Margaret Rand explores the ways in which two of the Douro’s leading producers have developed their viticultural practice in the 40 years since the region was reshaped by large-scale, World Bank-funded plantings.
In the words of Charles Symington, “There is very little in viticulture in the Douro that is the same as 30 years ago.” You could extend that period back to before phylloxera; lots of those old terraces still exist, replanted to the same pattern, and are the ones we picture when we think of the Douro Valley: dry-stone walls and single rows of vines, stitching the topography of the hills as eloquently as any contour lines on a map. They are silently expressive of the improbability of growing great wine here; the back-breaking labor, the heat, the necessity of extracting something from apparently nothing.
The drivers of change in the vineyards have varied over the years. Replanting after phylloxera, of course; and there was the big move for shippers to become growers; there were the World Bank-funded plantings of the 1980s (the Douro’s New World phase); there was the growth in table wines and the shrinking market for Port. This piece focuses on two companies in the years since the World Bank plantings: the Fladgate Partnership and Symington Family Estates. And it focuses on the two big changes brought by those plantings: design of vineyards and grape varieties. Do the views of Fladgate and the Symingtons coincide on these matters? Not entirely.
Both, however, present something of a Whig view of history, because they bring us to a point where Port is better than it has ever been, even if the challenges are great. Progress! Those World Bank plantings might not have been quite the future, as it turned out, but everybody learned a lot from them. How else do you find out about each variety—the right exposure, the right altitude, the right amount of shelter, the right rootstock—
if not by planting it separately?
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If you go back far enough in the Douro, you hit field blends. To the improving, technical mind-set of the 1980s, field blends were backward, a mess and a muddle. David Guimaraens of the Fladgate Partnership reckons that mixed vineyards weren’t a muddle at all but the result of detailed understanding of 100 or more different vine varieties, and that all that empirical knowledge was lost when shippers—like Taylor’s and Fonseca and the Symingtons—started acquiring more vineyards. The British-shipper buyers thought they knew best, he suggests: modernity and rationality ruled, and a lot of old knowledge was lost or discarded. As you might infer, Guimaraens loves field blends; Charles Symington emphatically does not.
Varietal plantings were not an entirely new idea: Dick Yeatman had planted varietal plots at Vargellas in 1927. There were varietal plantings at Quinta do Vesúvio dating from the 1970s, before the Symingtons bought the quinta. It was Cockburn’s that planted the widely ignored Touriga Nacional at Quinta do Ataíde in the Upper Douro many decades ago; the nursery there later supplied much of the Touriga Nacional for planting elsewhere.
The pace of change accelerated. When Fladgate bought Quinta do Panascal in 1977, Bruce Guimaraens wanted it to be 100% mechanized, with single-variety fermentations, steel tanks, the works. When Bruce’s son David returned from his studies in Australia in 1990, all the old vineyards at Quinta da Vargellas were set to be grubbed up. It was only after they made their first Vinhas Velhas wine from them that they wondered if they should look at old vines in a different way. In some ways you might think we’re coming full circle now, with the current fascination with old vines and even field blends; but in fact, we’re coming to a very different place, because the Douro is a different place now.
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The Douro has more than 100 different grape varieties; the World Bank planting program settled on five. They were Touriga Nacional, Tinta Roriz, Touriga Franca (which Guimaraens always calls Touriga Francesa, so we will, too, when talking of Fladgate wines), Tinta Barroca, and Tinta Cão. It was probably inevitable that that would seem absurdly constrained; it would be like living on nothing but peas when shops are overflowing with artichokes and aubergines and asparagus. And the climate has changed and continues to change. The solutions for then are not the solutions for now.
Guimaraens talks of individual vineyard identity and how that lessened with rationalization. “When we launched Vargellas Vinhas Velhas,” he says, “we put [the difference in character] down to the age of the vines. But when the vines of the 1970s and 1980s got old, they were not the same. They weren’t the same mix of vines.
“The first generation of post-phylloxera plantings—from the last decade of the 19th century and the first three decades of the 20th—had complexity and identity. The 1970s and 1980s plantings had more color, but they all tasted the same; they were fruit-bombs. They produced very good Port, but they didn’t have the same identity. Unless we can produce that same identity, we will have failed as a generation.”
