. From this point the road to Carrazeda de Ansiães and Vila Flor, and the railway of Tua to Mirandela and Bragança begins.
Ripped on the left bank of the river Tua, the Tua rail is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful in the world, carved in the slopes by dynamite, disappearing inside tunnels which still show the laceration on the rock done by explosives, transposing precipices, slipping out along the frightful trenches, never driving away off the river which carries the water in a touching closeness, either with a crystalline serenity of a lagoon, or loaded with strength cascading in the plentiful pavement. The rail was inaugurated in the year of 1887 until Mirandela and in the year of 1906 until Bragança, and went diagonally through all the province of Trás-os-Montes, also serving Romeu, Macedo de Cavaleiros, among other places. Since 1990 the train only goes up to Mirandela.
Tua rail
Abreiro
Now, we continue towards Pocinho. This section of a rail was inaugurated in the Winter of 1887, more precisely on the 10th January, and it is indeed the most impressive and remarkable from the engineering point of view. It includes several relief works of art, such as “The tunnel of Valeira” with its 712 metres of extension – due to the construction of the “Dam of Valeria” suffered a small increase – the “Tunnel of Saião” with 752 metres of extension and the old “Bridge of Ferradosa” 377 metres length, on which the train changed bank and which was replaced by a new one in 1980 with the same result and with 277 metres of extension, also due to the construction of the referred dam.
River Tua
As we reach the bridge of Ribalonga we penetrate a rustic landscape, loaded with granite scarps with stones, which keep balanced in a constant affront. From this stage till Ferradosa, the rail was built in a narrow gap in the terrible scarps, at the cost of many explosives. The train, on its slow march challenges respectfully these stones of hostile and threatening posture, as if they bordered one by one without touching them.
At the entrance of this gullet and from above, Nossa Senhora de Lurdes watches and protects all who venture themselves up the river, while on the other extreme, São Salvador do Mundo waits patiently for the gratitude prayers of all who dared to challenge this impressive gullet.
After brief minutes of journey we arrive to Alegria. Ahead of us the beautiful Quinta do Castelinho. Soon after we immersed in the creepy darkness of the tunnel of Valeira, being suddenly overthrown with the unique beauty which invades our view, as if it hypnotized us, that’s the Cachão da Valeira! Spot of the river where there used to be a big waterfall, which represented a huge obstacle to the navigation and later demolished by the Queen D. Maria I. Even after its destruction, this spot was still one of the most dangerous of the river, the waters filled up with strength and rushed into a rapid where the Baron of Forrester lost his life. With the construction of the Dam of Valeira the waters of the river became mirrorlike and calm. According to the Viscount of Vila Maior, the fertile soils of the Valley of Vilariça owe their existence to this ancient flood-gate.
Walking up river, we reach Ferradosa. Here the train changes bank, crossing the bridge with the same name, reaching Vargelas, the place of the Quintas de Vargelas e dos Canais, and the Station of Vesúvio. Here stands one of the best known Quintas of the Douro – the Quinta do Vesúvio.
In the opposite bank, we can see the small chapel of Senhora da Ribeira which gives name to the Quinta and the small village that exist there. Viaduct of Murça and then we reach Freixo de Numão. Some tunnels after, among which the cited tunnel Saião and passing the Meão hill, we reach the small place of Pocinho.
Landscape of
the branch Tua –
Pocinho
From the Station of Pocinho starts the Sabor rail with destination to Duas Igrejas, a small town 7 km from the distant Trás-os Montes city of Miranda do Douro. Completely inaugurated in 1938, the rail initiates a long climb until Torre de Moncorvo, in which the vast and fertile Valley of Vilariça and the Mouth of the River Sabor can be admired, then crossing the Miranda Upland, passing through Carviçais, Freixo de Espada à
Cinta and Mogadouro, heading to Duas Igrejas. Since January 5th, 1989 no other train crossed this railway.
In May 5th, 1887 the train reached Côa and in December 9th finally reached Barca D`Alva, thus concluding the Douro rail, the most beautiful and the shortest connection of Portugal to Europe by railway. The branch of Pocinho – Barca D’Alva was built without resorting to big works, having three bridges and two tunnels worth referring. That’s one of the best outlined areas of rail, if not the best, always set on the left bank of the river Douro to the Spanish border. These 28 km are of a rare beauty and maybe the most beautiful of all the Portuguese network of railways.
Bridge of
Castelo Maior
Station of
Almendra
Proceeding upstream the Douro rail winds through the dark-grey schistous slopes and acrosss an arid and deserted landscape to Côa, where the river with the same name drains. Before the Treaty of Alcanices, negotiated by D. Dinis in 1297, it was the dividing line between the Portuguese and the Spanish kingdoms.
Continuing in-between olive-trees and almond-trees plantations and passing the small tunnel of Parissas, transposing a scaring scarp, then it appears the wayside-station of Castelo Melhor. Moving on in the middle of a rough parched relief some pigeon-houses lost in time strike the eye. We reach Almendra, which is set at the foot of the Hill of São Cibrão. Manuel Monteiro, in his book “Douro” immortalized the arrival at Almendra in this way: “then, the train delays the march progressively until everything rests calmly, as if, hurt in its propeller energy, this would disappear gradually: that’s the Station of Almendra, small and hidden under the lean shadow of the long and thin trees which draw up the line as protective sentinels. No movement, no stir so that the passengers can listen better to the water’s rumble!”
Leaving Almendra the train penetrates into the tenebrous scarp continuing to Barca D’Alva passing through the Quinta da Canoeira e do Silho. At the arrival at Barca, the valley opens itself, showing impressive reliefs that embrace a river, now calm and soft, as if it was resting from the rocky travel from the Miranda’s cliffs until the mouth of Águeda in Barca D’Alva. On the opposite slope the Quinta da Batoca rests, a production of the poet Guerra Junqueiro, followed by the Quinta das Barreiras and the Quinta da Barca.
Landscape of the
branch Pocinho /
Barca D’Alva
Barca D’Alva, small town that develops around an old customhouse, is the simplest and most beautiful border of Portugal. At the arrival of each international train, a group of curious people and travellers gathered round. Since October 19th, 1988 the train stopped whistling on these 28 km of superb landscape, having the pens of bureaucracy signed a future of desertion and the forgetfulness for Barca D’Alva.
Station of
Barca D’Alva
Station of
La Fregeneda
At the same day the first composition arrived at Barca D’Alva by the Douro rail, it also arrived the first locomotive from Spain with a composition deriving from Salamanca. The Spanish locomotive bordered upon the Portuguese locomotive over the international bridge over the river Águeda, both moving backwards to the Station of Barca D’Alva. It was inaugurated this international connection. Built with Portuguese money this branch rail is an engineering masterpiece and one of the most important public works of the final of the 19th century. Stripped at the cliffs of the slopes of the river Águeda has for a start a drop of 327 metres, appealing to 20 tunnels, 13 bridges and a maximum pendent of 21 mmm/m. With a difficult outline, the rail strolls about slowly by the rocky chain of mountain slops offering one of the most beautiful railway mountain tracks, filled with glimpses of rare beauty and of an impressive austerity.
