12 Port anD the Douro
PoMBal anD the early
regulations
Pombal acted to quell the problems in the Douro with characteristic decisiveness. In
1756, with the backing of a number of significant Portuguese growers, he created the
Real Companhia das Vinhas do Alto Douro. The new Companhia or Company was all-
embracing. It was empowered to fix prices, protect the authenticity of the product, raise
taxes and even to grant rights as to which taverns could sell Port wine in the city of Oporto
and three leagues beyond. It had exclusive trading rights with Brazil, and all other Port wine
for export had to be bought from the Companhia. A decree dated 10 September 1756 fixed
prices at 25 to 30 escudos a pipe for Port of primary quality and 20 to 25 escudos a pipe
for secondary wines. Pombal’s Companhia was effectively a state monopoly that seems to
have been constituted like a rather bureaucratic co-operative. The board of directors was
Besteiros, S. Miguel do Outeiro, Anadia and other places’ (i.e. Vinho Verde and Bairrada),
making up for the ‘lack of natural goodness with elderberry, pepper, sugar and other
admixtures’. These wines arrived in England ‘devoid of taste, body, colour or goodness of
any kind; so that having gained preference over all others for strength, colour and delicacy
of flavour it came to pass that not every other wine was preferred to it, but every other
beverage’.
This unprincipled over-production brought about a slump in the trade and prices
came down dramatically. A pipe of wine worth 60 escudos at the turn of the century fell
to 48 in 1731 and just 6.3 escudos after 1750. With supply outstripping demand, the
farmers could not find any buyers. In September 1754 the shippers didn’t even bother to
visit the Douro, contenting themselves with a circular to the growers accusing them of
adulteration and threatening to expose the culprits. The wines were described as having ‘a
fiery spirit like gunpowder alight, the colour of ink, the sweetness of Brazil and the aromas
of India’. Provided that the ‘aromas of India’ referred to spice, the tasting note doesn’t
seem too derogatory. The residual sweetness in the wines of the day was controversial,
for the Factors (members of the Oporto Factory) wrote that growers were ‘in the habit of
checking the fermentation too soon, by putting brandy into them while still fermenting,
a practice which must be considered diabolical’. They clearly didn’t use enough spirit for
‘after this the wines will not remain quiet, but are continually tending to ferment and to
become ropy and acid’.
Over the preceding years, the small Douro farmers had clearly done well from the wine
trade for, as John Croft invidiously observes, they strutted through the streets of Oporto
‘like so many peacocks ... and thus vied with each other in gaudiness of apparel’. Now
they came down to Oporto cap in hand pleading with the shippers to buy their wines.
Needing no more, the British shippers refused and repeated their accusations. The Douro
growers, desperate at the loss of their livelihoods, took their complaint to the highest
authority: José I’s autocratic Prime Minister, best known as the Marquês de Pombal.