66 Port anD the Douro
Men who shaPeD the Douro
the ceVd: José antónio Ramos Pinto Rosas (1919–1996) and
João nicolau de almeida (1949– )
the ceVd (centro de estudos Vitivinicolas do douro) was established in the late 1960s
to examine the mechanisation of douro vineyards. Backed by the leading shippers, two
of the main pioneering figures came from the then family-owned Port house of Ramos
Pinto. José antónio Rosas was passionate about the douro, especially viticulture. his
nephew João nicolau de almeida recalls going to the Ramos Pinto lodge for his first job
interview with ‘tio tó’ after graduating in oenology from Bordeaux University in 1974.
the conversation was short: ‘oh pá (‘mate’), it is no good talking here in Porto. What if
we go to the douro for the weekend? so we went. in two days of walking up and down
he demonstrated his preoccupation about the inertia of the region, he worried, blushed,
gesticulated, named those responsible. he showed me, step by step, a vine that was
diseased, another poor thing that had died, next to one which was a beauty (tinta
Barroca was his favourite) so that it was difficult to move on as each vine was a living
individual to be looked at with love and respect.’
With the backing of the ceVd José antónio Rosas devised the system of patamares
that are now widely used in the douro, the first of which were constructed at Ramos
Pinto’s Quinta do Bom Retiro in the early 1970s. Gesticulating like a professor who has
solved a particularly knotty mathematical problem, João nicolau de almeida illustrates
the saving in costs: ‘one man can now carry out the same amount of work in ten hours
that used to take fifteen men a total of fifteen hours.’ in 1974, after studying military
maps of the region, Rosas established Quinta de ervamoira on relatively flat land in
the douro superior and laid it out vertically (vinha ao alto) by grape variety. Using their
empirical knowledge of the douro, the two men embarked on a project to select the five
best grape varieties (the so-called ‘top cinco’). the results of this study were presented
in a communication delivered by both men in 1981 at the University of trás-os-Montes.
despite the controversy this caused at the time, the conclusions of this study were
accepted by the World Bank, which supported the planting of 2,500 new hectares of
vines. Rosas was well into his seventies when he bought his own property, Quinta da
touriga, which is now run by his son Jorge, who is also export director of Ramos Pinto.
together, José antónio Rosas and João nicolau de almeida literally shaped the douro
in the last quarter of the twentieth century.