The branch rail
of Fregeneda
La Fuente de
San Esteban
After a long tunnel, the train enters the station of La Fregeneda. From here it follows to Boadilla / La Fuente de San Esteban, where it converges with the connection to the Beira Alta rail and from where leaves towards Salamanca.
Some time ago it used to exist a railbus which made the connection Oporto – Salamanca following to Madrid at the weekends. However this rail began to be abandoned and forgotten in such a way that in the last years only a small “Ferrobus” travelled over the rail, which nickname was “andorinha” (swallow), which daily established the connection from Salamanca to Barca D’Alva. Since January 1st, 1985 no train has ever travelled on this course.
Ferrobus in
the Station of
La Fregeneda
It took 12 years to conclude this big work of Portuguese Engineering. A work of vital importance for the Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro region. However, from the start this railway had to fight for its survival, namely in these last years, since it has been continuously abandoned and condemned to a slow death, not being far from its closing, Régua upwards, but as hard they try it will always be there with its identity and its vitality of big work, patiently waiting fate replaces the truth in its place and the trains again in Barca D’Alva.
Epilogue
The construction of the Douro rail represented a huge sacrifice for the period in which it was built, not only financial but also human. Besides being the shortest and most direct railway connection from Portugal to Europe it’s considered as a complementary connection by the International Union of the Railways – U.I.C., and in other times it used to connect Oporto to Salamanca and to Madrid.
Forgotten through the time by politicians, it still is the most beautiful of all Portuguese railroad networks. All those who travel in it see their sight fulfilled by the unforgettable landscapes, and of unlimited beauty from the valley of the Douro, while its soul is travelled over by a candid peace from long ago. The singing of the tracks striking the junctions makes us stop in time, making this journey a unique one and filled with nostalgia.
The future of this rail belongs to God, since the application of the Region of the Douro to World Heritage can and must represent its revitalization. But while that doesn’t happen, the hope of listening again to the whistling of the trains tearing the silence of Barca D’Alva upon its departure to Salamanca is kept alive …
ALIJÓ
CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETY CELLAR
Here,
from the finest grapes
and
lineage of the region
the white
and
the Muscatel wine
of Excellence in the World is done
CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETY CELLAR OF ALIJÓ, C.R.L.
Avª 25 de Abril, nº 15
5070 – 011 Alijó
WINES THAT ARE WORTH GOLD
– Diversity – Quality – Prestige –
The Co-operative Society Cellar of Alijó, was created in the year of 1958 and had its first labouring in the vintage of 1960.
It’s located in the Demarcated Region of the Douro, in the Zone of Cima Corgo and its Social Area includes 8 freguesias of the Municipality of Alijó, which spreads out from the rivers Douro, Tua and Tinhela to the most important upland of Alijó.
It’s one of the most important Co-operative Societies of the Duriense Region not only for its storage capacity (the biggest unit of Douro, with about 25.000 casks ), the number of Members (867), the annual labouring ( 5.500.000 litres approximately ) as by the diversity and characteristics of the wines produced.
It produces PORT WINES, DOC–DOURO (Denomination of Controlled Origin), RESERVES, SPARKLING WINES AND MUSCATEL WINES.
It’s worth to distinguish the good quality of the Port Wines and of the Red wines – RESERVES – which have reached countless prizes and medals in many International Competitions.
But the production area where the vine plantations of the biggest altitude allow to acquire white wines of excellent quality, with distinction for the SPARKLING WINES and for the MUSCATEL WINES.
It was the first Cellar of the Country producing SPARKLING WINES
(Charmat method) which are very appreciated and esteemed, detaching VALE D`ANAIAS and FRAGRÂNCIA.
It’s quality is acknowledged by the growing demand of the SPARKLING WINES and also by the prizes achieved in Competitions: 1 Excellence Prize, 2 Silver Medals, 1 second Prize and 2 Bronze Medals.
As for MUSCATEL WINE, it proceeds from the Gallician Muscatel lineage, which founds a perfect natural habitat in the Upland of Alijó.
(Union of soils and climate which allows the production of excellent quality grapes and consequently, the vinification of these Fortified Wines, organoleptically sweets, aromatic, golden, with unique,unmatched characteristics).
THE MUSCATELS OF ALIJÓ are already considered the Best of the World.
In 1984 they won the Champion Medal in Ljubiana – ( Ex-Jugoslavia ), being until now, the biggest award of always of the Portugal Wines.
In 2001, in the 1ST INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION OF THE BEST MUSCATELS OF THE WORLD, which took place in Languedoc – ROUSSILLON – FRANCE, they won a Golden Medal – the only one in Portugal – and a Silver Medal.
At the 2nd COMPETITION, which took place in 2002 also in France, they won again A GOLD MEDAL, a SILVER MEDAL and one BRONZE MEDAL, giving prestige once again to the Portuguese Wines.
To this day, the Muscatel Wines, apart from the premiums referred above, achieved even more: 1 EXCELLENCE PREMIUM, 20 GOLD MEDALS, 18 SILVER MEDALS, 4 BRONZE MEDALS and 2 DOC TROPHIES.
The quality of the WINES OF ALIJÓ is well proved in the 139 Medals gained in the International Competitions, being the Portuguese Company in the Section with the most awarded wines.
Alijó, 7/11/2002 President – José Ribeiro (Eng.)
70
YEARS
CELEBRATION
In favour of the viticulturers and
wines of the Demarcated Region of the Douro.
November 19th, 2002
CASA DO DOURO
Since 1932
Port Wine
Demarcated Region of the Douro
Text
Daniel Bastos (Prof.)
Bottle from the Plane Journey
Historical description
Those who care to research and study the remarkable facts of the socio-economic history from the duriense region will easily notice that cyclically, periods of richness and wealth alternate with others of poorness and misery.
I had the opportunity, for six years, as director of the Instituto do Vinho do Porto, to have resource of the very beautiful and well lined library of this Organisation, to deepen my knowledge about the history of the Port Wine sector and, specially, about the Douro Region.
I searched thoroughly and analysed documents, read and reread treaties, turned over the pages of countless books.
In this context, as a kind of historical description, the main cycles of the duriense economy and its corresponding social evolution throughout times will be here characterised.
Man with his will and strength, the wine with its exhilarating nectars and its rich heritage, idyllic and magnificent, are the main characters of the historical narrative which is common to all the assignments and treaties that we had access to.
For those who are interested in this subject here is a summary of that motivating experience.
The wine is a product of major importance for the economy of the duriense region. Intimately connected to our cultural tradition, it is imbedded in our fellow citizens’ customs and traditions in such a way that the facts, which fundament the socio-economic history, are determined, since ancient times.
