Douro Valley Wines: Explore This Portuguese Wine Region

The Alto Douro wine region may have made its name on port wine—a sweet, fortified wine made in a variety of aged and unaged styles—but the area is crammed full of venerable quintas (estates) producing noteworthy red and white wines, in addition to a variety of ports.

The Douro Valley is in northern Portugal, a few hundred miles from Portugal’s capital city of Lisbon. It’s named for the Douro River, which begins in Spain in the east and flows west, making its way through the region until it reaches the iconic city of Porto and the Atlantic Ocean.

The Douro Valley accounts for 61,000 acres along the western edge of the country and was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2001 in recognition of the ingenuity of its narrow, mountaintop terraces and continued quality in the face of staggering geographical challenges.

Archaeological evidence in the Douro Valley points to winemaking practices throughout the region as early as the third century AD. It wasn’t until the 1600s, however, when the Douro Valley emerged onto the world stage as the center of Portuguese winemaking—international trade routes and European exploration sent demand for barrels of port wine skyrocketing.

Port wine was such a valuable commodity between the English and Portuguese in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that regulations around its production and trade were established by royal charter in 1756—making the Douro the world’s first formally demarcated wine region.

Port wine’s overwhelming popularity meant that the region’s other table wines generated little to no demand outside its own borders; though winemakers throughout the 1950s and 1970s continued to experiment with more ambitious wines, production, interest, and exports remained dominated by port until the latter half of the twentieth century, when Portugal joined the European Economic Community.

The Douro Valley is categorized into three main subregions:

• Cima Corgo: As the largest of the three subregions, Cima Corgo, centered around the riverside city of Pinhão, produces about half of the entire valley’s wine. Most vintage port is made here, though the steep slopes of the area, composed mostly of schist and granite, make growing and harvesting vines a challenge: Some Cima Corgo vineyards span two different terroirs and climates, requiring two separate sweeps come harvest time.
• Baixo Corgo: Coastal Baixo Corgo, or lower Corgo, is known best for producing some lighter fortified wines and a large share of the country’s table wines—referred to as either Vinho de Mesa or Vinho Regional. The temperatures and accessibility are much less extreme than in Cima Corgo, and as a result, Baixo Corgo more easily produces larger batches of its wines. Its main hub is Peso da Régua.
• Douro Superior: Hot, arid Douro Superior, or upper Douro, which nudges right up to the Spanish border, is the least developed of the three subregions, thanks mostly to its inaccessible terrain.

There are upwards of 80 grape varieties used in the production of both port wine and table wines in the Douro Valley, and it’s not uncommon for the exact percentages in any given blend to go unknown, even by the winemaker.

Table wines include Tinto Douro (red wine) and Douro Branco (white wine), as well as a few sparkling labels; Lamego, though it’s known as the birthplace of port, is known today for its production of both dry red and semi-dry white sparkling wines. Many of the most widely planted red wine grapes are indigenous to Portugal, namely Touriga Franca, Touriga Nacional, Tinta Roriz (Tempranillo), Tinto cão, and Tinta Barraco. While these grapes showcase fresh, ripe red fruits and notes of chocolate and caramel in port, in still wines, they can be unabashedly bold and tannic or lighter in style, best compared to Bordeaux-style blends.

Vinho verde might be Portugal’s most familiar easy-drinking, fizzy white wine, but white wines from the Douro are just as bright and light-bodied, but with less of a focus on green fruit and more minerality. The top white grapes include rabigato, viosinho, malvasia fina, moscatel (muscat), and gouveio.

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