The five recommended varieties never took over completely. A look at the varieties that make the three Fladgate brands—Croft, Fonseca, and Taylor’s—shows that all three rely heavily on Touriga Francesa, followed by Roriz, Tinta Barroca, and Touriga Nacional in different proportions. Then come an assortment of Tinta Francisca, Cão, Tinta Amarela, Tinta Aguiar, and Tinta de Barca, according to the wine. Then the seasoning—at Croft: Rufete, Alicante Bouschet, Tinta de Barca, and others; at Fonseca: Moreto, Tinta Bastardinha, Rufete, and others; at Taylor’s: Cornifesto, Rufete, Casculho, Malvasia Preta, Sousão, and others.
“Tinta de Barca (which nearly disappeared) has bitterness,” says Guimaraens; “if you taste the berry, it’s bitter. The Taylor’s ‘grip’ was very much down to Vargellas; and in the old vineyards there, there’s Tinta de Barca. It was 20% of the old vineyards but very much less in the wine. On its own, it’s like light Pinot. How can that add to Vintage Port? But in co-ferments, varieties that have a secondary role—bitterness and astringency in this case—give an extra level of complexity. If you make it separately and add 3 or 4% in the tasting room, it doesn’t.
“Barroca has anthocyanins but no tannins. Bruce [his father] used to talk of Barroca lagares that were black. In ferments, you have to mix it with Roriz, which has lots of tannins. Old vineyards probably have no Touriga Nacional but lots of Barroca and Roriz.”
Varieties like this are the salt and pepper, he says. “When we replanted Panascal, we lost the old varieties, like Alicante Bouschet—it’s 2–7% of the old vines at Roêda. It was brought by Archibald as a replacement for elderberry. Elderberry was much used by the farmers for color.” And not always so very long ago either, he suggests.
To try to draw closer to those old plantings (“I haven’t got the guts to interplant yet,” he says), he’s planting microplots. The patamares on which the World Bank vines were planted were designed for mechanization and had two rows per terrace and an 11.5ft (3.5m) platform, and varieties were planted in large blocks and fermented separately. Since 2000, Guimaraens has retrieved old varieties and—using natural boundaries to form one fermentation batch and choosing the varieties accordingly—plants in microplots and ferments all together. He says he does no single-variety ferments now. “Microplots, because different varieties cope with different soil types.” Yes, it’s all schist, and that doesn’t vary much, but everything else does. “If there’s a ridge, it will be windier, and the soil will be less fertile and will control vigor. In a hollow, I might put Touriga Francesa, which is resistant—but it won’t ripen if the soil is too poor. Within one block you get different fertility and different aspects. If you play with that puzzle, you can put each variety in the best place. Patamares can run across three different soil types, and I will plant three different varieties.” At the 3.5ha (8.5-acre) Vinha Grande vineyard at Vargellas, he’s gradually planted nine varieties in microplots: Tinta de Barca, Cão, Roriz, Barroca, Amarela, Touriga Francesa, Tinta Francisca, Rufete, and Touriga Nacional.
“Some vineyards are more disciplined than others. The old Portuguese vineyards had more varieties and less discipline; British shippers had more discipline. But over 100 years, with vines dying and being replaced, that discipline became less.”
Monovarietal virtues
Over at the Symingtons, Charles Symington likewise thinks they’ve come a long way since the World Bank days. “I don’t feel that [those five varieties] were necessarily the best selection. I’m not keen on Cão; we’ve never had much success with it. It’s difficult to work; it doesn’t rot, it’s hardy, but it’s late-ripening, so you need good weather. We’ve picked it in November, and even then it wasn’t that ripe. Roriz produces well, but it makes relatively light wines. We tried to improve our Roriz by getting clones of Tempranillo from Rioja, and they transformed themselves into what Roriz is here. In Rioja, it has relatively small berries. In Portugal, it presents itself with bigger berries and less color; good for base wines for aged Tawnies, but not really interesting for Vintage Port. Barroca is a mainstay and the first clear casualty of climate change. In recent years it mostly has had no grapes: The berries shrink and dry out.”
In the Vilariça Valley in the Douro Superior, where the Symingtons make table wine at Quinta do Ataíde, two tectonic plates have pulled apart and created flat land, with pretty homogenous conditions. Where better for an experimental vineyard? There they’ve planted 52 of the 100 or so permitted varieties, red and white. “We’re trying to identify those that are useful from the perspective of climate change and resistance, for Port and for Douro DOC. Then we planted another library at Bomfim, with 29 varieties—we had to leave a lot of whites out—but it allows us to gauge their performance. And we have a further planting of 11 white varieties at Tapadinha in the Torto Valley at 600m [1,970ft], at the top of the hill, well aerated. That was a first for us. We planted ten different varieties in 2016–17. Then we have plantings at Paul [Symington]’s at 550m [1,800ft] in the Pinhão Valley above Cavadinha, and at 550–600m at Lamego, very high up, for whites and sparkling.”