The high prestige conquered by the Port Wine throughout the century, is due to the great quality and its single characteristics resultant from the unique edafo-climatic factors, which make this region a «wine growing country» well-known and appreciated worldwide.
To understand and perceive, in a correct way, the organisational evolution of the duriense viniculture, it becomes necessary to know, analyse and characterise the important historical facts. This justifies, in a way, the changes throughout time, determined by the involving conditions that demanded the promotion of the most adequate measures to each moment.
This way and in a simple manner, it intends to refer some facts that, in a way of historical description, try to characterise completely different economic cycles and their corresponding social evolution in the Douro region.
Since the beginning of Portugal as a country the wine has become an important product for the economy of the country.
The charters that in the 11th and 12th centuries obliged people from S. João da Pesqueira and Freixo de Espada à Cinta, as a tribute of payment to the crown, a certain amount of wine, can confirm it, among other historical data.
Even during the Roman Occupation the culture of the vineyard was an important factor of the peoples’ settlement and the Visigoth code, in the 7th century, referred to it.
It is also known that in the 13th century Portuguese wine was exported to France, although, the increase in the exportation especially to Rouen and Burges, took place during the 14th century.
The wine production in the Douro region transformed it as one of the most important and well-known wine-growing centres, mainly by its high quality and organisation.
In 1531/32 the Douro wines were already distinguished and characterised by the diverse prices. So, the «aromatic wine», which was the best, was destined to the noble houses of Portugal and Spain; the «embark wine» was destined to be consumed in the big centres of Lisbon, Oporto and colonies; the «amaral wine» was drank in agricultural houses and taken on board to be consumed by the Portuguese sailors.
The quality of the red wines started to be recognised by the taste of British consumers who made the British market the biggest and the major importer of wines known as «feitoria wine» and «aroma wine».
It was then by the end of the 17th century, that the first reference to the designation
«Port Wine» applied to the wine produced in the Douro region and exported from Vila Nova de Gaia.
The preferential treatment given by England to the Port Wine, to the prejudice of the French wines, by the treaty of Metween, celebrated in 1703 made the consume rise in such a way that the production did not cover the needs of demand.
The frauds appeared. Grapes cultivated in improper places for the culture of vineyard are used; common wines, much cheaper and from other regions are blended; the quantity rises compared to the decrease of quality; the trade needs are surpassed; the discredit spreads; the crises settles; the situation of poverty is general.
That situation is determined by the promulgation measures intended to rule and regulate the sector of the Port Wine, namely by the demarcation of the areas where it could be produced. For that purpose, in the reign of King Joseph I, the Companhia Geral de Agricultura das Vinhas do Alto Douro, was instituted by royal charter of 10th September 1756.
The first demarcated region of the world, is thus born, whose works started in 1757 and were concluded in 1761.
Each land, independently of its area, was officially registered and the maximum quantity of wine to produce was attributed to it. The demarcated area was signalled by a rock pillar where the number of order and the word «Feitoria» were sculpted.
(*Legenda da fotografia das nuvens)
In the demarcated region of the Douro dark clouds hang over the Port Wine businesses, namely when it comes to its liberalisation in a very near future with harmful consequences to the farmers and clear benefits for those who commercialise that nectar.
No fertilizers were allowed in the lands destined to the production of «feitoria wine», and the price of casks was officially settled. Wine produced outside the region was forbidden to enter.
To assure the accomplishment of the imposed rules and the genuineness and quality of the wines from the Douro, the sanctions to be applied in case of non-compliance of those rules ranged from the pouring of the wine illegally produced, which was made useless, to the prohibition of the production for several years.
The appliance of those rules assured the quality of the wines; credibility and fame were back again.
The Douro found again the way to stability and progress.
The Companhia Geral de Agricultura dos Vinhos do Alto Douro, founded in 1756, suffered several organic changes until 1865, when it was definitely extinguished. Its foundation was due to the sagacious and determined intervention of the Marquis of Pombal and his collaborator friar Mansilha, who was from the region, that the recognisable results in the sector of the wine produced in the Douro region were quickly achieved.
The quality image and prestige of the port Wine was imposed in the national and international market, the price tripled and the exports increased outstandingly.
The policies adopted, characterised by the authoritarianism that marked the era, were only possible to be executed by the inflexibility and hardness of the methods imposed.
Frauds were severely punished and the punishments applied by the non-compliance of the law included, among other, the death penalty (the mutiny that arose in Oporto in 1757), the exile and confiscation of assets. Other severe punishments imposed to the transgressors when proves of illegalities were found, which diminished the quality of the products. These punishments were the demolition of warehouses and winepresses, as well as the pour of the product and its uselessness.
So, in a very short time, the results of such policies in the economy of the Port Wine and in the development of the region were extraordinary, reaching the highest level of prosperity ever felt.
After the death of King Joseph I, the compulsory seclusion of Marquis of Pombal and the lifelong imprisonment of friar Mansilha, the hardness of the policies followed until then were replaced by permissiveness, changes and abolition of the protective measures imposed before.
The vicissitudes then, troubled by the French Revolution, by the invasion of Portugal and the exile of the Royal Family to Brazil had, naturally, a negative impact in the production and trade of the Port Wine, where the crisis were felt dramatically.
To an era of authoritarian government, a period of great insurrection and disobedience succeeded.
The attacks to the monopoly, which the Companhia Geral de Agricultura represented, were frequent and the interventionist and protectionist policies of the government were doomed. In 1834 the Companhia was extinguished; in 1838 it is reinstated but without any positive consequences to the sector, as the changes were not significant and were too conciliatory, against the irreducibility and the contradictory interests confront that were then revealed.
Worsening the situation in this second half of the 19th century, a new calamity arose, the phylloxera, a disease that quickly transformed into «mortuaries» great part of the duriense vineyards setting the region into the greatest drama ever.
With the parliamentary government of João Franco, in 1907, new measures are applied attending to minimise the effects of the existing crises. The Comissão de Viticultura do Douro is founded with an independent administration, the demarcation is altered, new processes of vineyards culture are studied and used, and exceptional measures are applied to assure the quality and genuineness of the Port Wine.
With the settlements and corrections made in the demarcation of the Region and their approval in 1921, the final formula of the demarcation of the area for port Wine production was found and has been kept unaltered until today.
By legislation of 1933 the protection of interests of production and commerce, which was adapted to the corporative organisation established then, is attributed to the Casa do Douro and Grémio dos Exportadores being these subject to state fiscal control by the Instituto do Vinho do Porto.
The attribution of the amount of must to be beneficed is done according to cadastral elements gathered in order to each parcel of vineyards classification, allowing a discerning selection bearing in mind its qualitative potential.
This way, and by the strict obedience of the specific legislation of the sector, which includes the attribution of Denominação de Origem «Porto», a product whose dignity and distinction makes it appreciated and well-known all over the world arose.
