74 Port anD the Douro
plots strategically placed in the three different sub-regions of the Douro. Based on
empirical information gathered from some of the leading Port tasters and blenders of the
day, ten different red grape varieties were selected for study. After five years of intensive
investigation, five red varieties were selected in 1981. Touriga Nacional, Touriga Francesa,
Tinta Barroca, Tinta Roriz and Tinto Cão became known as the top cinco (top five).
Under the PDRITM or World Bank Scheme of the 1980s, 2,500 hectares of the five
varieties (mainly Touriga Francesa and Tinta Roriz) were subsequently batch planted in
single varietal plots.
toDay’s vineyarDs: BaCk to the
Future?
Since the varietal breakthrough in the early 1980s, viticultural research in the Douro has
been advanced by a privately funded association known as ADVID (Associação para o
Desenvolvimento da Viticultura Duriense). This was established by a number of leading
Port shippers in 1982 with the modernisation of viticulture in the Douro as its principal
objective There are around a hundred members, including most of the leading single
estates. ADVID’s brief is wide-ranging and covers research into mechanisation, methods of
cultivation, soil erosion, disease, rootstocks, grape varieties and yield. ADVID has a number
of weather stations in the Douro (one of which is on top of the giant Sandeman Don on
the opposite side of the river from Régua) where pollen is monitored during flowering in
an attempt to predict yields. The results are announced in early August shortly before the
annual benefício is issued in the communicado da vindima (communiqué issued by the IVP
before the start of the harvest).
Cockburn’s instigated a programme of massal selection, the first in Portugal, in the
late 1970s. This led directly to the first clonal selection that took place at Cockburn’s
Vilariça vineyard and Ferreira’s Quinta do Seixo in the early 1980s under the supervision
of Professor Antero Martins of the University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro (UTAD)
at Vila Real. There are now over sixty Portuguese varieties undergoing clonal selection,
although in the Douro the main emphasis has been on the capricious Touriga Nacional
with the object of balancing commercial yields with acceptably high sugar levels. The
selection of eight Touriga Nacional clones to date has brought about an increase in yields
of over 30 per cent. Professor Nuno Magalhães of UTAD, viticultural consultant to Quinta
do Noval, complains that clonal selection has been subject to the whims of fashion and
that too many clones have been selected for productivity rather than quality.
The viticultural research that has been undertaken by the larger growers since the
1970s has bypassed the majority of growers in the Douro, especially those in the Baixo
Corgo who continue to tend their tiny plots in much the same way as they did in their
great-grandfathers’ day. Despite thirty years of replanting, over 50 per cent of all the
vineyards in the Douro are still planted with the time-honoured pick and mix – hence
the shrug of the shoulders when you ask a question about varieties that would be fairly