They’re studying ten varieties and clones of each variety for drought adaptation. The idea is that the physical structure, even at a cellular level, of some varieties helps them survive better. They have a whole R&D team working on viticulture. “Fernando [Alvez] heads that. He used to work at the association that took data from that vineyard, so he was in the picture from the start.”
Field blends “can be very good but can be appalling. Not all old vineyards are good. We had a type of field blend at Quinta de Roriz—three rows of one, three rows of another in the same block, and that was a good solution. Roriz makes Chryseia, and in the end we preferred monovarietal plantings.” He adds, “You can do one of two things, according to your objectives. You can pick parts of a block at different times. But with field blends, if you add in different vigor levels and the number of varieties, you’re putting a lot to chance. It can work, but you have to be very lucky.
“In a monovarietal block in the Douro, you can have two weeks’ difference in a single block. If you add different varieties to that, you get into an awkward situation. Old field blends can work well because they produce very little. They’re more uniform because they have very small yields. It’s not unusual to have 500g [18 oz] or 300g [10 oz] per vine. With that, you get more uniformity. But it’s not true for younger field blends. And small amounts of green grapes can completely spoil a lot. I have two basic rules: I prefer to pick late rather than early, and I don’t want green.”
The Symingtons have mostly gone down the route of monovarietal plantings for Port, including earlier-ripening Souzão for color and acidity, up to 10% in the Vintage blend, and Alicante Bouschet, now used for Vintage and other Ports. “Alicante in my mind has replaced Barroca. It’s quite hardy, it has a lot of color, and it’s a short-cycle variety so more likely not to have problems, and we pick it in early September; it’s a safe bet. You have to spread risk. But it’s a very dominant variety, so we don’t use it in large quantities in a blend: just 10–15% probably.
“But just because you have monovarietals, it doesn’t mean you can’t co-ferment. When we’re picking Touriga Nacional, we can co-ferment it with Franca. Both are ripe and can be very interesting in a ferment. Instead of mixing vines in the vineyard, we mix them in the winery. It’s a lot safer.”
Their mainstays are Touriga Nacional and Touriga Franca (the grape that Guimaraens calls Touriga Francesa). “Most of our quintas are 60% Franca and Nacional—they’re like the Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot of the Douro. Others fit in around them.” And where he and Guimaraens agree is that the varieties of the future will be found in the varieties of the region. They do not need to look elsewhere.
Modern mountain viticulture
It’s not just what you plant and how, but how you design the vineyard. There are physical reasons why planting matters in the Douro. First, there’s erosion. We’re talking about mountain viticulture, and the thing you notice on mountains is gravity. Soil that starts at the top finds its way to the bottom. Rainstorms wash topsoil away; soils in the Douro tend to have only around 1% organic matter anyway, and you don’t want it ending up in the river. The different designs of terraces over the years have been aimed at reducing erosion, at keeping much-needed rainfall in the soil and keeping that soil on the terraces.
The design of the vineyards is also linked to sustainability. You can’t let weeds run riot, or in a few years vineyards return to scrub. But the sorts of terraces that need herbicides to tackle weeds because people can’t get at the slopes are clearly less sustainable than those where weeds can be managed without herbicides. And without green cover of any sort, you will have erosion with a capital E.
As an aside, neither Symington nor Guimaraens sees organics as being the whole answer: Guimaraens has tried it and learned from it; Symington has doubts about a system that allows copper while banning systemic products. “I’m not convinced it’s the best solution,” he says. “One day people will say, ‘What on Earth were they doing?’”
The old terraces, of course, were stone, and nothing grew on the walls. Patamares suffered from erosion, and it was difficult to control weeds manually because the slopes were too high, and there was no room to get in between the slope and the first row of vines. Symington likes patamares, certainly more than vertical planting: “Up-and-down planting suffers from erosion, homogeneity is low, with more vigor at the bottom of the block, and more nutrients go down the hill. Cover crops can help—different types at the top and bottom—but you’re fighting gravity. There’s a tendency to have episodes of rain, and if you have terraces, it has time to sink in. Water gains high speed going down a vineyard. If the gradient isn’t very big, you can do it. But at 25 or 30% you need patamares. It’s also incredibly difficult to do manual work on a slope.”