A Delegation was established in order to assure, in a more diligent way, the fulfilment of the legal rules to the control, classification and promotion of the port Wine in the Demarcated Region. After it was finally created the seat of the Instituto do Vinho do Porto in the city of Peso da Régua, assuring, this way, identical conditions for all tradesmen independently of being in Vila Nova de Gaia or in the region of Douro.
Therefore, a wish that was stated long ago by the durienses, who always defended the presence of the I.V.P. in the exact producing region of the Port Wine, was fulfilled. This fact provided them with the necessary conditions to the fulfilment of direct trading targets that nowadays stimulate the producers.
As a consequence of a precarious and hard relationship between Commerce and Production, which has historically characterised the management of the sector, also deepened by the disobedience and the strategy mistakes that have occurred, it has become essential to rethink the instituted management layout, making it suitable to modern and efficient self-regulation ways.
To strength this strategy and being consensual the need to reform the R.D.D. institutional organisation, it was by governmental decision, discussed and approved the law by decree number 74/95 in which the Production and Commerce would share the jurisdiction and responsibilities in the management of its interests in a inter-professional cooperation whose aim was to guarantee the social-economic stability of the entire Region.
Thus the C.I.R.D.D. – Comissão Interprofissional da Região Demarcada do Douro was born, composed of an executive board and a deliberative board with seat in the city of Peso da Régua and has the same level of representation of the Production and Commerce, run by a state representative.
(*Legenda da página 101)
Sanctities, majesties, entities
all drink and worship the Port Wine
However after being in existence for six years, by incapacity of the global institutional system, from which resulted ambiguity of responsibilities as well as the increasing of procedures against the current organisational board, it is predictable that, a new change will shortly assure a procedure simplification and a reduction of Organisms determined by the C.I.R.D.D. experience.
This way, replacing this Organism and restoring the first proposal presented in 1994 by the administration of the I.V.P. at that time, a new Inter-professional Institution would be born bearing the name of Instituto do Vinho do Porto e Douro, that as a consequence of the merge of the two entities, would take over the current responsibility of the I.V.P and C.R.D.D..
The Casa do Douro, as an indispensable support of the duriense farming, should keep the cohesion of the associative organisation of the Producers.
These are, briefly, the rudiments in which the new and modern institutional organisation to manage the duriense viticulture will be based on, trying to guarantee the normality, stability, progress and perpetuity of the Demarcated Region of the Douro.
Mainly aiming at the global duriense development and the promotion of the Region abroad, the «Rota do Vinho do Porto» was recently created, which, in conjunction with the new Douro Museum and the Confraria dos Enófilos da R.D.D., will contribute to the promotion and prestige of the Port and Douro Wines, and still for the touristic and cultural development of their producing Region.
To end with, I would like to draw your attention to a sentence taken from a lecture by the President of the Cabinet in 1932 by then
called Commissão de Defesa do Douro whose immediate interest cannot be denied:
«The Minister declared that the State is not tradesman nor industrial. So it is, so it should be.
Certain cases are, however, so awkward that compel the State to interfere. The solution was signalled; if there is better we will be the first ones to applaud.»
September, 2002
Daniel Bastos, PhD
Pesqueira
Adega Cooperative
Here, red wine and excellent Port Wine are made from the best grapes and biological strains of the Region.
The third volume of the Dicionário dos Mais Ilustres Transmontanos e Alto Durienses comments on:
Mass Media
Wine and the Demarcated Region are the heart and soul of the Douro people. Their problems, wishes and aspirations are reflected in their lifestyle. One of the sores of our country was emigration, which no government seemed interested in sustaining. Thus was it in the past and thus shall it remain. In answer to this migratory wave, along with problems in the wine-growing industry since the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the press started to report on the decaying situation of the Douro Region. Desperate diseases require desperate remedies, was claimed at the time. And the periodicals began to cry out against the departure of the labour force to other lands. First the Voz do Douro and the Dissidente, followed by the Douro, run by Costa Pinto. Dr. José Maria de Alpoim, whose voice echoed in the Terreiro do Paço, used to write for the Dissidente. And the truth of the matter is that some of the much needed measures were taken. The newspapers Cinco de Outubro and the Independente Reguense followed in the same guideline. These were the newspapers that kept track of the situation until 1934, when the Notícias do Douro appeared, and as its name suggests, stood up for the legitimate interests of the people of the Douro, mainly of the wine producers, informing and warning, protesting and criticising and organising conferences and meetings. To sum up, it widely informed of the true aspirations and measures to be taken by the responsible entities, managerial or political, in favour of the Demarcated Region. To prove our assertions, the issues of the past 15 years under the management of Dr. Mansilha, ought to be read.
Recently, and after the A Voz de Trás-os-Montes, or more accurately since 1979, another voice has joined the Region’s journalistic spectre: the weekly Arrais. It follows the guidelines of past generations.
In 1989, the Editorial of the Notícias do Douro stated:
…WE WILL NOT:
Follow any political orientation.
Criticise unproductively except in cases of blatant injustice.
BUT WE WILL
Fight obstinately, trying to promote this newspaper to the level deserved and needed by the Douro.
That was the founders’ purpose and it will be ours if we have the support.
We already know that we will be criticised, but we also know that those who do criticise us, are the very people that have never done anything in their lives.
So our aim is to make this newspaper, in truth, the Notícias do Douro (News from the Douro), thus we propose:
- To promote duriense news in its multiple aspects;
- To communicate everything of interest for Douro farming;
- To transcribe, commenting on, all legislation applicable to the region and farmers;
- To give statistical, accounting, financial and legal data which may in any way be important for the region;
- Fight for the farmers’ rights and for the interests of the Douro Demarcated Region.
To this end, we have found collaborators with the required qualifications and experience who will be introduced in the upcoming issues through their ‘curriculum’. However, we will await all advise and suggestions from our subscribers and supporters, since there will never be enough of us to defend the Region, to maintain this newspaper and to contribute to improving the farmers’ well-being.
So we will try to offer indications of what we are capable of and prove our worth.
WE WILL TRY, our readers can see for themselves, by always reading and, and if they are pleased they can promote OUR NEWSPAPER.
This motto has been carried out intrinsically, and to prove it, this newspaper was awarded the medal of Merit by the City Hall of Peso da Régua in 1989. We organised, in co-operation with UTAD (University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro)), Casa do Douro and IVP (Institute of Port Wine) and in association with Bianchi Aguiar (Phd), and Jorge Dias (Eng.) the first Jornadas da Vinha e do Vinho (Exposition of the Vineyards and Wine). In 2002, we promoted the Anteprojecto da Reforma Institucional do Douro (Project for the Institutional Reform of the Douro). We were in S. Vicente and Santos during the Commemorations of 500 years after the Discovery of Brazil. We were granted the degree of Confrade Mareante (Fellowship of the Mariner) by the Confraria dos Enófilos (Fraternity of Enologists) of the Douro Demarcated Region. Furthermore, we were awarded several honourable mentions by politicians of every party including those connected to the Region. Nevertheless, the Notícias do Douro does not keep quiet, it gives a voice to the underprivileged and it certainly does not allow for opportunism on the part of those who have influence.
