220 Port anD the Douro
cruz
Gran Cruz Porto, Sociedade Comercial de Vinhos SA
Rua José Mariani, 390, 4400-195 Vila nova de Gaia
tel. (351) 223 746 460
http://www.portocruz.net
Almost unknown in English-speaking markets, Porto Cruz is a bestseller in France and
Belgium/Luxembourg. With annual sales of around ten million bottles, Cruz is the
largest single brand of Port. The company was established in 1887 and was bought in
1974 by the French drinks distribution group Martiniquaise, who also own Justino’s and
Henriques & Henriques in Madeira.
Cruz is simple, clever and very efficient exercise in branding. Around 70 per cent of all the
wine is bought in from co-operatives and the company has very few employees. The lodges
are impressive, with 230 wooden balseiros holding 45,000 litres of wine each and stainless
steel vats each with a capacity of 350,000 litres. Highly automated, Cruz were one of the first
companies to mechanise bottling. The bestselling wine is the Cruz tawny, a soft, easy-drinking,
lightweight wine which spends a year in wood and goes down well in France as an aperitif.
Cruz also produces white Port, ruby, reserve, ten- and twenty- year-old tawny, LBV and, since
1982, vintage. Wines in the latter category are sweet, rather jammy and early maturing. Cruz
also own C. da Silva, and together their annual sales amount to twenty-four million bottles.
At the time of writing Porto Cruz are planning on moving their entire operation to the
Douro, leaving a visitor centre and restaurant in Vila Nova de Gaia.
hunt Roope
Hunt Roope has one of the longest and most colourful histories in the Port business. It
was established by a number of the Dartmouth and Devon families of Newman, Roope,
Holdsworth, Hunt and Teage. The Newmans carried out a thriving trade in dried cod
(bacalhau) with their own ships as far back as the fifteenth century. In 1735 Hunt Roope
opened lodges in Vila Nova de Gaia and Viana do Castelo, the former for wine, the latter
for fish. The company’s ships had a number of escapades and adventures; for instance,
their brig Jenny, en route to London with a cargo of Port, beat off a French privateer with
eighteen guns. This is commemorated in a panel of azulejos (tiles) on the wall of the adega
at Quinta da Eira Velha, which belonged to the Newmans until 2007. Ferreira bought
the firm of Hunt Roope in 1956. With the exception of a Hunt Roope 1963, all vintage
Ports were bottled under the name Tuke Holdsworth.
Quinta do infantado
Quinta do Infantado – Vinhos do Produtor SA
Rua Pedro escobar, 140-a 4150-596 Porto
tel. (351) 226 100 865
http://www.quintadoinfantado.com
Infantado began selling Port on the domestic market in 1979 and was already well established
by the time the law changed in 1986 allowing wines to be exported directly from the Douro