Terraces have got narrower since patamares were introduced—they went down to one row, and a platform of 7.5–8.2ft (2.3–2.5m), and Guimaraens has moved on to laser-guided terraces (it’s actually the bulldozers that are laser-guided) of 5ft (1.5m) wide, less high, with one row of vines, and a path between the vines and the slope above to allow access to the slope and its growth. A little tractor can run through and cut the growth, eliminating the need for herbicides. The flat parts of the terraces are 3° off the horizontal, which, he says, gives the right balance of rainwater penetration and runoff. It also gives greater vine density per hectare, which makes the best use of the land. The angle of slope of the embankment matters too: Alvez’s studies show that steep risers—1:1—are best for preventing erosion.
Mechanization and simplification
Work in the vineyards now has to be viewed through the lens of depopulation. You or I might think it’s the most beautiful place in the world, but people leave the Douro. The population there has gone down by 10% over the past 15 years alone, and there has been a steady decrease for 50 years. Better roads, better opportunities elsewhere, the young not wanting the hard lives of their parents… And the farther you go from Porto, the more people have left. Between 1981 and 2021, 14% of the population left the Baixa Corgo, 41% left the Cima Corgo, and 43% left the Douro Superior. “Since 2019,” says Guimaraens, “wages have risen 42%. Over the next four years, they’re forecast to rise another 30%.” Port producers have to simplify the tasks for which they need people, and they have to mechanize as well. He reckons that, in mountain viticulture, simplification is more important than mechanization. Fladgate would probably not disagree that it’s important, but they are working on some pretty whizzy machines.
Harvesting machines, for example. The Symingtons picked 150 tons by machine in 2024, “and we’re developing it further. We’ve been struggling with it for the past eight or nine years.” The Symingtons’ mechanical picker is an expensive piece of kit, and the problems are terraces and curves. Also, it can only pick in one direction, so at the end of a row, it has to reverse. It needs to be faster and more consistent, says Symington, “but it’s a solution for the future. We’re still picking 98% of our vines manually. But we need to double our workforce at vintage, and if we could get a machine to do half, then the workforce could do the rest.”
They’re looking at spraying with drones, “which have developed a lot lately. There’s been a massive revolution in drones, probably because of military use, and they’re becoming very efficient. We’ve done experiments at Bomfim, and they can spray one hectare [2.47 acres] in about 15 minutes.” You have to map the vineyard with the drone, and then it’s autonomous, and when it runs out of liquid or battery it comes back, replaces the battery, refills itself with liquid, and goes out and picks up where it left off. It’s not perfect, of course; wind can be a problem for the penetration of the spray, depending on whether you’re using a contact or systemic product. But it means less tractor use; and driving a tractor in the Douro is a dangerous job. “You can’t have just anyone driving a tractor here.”
Drones aren’t legal yet in the Douro; but irrigation wasn’t legal a little while ago. Guimaraens doesn’t really approve of irrigation and says its appearance was driven by table-wine producers; the Symingtons are testing it in plots at Bomfim, for Port, and at Ataíde. The tech is as high as it gets. There are 22 access points to measure water in the soil, with water probes 3.3ft (1m) deep that measure each 4in (10cm). Just before sunrise, someone is out picking leaves and putting them in a pressure chamber; there are thermal sensors around the trunks, measuring real-time transpiration. They measure the force the vine needs to get water out of the soil. They access each variety three times a week at flowering, budbreak, and veraison, and they do all this at Bomfim and at Ataíde, so on terraces and on the flat, in different climates. They’ve done these water measurements each week since 2017.
Here are some figures: If 0 is a leaf full of water and –0.2 is normal, –0.4 is stress. Then –0.8 is serious stress, and at –1 or –2 leaves can die. The aim is to avoid serious stress so it can be corrected. “The idea is to use other methods to protect the vine,” says Alvez, “so that irrigation is a last resort, to be used specifically to each variety.” In 2022, he says, the temperature reached 117°F (47°C) in Pinhão and 109°F (43°C) on the leaves at Bomfim, while the ground temperature at Bomfim was 134°F (56.7°C). “This is the challenge.”
When Fernando Alvez takes you around a vineyard, it is a different experience from being taken around by David Guimaraens. To put a label on either risks offending both; but Alvez is probably the more purely scientific, Guimaraens—what? The practical romantic? Both are rooted in their vines; between them they cover the spectrum of knowledge and heritage and future planning that is the Douro. My very great thanks to them both.
