The Mountain Wines of Portugal

By Richard Mayson

This short ebook comprises a guide to the mountainous wine-producing regions of Portugal, including the Douro, Trás-os-Montes, Távora-Varosa, Dão, Lafões and Beira Interior. Richard Mayson explores this northern part of Portugal, taking in the Douro’s less famous unfortified wines and the recently revived fine red wines of Dão, and visiting some of the most remote, beautiful and challenging wine growing scenery in the country. The viticultural traditions, geography, climate, appellation requirements and wine styles of each region are discussed. Mayson’s personal selection of producers follows and includes notes on the most interesting wines made by each. This handy book makes a great travelling companion for anybody visiting these wine regions and also acts as a guide to selecting wines at home.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Académie du Vin Library
• Release date: Oct 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9781917084093

Richard Mayson

Richard Mayson is an award-winning wine writer and an authority on Portuguese wine. A lecturer and consultant, he writes for Decanter and The World of Fine Wine and is a contributor to the Oxford Companion to Wine, the Larousse Encyclopedia of Wine and the World Atlas of Wine. His books include Port and the Douro, Madeira: The islands and their wines and The wines of Portugal. He is Chair of the Decanter World Wine Awards for Port and Madeira Wine.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

The mountains of north and central Portugal are but a small section of the great sierras and serras that surround the central Iberian meseta. They skirt the Biscay coast as the Cordillera Cantabrica and curve south through Galicia and León before heading into the Portuguese interior. These mountains mark an important climatic transition between Atlantic and continental Iberia. On the meseta, a vast tableland of bleak horizons at the centre of Spain, they talk of nueve meses de invierno y tres de infierno (‘nine months of winter and three of hell’). When the arid wind blows from the east into the mountains of north and central Portugal they still mutter nem bom vento, nem bom casamento vem de Espanha (‘neither good winds nor good weddings come from Spain’). In the spirit of European cooperation, the saying has been shortened to nem bom vento … but the sentiment remains much the same.

Many of Iberia’s best wines are to be found on the leeward side of this band of mountains. Rioja Alta and Alavesa, the two best subregions, are in the rain shadow of the Sierra da Cantabria. Ribera del Duero benefits both from shelter and altitude and potential is being realized in the mountains of Galicia and León. Port, still Portugal’s best known wine, is very much a product of the steady climatic transition from Atlantic to continental–Mediterranean and the unfortified wines of the Douro and Dão, as well as certain parts of Beira Alta, Beira Baixa and Alto Alentejo have the potential to be world class.

Portugal is top heavy with mountains. They drive a broad wedge through the north of the country subsiding just south of the Tagus with the Serra de São Mamede near Portalegre. Rainfall, high on the coast, rises significantly on the windward slopes before diminishing sharply on the leeward side. From 2,000 millimetres and more on the mountain peaks, annual rainfall diminishes sharply to as little as 400 millimetres per annum, perennial drought, along parts of the frontier with Spain. The planalto, or high plain in the farthest north-east corner of the country is really an extension of the meseta, although the word is never used in Portuguese, where it is known by the provincial name of Trás-os-Montes (‘behind the mountains’). This remote region, with its cold winters and hot summers, is sealed off from the Atlantic by a chain of granite serras reaching up to 1,500 metres in the Gerês. It has its own DOC, Trás-os-Montes and a Vinho Regional, Transmontano.

The Trás-os-Montes province ends at the River Douro, which cuts a chasm through the north of Portugal. Although it has never been a single administrative region, the upper Douro (or Douro Vinhateiro as it is sometimes called) has a strong territorial claim of its own. Where the river flows through the slate-like schist, the Douro and the lower reaches of its tributaries, the Corgo, Varosa, Távora, Torto, Pinhão, Tua, and Côa, collectively form one of the world’s most dramatic vineyard regions, demarcated both for Port (Vinho do Porto) and unfortified Douro wines.

The vineyards to the south of the Douro belong to the Beiras, a huge slice of central Portugal that splits into three. The land rises steeply into Beira Alta and although grapes for sparkling wines are grown on the so-called altos above Lamego, much of the country immediately south of the Douro is too high and too sheer, even for vines. The upper limit is about 900 metres above sea level. The DOC of Távora-Varosa, which covers the upper reaches of the Távora, Tedo, Varosa and Torto valleys, all of them tributaries of the Douro, is the first DOC in Portugal for sparkling wines. Terras de Cister is the small Vinho Regional. The giant massif of the Serra de Estrela rises to a height of 1,993 metres (the highest point in mainland Portugal) and the land around the city of Guarda to the north-east is bleak, windswept and barren. The granite soils are frequently too poor and shallow to support viticulture but there are outcrops of schist on the planalto, north of Pinhel, where there is a cooperative and a handful of growers have proved that vines can be cultivated to good effect.

Lazy ‘z’ bends in the mountains of northern Portugal

The Mondego, the largest river entirely within Portugal, bubbles up as a spring in the Serra de Estrela and loops round the northern flank of the mountains, carving a broad basin to the south of Viseu. This region takes its name not from the mighty Mondego but the diminutive River Dão that rises near Trancoso and crashes over granite boulders until it joins the Mondego downstream from Santa Comba Dão. Hemmed in by mountains, Dão is in the middle of the Atlantic–continental climatic transition. It has traditionally been the repository of some of Portugal’s finest red wines which, after a half-a-century of decline, have been undergoing a timely revival.

East and south of the Serra de Estrela the watershed belongs to the Tagus or Tejo and the upper reaches of the River Zêzere define a basin known as Cova de Beira. This is the heart of Beira Baixa (lower Beira), a province that extends all the way down to the River Tagus, south of Castelo Branco. Cova de Beira is a good fruit-growing area that is slowly turning to growing grapes and producing wine. Much of the wine from this region is bottled under the Vinho Regional of Terras da Beira. There is also a DOC, Beira Interior, that now encompasses parts of Beira Alta and Beira Baixa.

The text of this ebook is taken from my book The wines of Portugal, which covers in detail the wines of the entire country, including the islands of Madeira and the Azores. That book also takes a more detailed look at wine in the context of Portugal’s history, profiles the important grape varieties of the country and assesses the importance of both rosé and sparkling wines in the development and future of the Portuguese wine industry. For details on where you can get your copy (with an exclusive discount) please turn to the end of this ebook.

1

THE DOURO (AND PORT)

Port and Douro wines are intimately related and have long been hived off by the Portuguese authorities to be regulated by the Port and Douro Wine Institute (IVPD) rather than the Lisbon-based Instituto do Vinha e da Vinha (IVV). The purpose of this section of the book is not to discuss Port wine in any detail but to cover the expanding category of unfortified red and white wines. Since 1979 these have been given the right to