Besides that, it informs…To sum up, above and beyond being the oldest in the Region, it has the greatest number of readers.
You must read it
You must subscribe to it
Mass Media in the Douro Demarcated Region
Notícias
do
Douro
a
symbol
of
the
information
and
the
formation
of
the
real
problems
of
the
duriense
Instituto do Vinho do Porto
Port Wine is an important element of Portugal’s historic heritage and international image due to its cultural and symbolic value. Produced in the oldest constitutional and demarcated region in the world, it has gained enormous prestige as one of the world’s greatest wines.
The first signs that bore witness to the production of wine in the Douro region date as far back as prehistoric times. However, the designation of Port Wine emerges in the mid seventeenth century, when a spread of quality vineyards in the Douro region is verified, resulting from a rapid growth in the exportation of wines. England was its main market for over a century.
The establishment of the Companhia Geral da Agricultura das Vinhas do Alto Douro, on 10th September 1756 and the consequent demarcation of the producing region was a measure undertaken by the Marquis de Pombal, whose goal it was to guarantee the quality of Port Wine and to adjust the volume of production to the fortuitous exportations, establishing, at the same time, precise rules of production relative to the cultivation of vineyards, prices, transports and the mandatory tasting of wines.
With almost two centuries in advance, Portugal had created and regulated the first Denomination of Controlled Origin which followed a policy of quality and guarantee of authenticity, already associating at that time a determined territory with certain characteristics which made the wine produced in it, unique.
Nowadays, it’s the Instituto do Vinho do Porto – IVP (Port Wine Institute) that controls, promotes and defends the Denomination of Port Origin – DO. This organisation is responsible for supporting commercial expansion in consumer markets through the generic promotion of Port Wine on an international level. Furthermore, it is also accountable for the protection of the DO Port Wine in consumer markets, fighting off falsifications and imitations.
If the history of the Douro Demarcated Region and of Port Wine is long and justifies this approach, centred on the territory, it is equally important to talk about the product, the wine, the different categories and the different occasions when it is consumed.
In this context, the complex selection that makes up the family of red Port Wines, can, basically, be divided into two categories according to the type of ageing:
Firstly, there is the Ruby style, whose producers constantly endeavour to maintain the quality of its red colouring, more or less intense, as well as its fruity aroma and vigour of young wines. In these types of wines, the categories which follow are included in an ascending order; Ruby, Reserve, Late Bottled Vintage (LBV), and Vintage. The best wine categories, especially the Vintage, and to a lesser degree the LBV, can be stored, because they mature well in bottles. The LBV and Vintage are especially recommended.
Secondly, the Tawny style is obtained by blending wines of varying levels of ripeness, achieved through the ageing of barrels and large casks. They are wines in which the colour presents evolution and they should be integrated into the subclasses of the Ruby, Tawny, Light-Tawny. The aromas remind one of dry fruits and wood; the older the wine the more these characteristic are drawn out. The existing categories are: Tawny; Tawny Reserve, Tawny with an Indication of Age (10 years, 20 years, 30 years and 40 years) and Colheita (Harvest). These are batches of wines from various years, with the exception of the Colheitas, which resemble a Tawny with an Indication of Age with the same period of ageing.
When they are bottled, they are ready to be consumed. The wine categories of Tawny with an Indication of Age and Harvest are recommended.
White Port Wine is presented in various styles, namely associated to the ageing periods which are more or less prolonged and the different degrees of sweetness, which result from the method of its preparation. Wines with a floral and complex aroma and with a minimum alcohol content of 16,5%, (Dry Light White Port Wine) were added to the traditional wines. These wines are capable of supplying a demand for wines with lower alcoholic content.
It is this extensive and opulent range which, allowing for the most varied gastronomical combinations, offers Port Wine an enormous versatility which is so important for such demanding and volatile markets and consumers.
It is this versatility associated to the system of guarantee of quality, of which the IVP is an integral part, which has made that this product, with centuries of history, maintains such a strong presence in the whole world. We would all lose out, if one day, those characteristics of quality and versatility were no longer guaranteed.
Eng. Jorge Monteiro – President of the IVP
Armamar of the Golden Douro
Man’s victory against nature’s adversity, the passion of a people for its land, has in the Douro, an unsurpassed region in the world, its altar!
Sacrifice, courage and love masterly sculpted the cradle of that magical nectar which is in duriense blood.
Testimony of a past, registered within a memory furrowed with eternal recollection, has been born again! It has opened up to imagination, becoming an object of desire and making itself worshipped by uprooted investment.
Armamar is a part of such a vast treasure, recognised as World Heritage. This harmony is a result of sharing that monumental dream, made of adversities and accomplices, which has become eternal in the erected terraces and planted vines.
Now, as always, we look the future in the eye. Like the women and men who, with dedication, knew how to mould mountains, we need to know how to create conditions to harvest the new products discovered in the Douro. We must seize new interests, make them loyal to our Region by placing a clear wager on quality!
Always remembering the past that honours us, let’s turn to new challenges. We must know how to defend nature’s generosity and the work of those who preceded us. We must invest in our identity. Let’s be grateful, let’s be citizens!
The Mayor of Armamar
Hernani Pinto da Fonseca Almeida
DOURO:
STAIRWAY
TO HEAVEN
Francisco Gouveia, (Eng.)
The first half of the century was running fast, at a time when trains whistled ashes and drivers hid toil-worn-soot-covered-shining faces from smoke and sweat.
At the station in Campanhã, confusion had settled: above the porters’ marathon and villagers’ bewilderment, with bags on their shoulders and holding small baskets, the station chief’s hoarse tobacco- haggard voice was giving orders everywhere and cleaving through the hustle and bustle with a strident whistle.
Dressed in my Sunday school clothes, terylene shorts and a nylon shirt, holding my father’s hand tightly, I waited with the anxiousness of my twelve years, for the arrival of the dark and smoking beast that would take me to Régua. My grandfather would be waiting there for me, to catch a bus that would drag us to Tabuaço and, after that, to Pinheiros, village of our journey’s end and mother’s bosom, an origin belittled in the city. It was the same thing every year for the holidays. Two months of country life awaited me, an experience that time itself registered in my mind with furrows of eternal memory.
The journey to Régua was a mixture of eternity and folklore, lasting unhurried time and cradled in the echo of mountain voices, clear and noisy, which exposed each one’s life to the sun, with simple people’s naivety and healthy people’s certainty.
- Come here, Zezinho! Leave the gentleman alone!…
And the boy, with a drippy nose and rosy cheeks, stared fixedly whilst playing hide and seek from behind his seat.
- The little brat just can’t keep still!…
And over the newspaper, the traveller smiled at him, cunningly replying by making a childish face.
- Don’t worry, madam. The boy is not being bothersome.
Later on, a group of people cussed at the misfortune of the grape harvest. The year hadn’t been good and they were expecting a measly harvest.
