Vineyard and Cellars
Part I/II

The Port-growing Douro region extends for about one hundred kilometres along the Douro River. Its Western boundary is just below the town of Régua and it extends to the Spanish frontier in the east. In most places the area is about forty kilometers wide. It was the first wine region in the world to be demarcated (this immense task was begun in 1756) and is the only source of genuine Port.


The Alto Douro is an unlikely setting for any form of agriculture. Sheer rock faces and harrowing ravines are interspersed with stony, schistous, slatelike ground with hardly a trace of soil. The vine and this unique rocky territory of the Alto Douro are notwithstanding, perfect partners. Where nothing else will grow, the vine is in its element, digging its roots deep into the slaty layers of stone.


Terraces have to be blasted mercilessly out of the rocky ground, with further explosives sometimes having to be used in the planting of vines. All work including planting, care of vines and harvesting must be carried out by hand. Mules are used for ploughing and the terrain seldom allows the use of modern machinery.
Some six principal varieties of grape are used in the making of Port. Each of these has its own particular contribution to make in the vinification of a perfectly balanced wine. The Tinta Roriz, for example, gives Port a characteristic and quite unmistakable aroma and the Touriga Nacional lends a particularly deep colour. As elsewhere in Europe, all vines have to be grafted onto phylloxera-resistant root stocks.

In the late autumn the vines are pruned in preparation for the bitterly cold winter wich also brings weeks of torrential rain. The mild spring is brief and gives way to a fiercely hot Summer which ripens the grapes into readiness for the climax of the year, the harvest.

In late September troops of pickers arrive in the Douro Valley from the surrounding provinces. The grapes are gathered into tall wicker baskets and carried down the hillsides to the wineries.

The traditional means of crushing the grapes, still practised in many "quintas" (wine growing estates), is to tread them in huge open stone tanks known as "lagares". At night teams of barefoot treaders climb knee-deep into the lagares filled with the day's harvest. To the stains of country music, they link arms and march up and down the tanks crushing the grapes underfoot amid much festivity.

This process continues until sufficient colour has been extracted from the grape skins to produce a rich purple "must" with the skins and pips forming a floating crust or a "cap" on top.

This fermentation takes place as the natural yeasts present on the grape skins convert the natural sugar in the juice into alcohol. Fermentation will take between two and three days during which time men and women resume treading at regular intervals. This laborious task ensures that the flavour and colour-giving skins, which form the floating cap, are repeatedly submerged in order to be in constant contact with the fermenting "must". When about half the sugar has been turned into alcohol and the desired level of colour achieved, the semi-fermented must is run off into vats where pure high strength grape brandy is added in the proportion of approximately 20%.