Facts and figures

The history of Portuguese wine has been influenced by Portugal’s relative isolationism in the world’s wine market, with the one notable exception of its relationship with the British. Wine has been made in Portugal since at least 2000 BC when the Tartessians planted vines in the Sado and Tagus valleys. Around 1000 years later, the Phoenicians had arrived and introduced new grape varieties and winemaking techniques to the area. Up until this point, viticulture was mostly centred on the southern coastal areas of Portugal. In later centuries, the Greeks, Celts and Romans would do much to spread viticulture and winemaking further north. Soon after Spain and Portugal separated, Portuguese wines were first shipped to England in the 12th century from the Entre Douro e Minho region (which today includes modern Portuguese wine regions such as the Douro and Vinho Verde).

In 1386, Portugal and England signed the Treaty of Windsor which fostered close diplomatic relations between the two countries and opened the door for extensive trade opportunities. While there are many theories as to the origin of the fortified wine known as Port, one of the most prevalent is that of the 1678 visit by English wine merchants to a monastery in the Portuguese town of Lamego located along the Douro river. In search of new wines to ship back to England, the merchants came across an abbot in Lamego who was producing a style of wine that the merchants had never encountered before. While fortification of wine had been known for centuries, the fortifying grape spirit was usually added after fermentation, when the wine was already fermented dry. The abbot of Lamego was fortifying his wine during fermentation, which had the effect of killing off the active yeast cells and leaving the wine with high levels of residual sugar. This method produced a very strong, alcoholic wine with noticeable levels of sweetness that was very successful in the English wine market.