During the heated argument, a loaf of wheat bread
and a slab of smoked ham appeared, cut by well-acquainted knives.
- Would you like some, boss?…
The demijohn swayed dizzyingly backwards and forwards and the argument heated up.
Leaning out of the window, hoping to dupe train-in-motion-sickness, with a hog skin face and fleshy hands, inspired by the magic of the river, the digger trilled:
This Douro
is like time
A weak boat are we
We want to go back to the spring
And he’s pulling us to the mouth
The slow journey of the carriage, holding onto the slope of the valley and abiding by the railway track, made me predict a return to peace. The more it penetrated the Douro valley, the more I felt the smallness of being in this corner of the world. The opened terraces in the faces of the mountain, resting-place to the vineyards supported by the harshness of flagged walls, conferred a seriously tended, educated, proud and majestic look upon the valley. I was amazed that such boldness had been made by men, similar to those who surrounded me in a human fair within the carriage, themselves, distracted, simple mortals, without history and unknown.
The river was the mirror of the valley. It reflected its face staging the sky in a green background, which calm, like a wise man, looked like it was whispering mysteries at me that satiated the imagination of my amazement.
- Would you like some, boy?…
And I would wake up from that dream with an old lady seated next to me, offering me a shiny pear.
- No, thank you!…
I lied, discreetly but not convincingly.
- Come, come! Take it! No need to stand on ceremony!
I took it and started to learn that “no” was an uncommon word in that area.
Arriving at Régua, and after my grandfather’s strong and effusive embrace, it was a rush and a bit of a run to catch the bus and, away we went! All along the riverside to Espinho, on the road to Pinhão and, from there on, up the slope climbing the mountain.
The climb opened up the horizons and the world seemed to grow in front of my very eyes. Terraces stuck to the mountain kept fascinating my spirit, now satiated by my grandfather’s certainty.
- It’s the stairway to heaven…
And what was only an allegorical joke in an adult’s addicted mind, gained form of a magical castle in the innocent consciousness of my childhood. It was the stairway to heaven and that’s how I still think of it.
My grandfather was a simple man, with a trained rudeness in the calm of the village, cultivating nature’s wisdom and having the sun as his only superior; free enough to know what he said. Little by little, I began to understand that solely men like these, generous with themselves, with others and with life itself, could have built such creative work, hollowing out the hill methodically until ground was evened out
in the giddy spell of the cliffs that the strength of courage groped, making them worthy of permission to ravage the consenting land, blessing the vines, the fruit of copulation between man and mountain.
The Douro was thus built by humble men who wanted to conquer paradise and, through a priestly act, they thought they had defeated death in so doing. The valley is a dream, fruit of a dream. Up till now, in the moonlit nights, we can distinguish the sphinx of those men phantasmagorically taking a walk on the stairs of the valley, as if they were telling us it is true that one can reach heaven by going up the slope.
As the years went by, my grandfather died, I grew up, but memory wasn’t erased and each time I look at the Douro valley, I’m still the same boy of the past.
I find it hard to think that men no longer believe that those stairs lead to heaven. Possibly, they don’t even believe in heaven anymore.
Tangled in their small-minded mediocrity, they’ve lost the gift of dreaming.
As far as I’m concerned, I still believe in my grandfather’s dream.
Men come and go but heaven is still there. And so are the stairs.
My grandfather was right.
Always.
(from the novel of Francisco Gouveia,
As Escadas do Céu, 1997)
THE WINE-GROWING DOURO
WORLD HERITAGE
DOURO
Steps unearthed on the hillside
Green veiled granite
From here to the horizon
From the river till the heavens
Rebellious schist, laid
Stonewalls raised by hand
It is like the tight bosom
Under a girl’s blouse
River of golden waters
Sowing bread and peace
Flowing onwards cradled
In the crib cut out by the mountain
Valley sculpted in the image
Of man filled with boldness
With the chisel of courage
And the gouge of thought
People exploring life
On the rocky slopes
In the fatigue of the climb
In the giddiness of the descent
Lands of the Douro where
Humane and serene calm resides
Where even the vineyard weeps
And the stones have souls
(in Livro dos Poemas Pobres, Francisco Gouveia, 2000)
They say…
“God Created the World…”
- I say…
“Man Created the Douro…”
Man’s power of creation is implicit “here” and “now” in this Wonderful Region that goes on “being” built after centuries.
(…) He looked around and noticed the gift that the Great Creator had placed in his hands.
He retained that image in his memory… “Hills upon Hills”… Fitting into sinuous puzzles that, hanging over the river Douro, kissed it with muddy tears, colouring its unsettled waters by the sharp schist margins alongside a riverbed in turmoil.
(…) “A thought was begot”…
Once the first moment had been created, more and more came up… giving rise to an “image/thought” that gains a form… a dimension which grows at the same rate of the overbearing will to accomplish an objective…
(…) “To be Creator”
That Image/Thought transforms itself into
Word – a registered testimony in written symbols in the history chronicles in a sealed commitment to that will – “To bring down mountains…”
(…) From previous agreements, discussed and properly established, arise the propitious conditions of Space and Time involved in the accomplishment of the Great Project
“The Douro at the time of the Marquis of Pombal”
(…) Going up the tilled soil… Hills are excavated, arduous Effort, blood, hunger and sweat moved Man by the will to grow and make its Creation immemorial…
And in one giant step with hoe and plough…
Hereby Its Fifth Creation
Terraces flowed towards the river that blessed them with its grace and, early in the morning, no sooner was the sun rising in the horizon, greeting them with a gracious “Good Morning” than…already tired, he went to lie, eager for the new awakening… to admire MAN’S accomplishment, tireless in will, set in his wish to Hollow Mountains.
(…) Vines filled with understanding and wisdom… are planted in moderate steps which climb the tilled soil between laughter and tears, grief and fears… between interlacing tears of kind welcomes to BITTER SWEET LOVES perpetuated at the time of those who stayed and left.
And then!… dressed in green, embellished by Mother Nature who, proud of her accomplishment… presents them this way forever, adorning each vine with laces of Hope and, later, the delight, with the harvest of the “Divine Nectar” – “The Fruit”. – (…) Yields, Grows, Ripens and dies at The Creator’s feet.
Finally, the Seventh Creation.
(…) Thus it is in the “Here” and the “Now” that everything runs in an eternal continuity of Mother Nature who keeps the promise of wearing colours of
… Hopeful Green
… Diligent Yellow
“Fiery Red”…
“Worn out Brown”…
“Pure Violet”…
which, on days in spring and autumn, bathe in the waters, now Crystalline, and elevate themselves in the Rainbow to the Great Creator Spirit with the message:
“God created the World”
“Man created the Douro”
Echoes that perpetuate throughout the whole of Creation… as we are Co-Creators with
The Creator…
Santa Marta de Penaguião
The wine shell of Portugal*
Monuments
Romans lived hereabouts and important signs of their presence remain. As the names themselves show, there is a valuable Roman ceramic kiln in Fornelos [name coming from the Portuguese word “forno” that means “furnace or oven”] and in Barreiros [name coming from the Portuguese word “barro” that means “clay”], where clay was extracted .
