Port anD the Douro uP to Date 51With an end to the Douro’s isolation, the region’s commercial prospects have diversified
and improved. Inhabitants have returned to villages they deserted in the 1960s, and
the rural landscape has been transformed (mostly for the worse) by the construction
of anomalous little houses whose architectural styles derive from France and Germany
where many of their occupants spent the intervening years. On the outskirts of São João
de Pesqueira one such house is famously decorated with bombs, its owner having been
engaged in fighting the colonial wars!
At the start of the twenty-first century, measures were finally taken to protect much
of the unique Douro landscape from further development. The Alto Douro Vinhateiro
was granted UNESCO World Heritage status in 2001. Out of the 250,000 hectares that
constitute the demarcated region, 24,600 have been protected, extending from Rede in
the Baixo Corgo all the way upstream to Pocinho in the Douro Superior, as well as the
lower reaches of the Rivers Corgo, Varosa, Tavora, Torto and Pinhão. It includes nearly
all the finest pre- and post-phylloxera walled terraces as well as quintas, adegas, chapels,
villages and ruins, some dating back to before the Pombaline era. The main blot on the
Douro landscape is the town (officially the city) of Régua that has grown, seemingly
uncontrolled, in all directions, although this is just outside the boundary of the World
Heritage Site.
Port uP to Date
In 2011, a total of just over 34,000 growers were farming 45,000 hectares of vineyard in
the Douro, mostly in the Baixo Corgo sub-region, just under a third of which is under
vine. In common with most of northern Portugal, the Douro region is fragmented into tiny
holdings, numbering over 142,000. Over 80 per cent of these are less than half a hectare in
size, and a mere 0.01 per cent of holdings have an area greater than 30 hectares. The average
area of vineyard per grower is 1.32 hectares, divided between 4.17 plots.
In the five years up to and including 2011, the average benefício (i.e. the amount of
grape must authorised to make Port) was 110,700 pipes (60.89 million litres) which
converts into 76.11 million litres of Port. The production of unfortified Douro wine,
which has increased markedly in recent years, averaged 56.27 million litres (2008 to
2011). These figures, however, disguise the huge variation in production between different
vintages, which is both a function of the climate and the licensing system or benefício (see
Chapter 2). Douro wines are covered separately in Chapter 6.
During the 1980s and 1990s, world-wide Port shipments grew strongly, peaking
at 10.3 million cases in 2000 (representing a value of 415 million euros) but falling
gradually to 9.2 million cases (353 million euros) in 2011. Despite this, the so-called
‘Special Categories’ of Port, which include reserve, aged tawnies, colheita, LBV, crusted
and vintage, have been growing steadily. They currently make up 20 per cent of all sales
by volume and 37 per cent by value (see Chapter 4).
France has been the principal market for Port for over thirty years, taking over from
the United Kingdom in volume terms in 1963. With sales of 2.53 million nine-litre