2 Port anD the Douro
from this period which are known as either pias or laragetas. It is likely they were used for
making both olive oil and wine.
In 711, Iberia was invaded by Muslims from the south and within five years most of
the peninsula had been conquered by Islam. Viticulture clearly suffered under Islamic
rule. Although winemaking was tacitly permitted during the early part of the occupation,
it was certainly forbidden by the Almorvarids, who took a more orthodox line. The
Douro itself was described by the Moorish geographer Al Idrisi as ‘a big river with a
rapid, rushing current, full and deep’ and the landscape between the Rivers Douro and
Minho as ‘a populous land with towns, castles and many tilled fields’. There are remains
of Moorish castles above the Douro at Numão and Lavandeira that kept the Christians
at bay until the middle of the ninth century. As they drove south from Galicia they
established a new seat of government at Portucale, one of the first towns to be repopulated
and which lent its name to the surrounding terra or province.
Portucale became the embryo of a new kingdom when it was awarded to Henry of
Burgundy, who married Teresa, daughter of the king of neighbouring León in 1094.
Henry, a cousin of the Duke of Burgundy, was reputed to have brought the Pinot Noir
grape to Portugal (a name which lives on in the Douro under the guise of a variety called
Tinta Francisca) but otherwise made little impact on his adopted territory. He died in
1112 leaving his powerful wife and a young son, then no more than five years old, named
Afonso Henriques. For a time the nascent Portugal was governed by the boy’s mother, the
scheming Countess Teresa, who favoured her new Galician husband over and above her
son. However, the Portuguese barons took sides and backed the young Afonso Henriques
against his mother, thereby consolidating his court at Guimarães and extending his
authority into the mountains as far east as Bragança. The first Douro quintas date from
this time. Properties like Quinta da Folgosa (now Quinta dos Frades, on the front cover
of this book), Paço de Monsul and Quinta do Mosteiró were established by the powerful
Cistercian order to supply monasteries at Santa Maria das Salzedas, São João de Tarouca
and São Pedro das Águias.
In 1128 Teresa’s forces were defeated. She was exiled to Galicia and Afonso Henriques
became the first ruler of Portugal. He immediately graduated from plain ‘Portugalensium
princeps’ to become the self-styled ‘Alphonsus gloriosissimus princeps et Dei gratia
Portugalensium rex’. Having consolidated his rule in the north, Afonso Henriques
embarked on a series of campaigns to expel the Moors from their territory to the
south. He was greatly aided by English, German and Flemish crusaders who already
knew something of the coast of western Iberia from the time of the First Crusade. By all
accounts, the English were about as welcome as today’s football hooligans, and the pirate
crusaders gained a distinctly unsavoury reputation as plunderers, drunkards and rapists.
Afonso Henriques succeeded in diverting their misdemeanours from the Christians in
northern Iberia to the Muslims immediately to the south. In around 1140, a fleet of
seventy ships carrying English and Norman crusaders bound for Palestine sailed into the
Douro and the soldiers agreed to join the Portuguese in a combined attack on the Moors.
Induced to stay in Portugal with the promise of good cheap wine and spoils ahead, they