The baroque and rococo styles are well epitomised in this municipality and can be appreciated in the churches of Cumieira designed by Nicolau Nasoni, S. João de Lobrigos, S. Miguel de Lobrigos, Cever and in the chapels of S. Pio, Mártir de Sanhoane and S. Pedro de Medrões.
Everywhere, there are manor houses and palace-like houses of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in particular the House of Quinta do Meio and the House of Pinheiro in Sanhoane. In Cumieira, there are two, the House of Quinta do Bertelo and the House of Quinta da Cumieira.
In Fontes, Crestelo, Cumieira and Carvalhais there are large stone crosses worthy of distinction.
We have always been – the Douro Demarcated Region – a unique Heritage in the World, now we are in our own right World Heritage. Such fact honours us, but makes us responsible to do better now and in the future. For Santa Marta de Penaguião and while we are in charge, we promise to and will do everything to go on deserving such honour.
The Mayor,
[Francisco Ribeiro, Dr.]
* Santa Marta de Penaguião is situated in a valley with a shell shape, hence the expression: “the wine shell of Portugal”.
Unedited documents to be published in the next editions.
Marriage license and will of Mrs Adelaide Ferreira
The marriage contract of Mrs Antónia Adelaide Ferreira [Ferreirinha] signed in London on 19th September 1856 and her will made in the city of Oporto on 2nd August 1889 and read in the city of Peso da Régua on 27th March 1896.
The originals are in our possession
Douro – the wrath of the waters
Text and Photos
José Braga – Amaral
(Living hand in hand with the river, waking up and falling asleep with the swelling of his breath is at times a liability to the waterside populations, who once in a while sustain the abuses of his bed, but who love him just the same, in a love-hate relationship where the wrath of the waters is opposed to the solidarity of men. That’s how things are when the Douro floods…)
he gives with one hand and takes with the other, this bastard!…
Thus spoke the nameless old man who I briefly heard in the Douro Avenue. I stopped, without turning around, to see if I could hear the rest of the conversation, but the river kept silent, downcast and guilty. Outlined, remains the image of a man old enough to be the river’s intimate friend, with his lower eyelid already fallen, showing its rosy inside and a watery eyeball. I turned to the brown, clayey and still waters, similar to those of a cemetery in wet weather, which now make visible the signs of their strength – the after-birth of a river-bed, who got pregnant by the excesses of nature, and whose womb became empty after having given birth to misfortune and tragedy in homes fortuitously, in men and women’s lives who, even so, flatter and adorn him with pride.
This is a grey and sad Sunday afternoon, but it is not cold and the only shiver is the one caused by the images that come in through the retina and leave us standing still and empty, as if fear had wrapped us in a cloak of indignation. Feeling my presence, the old man went on saying:
He never stopped being the way he is, this goddamn traitor, but in the old days it was different… when he became full, he climbed upwards, but that was once in a while, now, for any given reason, we have a flood! With this dam business, they fill him with vanity and your Excellency comes strolling down the avenue once in a while… he may have a wish for praise. And in the end he leaves this fine mess. F… him.
God help us.
– our man concluded, while twisting his candid hands angrily and with such strength around the umbrella’s handle, hands full of lilac veins ready to jump out of translucent skin, chapped by a life of many decades. He looked at me obliquely, opened his eyes wide and lifted his face wizened by many years spent with the river. I think that upon seeing me, he immediately took a red handkerchief from his pocket to wipe away his sadness and turning his back on me, walked down the avenue to the rhythm of his murmurs, without giving me time to open my mouth.
Contrasts of beauty and horror and the agony of the flood had preceded this still life. In the past decade in Régua, not a year has gone by that, roundabout January, people don’t secretly wonder, in other words fear: Will there be floods this year? Although they are already used to moves and afflictions, as soon as the river threatens, those who live alongside the river pay a fortune to have the privilege of falling asleep and waking up hand in hand with the river. They surrender to his moods and insist on keeping on loving him forever, in good and bad times, proud of being duriense. But this year the river’s unfaithfulness exceeded the limits! Five floods within the space of weeks is too much and I think there is no memory of such abuse of nature.
– We’re going to have a flood. The dreadful certainty happened once again, with the aggravating circumstance that nature had been so unloving and harsh that, not satisfied with the misfortune caused by the floods, she caused tragedies in the whole country, especially in our region.
Stubborn, the Douro bounded, as he well pleased, over the banks that shelter and embellish him, turning them into a landscape of mud, sorrow and loss. Even then, during every flood, the duriense looked at him with respect and nostalgia, despite the afflictions experienced and the damages caused in each one’s life. This feeling was seen in the almost resigned look, in the shrug of shoulders, in the impotence of those who saw their possessions covered with the opaque waters, now brown because of the soil stolen by the rain from the hills, which took upon themselves to offer the soil to the river as a gift.
It’s at times like these that the nature of men reveals itself and that’s what happened. Besides the solidarity and the immediate action of the institutions, whose function is to reduce the consequences of the floods and to find alternative solutions for the unfortunate people; there are some that want to help – relatives, friends and acquaintances, or even strangers, but all human beings and similar to each one of us. This is the greatest and highest strength that commands Men and our emotion cannot be indifferent to it. This is the strength that the river can never defeat, because this is the same strength that keeps us and will always keep us loving him and feeling proud of being people of the river and sons of the Douro.
Solidarity, hope and determination are the values that the wrath of the waters does not take from us – but brings.
[March 2001]
In the past few years, tourism has gradually been seen as one of the most promising ways to promote the social and economic development of the Douro Demarcated Region. There has been an increase in the number of people who even consider tourism as the driving force and priority of such development.
In this context, the Rota do Vinho do Porto (The Port Wine Route) was created and presented as a structured project to promote Port Wines and Table Wines of the oldest demarcated region in the world. This route is not only related to the diffusion of culture and regional tradition, but also to productive quintas and wine cellars.
Therefore, the Port Wine Route is presented as a structured project for tourism in the Douro region, illustrating the different stages of its creation and emphasising its regulative, institutional and operational aspects. Of all the objectives of this project, and besides the diffusion of the Douro Demarcated Region and its wines, there are two clear distinctions. Firstly, the diversification of touristic offer in the region and secondly, the creation of activities that complement the traditional culture of wine-growing as a source of additional revenue for those who intervene.
The creation of a wine route in the Douro Demarcated Region arose from the participation of the Instituto do Vinho do Porto (the Port Wine Institute) in the Programa de Cooperação Interregional – DYONISIOS (the Interregional Plan of Co-operation – DYONISIOS) of the European Union in 1992.
Wine-growing Tourism can become an alternative to the offer of traditional and mass tourism. As a matter of fact, it focuses on wine and the environmental, cultural and gastronomical aspects of our wine-growing regions and also on several products, of which small productions by craftsmen and Turismo em Espaço Rural (Tourism in Rural Areas) are examples.
The Wine Routes, as privileged instruments of organisation and diffusion of wine-growing tourism, should be the catalysts of potential in the wine-growing regions, a starter to get dynamism on the move, a regional liveliness, which could lead to better living conditions for the rural populations in the short or mid-term. Because of the complementary revenue that they can generate and because of the desired revitalisation of the rural area, the Wine Routes can contribute decisively to changing the tendency of rural exodus and most importantly to encouraging the settlement of the winegrowers, true guardians of the heritage and environment.
On account of its unique and natural features, which are suitable to the production of wines of excellence, and its long history – a real human epic – the Douro Demarcated Region meets the purpose of this challenge, becoming, naturally, a theme and destination of preference of the national touristic offer.
The creation of the minimal legal framework within the scope of the national tourism activity, (publication of the Orders in Council No 669/94 and No 670/94 of 22nd September), encouraged the elaboration of Wine Routes in Portugal, leading the Instituto do Vinho do Porto (The Port Wine Institute)), the Casa do Douro and the regional and local organisations of tourism to create the Port Wine Route. It was officially created on 3rd August 1995, through the signing of a Protocol between the Secretary of State for Tourism, the Northern Region Commission of Co-ordination, the Wine Growing Associations of the Douro Region – AVEPOD, AEVP and Unidouro – and the above-mentioned supporting institutions which formed the Executive Commission of the Route.
On that very date, the regulation of the Port Wine Route was approved and, besides the already mentioned Executive Commission, a Consultative Commission was created. This commission is composed of the officially registered members and several regional and national institutions, whose involvement is crucial to the development of this project.
In this regulation, the places which can be included on the Port Wine Route are strictly defined, bearing in mind the activities developed there and their respective localisation. The Producers of Certified Wine, Centros de Interesse Vitivinícola/Animação – CIV (Centres for Wine-growing/Animation Concerns) and Turismo em Espaço Rural – TER (Tourism in Rural Areas) are also defined, as well as aspects related to the quality of offer and the good use of the denomination.
For a correct usage and protection of this denomination – Port Wine Route – the Port Wine Institute encouraged its registration with the Instituto Nacional da Propriedade – INPI (the National Institute of Property) as a collective trademark of certification of tourism services, including hotel service and similar services, also embracing any kind of publication.
We’re dealing with special accreditation, benefiting from legal protection of the Industrial Property Code and the above-mentioned regulation. Any third parties are duly advised of any aspects related to unjustified usurpation or use, as its system foresees the existence of a control for the obedience of rules, which the services rendered should follow.
Besides these aspects of direct application, we paid special attention to the creation of an image for the Port Wine Route.
Therefore, we conceived a logotype that would translate the main idea of this new product, which joins wine and tourism in a unique wine-growing region of slope, namely the Douro Valley. From this idea emerged the logotype of the Port Wine Route, which figures as a distinctive mark on all material edited by the route.
It was publicly launched on 21st September 1996, after an initial period of diffusion and selection, based on pre-defined qualitative criteria. Initially, fifty-four locations were selected and written up; eleven more were added to this list in 1998. In 2000, seven locations were removed or suspended and twelve more new ones were introduced, making a total of 69 adherents to the Port Wine Route.
All these places are located in the Douro Demarcated Region and in suburbs on the outer-fringes, and are either directly or indirectly linked to the culture of wine-growing: Producers of Bottles, Adegas Cooperativas (Co-operative Wine Cellars), Douro and Port Wine Traders, wine shops, Tourism in Rural Areas and Centres for Wine-growing/Animation Concerns.
Thus the visitor will have the possibility of meeting the small winegrower, as well as the renowned producer of wines of the Douro Demarcated Region – Port Wine, DOC Douro, Muscatel and Sparkling Wine –, the possibility to visit the vineyards and the wine cellars, to taste and buy wine and also to take part in several wine-growing tasks, such as grape harvest, treading grapes in wine-presses, etc… At the Centre for Wine-growing Concerns, the offer varies from houses with relevant architectural interest, to museums and wine shops. The availability of space on farms is also possible for holding different events, from business meetings to great parties. Tourism in Rural Areas, together with the two pronounced components of wine-growing and regional craftsmanship, complete this offer.
One of the aims established on the long term for the development of the Port Wine Route, consisted of greater participation on the part of the supporters in the administration of the route, so that they in turn would begin to feel a part of the project. Therefore, the creation of an association for supporters of the route, whose role would be two-fold, was planned. Besides having a preponderant role in the involvement of the private agents, this association would also permit that the commercial gap be filled, which the institutions found impossible to bring about. In this context, the Associação de Aderentes (Association of Supporters) emerges as the entity representing the supporters in the Executive Commission of the Office for the route and which functions as the image of the idealised objectives on the part of each of the private agents with their adherence to this project.
A Rota do Vinho do Porto – Associação de Aderentes (The Port Wine Route – Association of Supporters) was officially created on 8th May 1998. At this moment, the association has got a total of 50 associate members, some of whom are Certified Wine Producers, Houses of Tourism in Rural Areas and Centres for Wine-growing Concerns.
According to article No 3 of its statutes, on nature and aims, the A Rota do Vinho do Porto – Associação de Aderentes is entitled to private rights without lucrative ends. The second point of the same article, states that its main aims are to support the associate members, to develop and promote the Port Wine Route, to obtain funds to support the respective implementation and diffusion, the defence of its specific interests and of the authenticity of regional products;
The collaboration with public or private entities of relevant interest to the Route;
The specification of conditions of the levels of quality and of services rendered, the maintenance and the functioning of fitting services in support of members, such as bookings, reservations and receptions;
The encouragement and even the accomplishment of cultural, sportive, folkloric or craft initiatives, properly studied and seen as suitable;
The Associação de Aderentes can associate or affiliate with other organisms when it deems it to be convenient. It may additionally and with mere promotional ends, commercialise or take advantage of the commercialisation of products from wine-growing or handicrafts, or other products that suit the aims of the Route.
As far as the organisation is concerned, the Associação de Aderentes is composed of a General Assembly, a Fiscal Council and an Administration, which are elected by the members for a three-year period. The Administration is composed of three permanent voters and two extras. All these functions are not salaried.
Besides carrying out a great part of the above-mentioned aims, the Associação de Aderentes has been making great efforts in order to promote the Port Wine Route and its associative members have been creating animation through their presence at fairs, as well as at events linked to the sector, such as the Grape Harvest Festival
In fact, this event has been the event with the most projection on a nation-wide basis, as well as internationally. This event has the particularity of involving the tourists who visit the route, giving them the possibility to carry out the main task of the wine route, the grape harvest, the treading in the wine-presses, the modern wine making, etc… On the other hand, there is always a component of cultural animation directed not only at the visitors, but also at the local population.
