A History of Wine in Europe, 19th to 20th Centuries, Volume I

Winegrowing and Regional Features

Silvia A. Conca Messina, Stéphane Le Bras, Paolo Tedeschi, Manuel Vaquero Piñeiro, Silvia A. Conca Messina, Stéphane Le Bras, Paolo Tedeschi, Manuel Vaquero Piñeiro, Silvia A. Conca Messina, Stéphane Le Bras, Paolo Tedeschi, Manuel Vaquero Piñeiro

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9783030277727
• Topic: Économie
• Subtopic: Histoire économique

This two-volume collection analyses theevolution ofwine production in European regions across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. France and Italy in particular have shaped modern viticulture, by improving oenological methods and knowledge, thendisseminating them internationally.

This first volume looks closely at the development of winegrowing, with cases ranging from Italian and French regions to smaller producers such as Portugal and Slovenia.

© The Author(s) 2019

S. A. Conca Messina et al. (eds.)A History of Wine in Europe, 19th to 20th Centuries, Volume IPalgrave Studies in Economic Historyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27772-7_2

Begin Abstract

The “Grapes Country”: Portuguese Viticulture from the Early Nineteenth Century Until the New Millennium

Conceição Andrade Martins¹ and Ana Cardoso de Matos²

(1)

Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

(2)

University of Évora-CIDEHUS, Évora, Portugal

Conceição Andrade Martins (Corresponding author)

Ana Cardoso de Matos

Email: [email protected]

Keywords

PortoPortuguese viticultureWine multinational companies

End Abstract

Introduction

Historically, vines have been cultivated all over the country and wine is an important production and a key article of our balance of trade.¹ From the fifteenth century, the Portuguese expansion process increased the demand for wines by the vessels that annually left the Tagus River in the search of lightening the unknown and discovers “new worlds”. Not just because wine was an essential product for the survival of the crews of the sea fleets that crossed the South Atlantic and the Indian Ocean, but also because it was an important commodity of the world’s maritime trade.² Despite this, Portuguese wines trade overseas was quite irregular until the beginning of the eighteenth century. Its take off dates back to the last quarter of the seventeenth and is directly connected, firstly with the international political-diplomatic and military context of the second half of that century and the rivalry between the British and the French.³ Secondly, with the development of the Portuguese–British trade encouraged, largely, by the 1654 treaty (Westminster Treaty) which awarded “huge” privileges to English merchants trading in the Portuguese “economic space”, above all in Brazil, including entitlement to lower duties.⁴ And thirdly, with the maritime and commercial competition between the British and the Dutch’s which, “crossing” the Portuguese sea ports, increased the demand of national products, among which wine proved to be a good “return merchandise”. By the end of the eighteenth, wine products—wine, spirit, and vinegar—already accounted for about half of mainland’s articles exports, but for the United Kingdom, Portugal’s major trade partner, their weight was much higher: 84%.⁵

It is, therefore, not surprising that viticulture has become such an important branch of the national economy that, from the mid eighteenth on, imposed itself as a national “question” and compelled the state to interfere and regulate it. Especially the Port wine sector where, from 1756 onwards “the state was always present (… and even) in the periods of economic liberalism and free trade, its presence was stronger than in the rest of the economy and society” (Barreto 1988, p. 374). It was, in fact, in that year (1756) that Prime Minister Pombal demarcated the first wine district in the world—the Alto Douro’s vineyards demarcated region—regulated all the winegrowing process inside Douro’s wine district and established a company with royal privileges to supervise the wine production , manufacture, transport and trade inside and outside this region, namely in the warehouses of Gaia and Oporto.⁶ Thus, Port is the oldest controlled denomination of origin.

A century and a half later (1907/1908) six new wine regions would be demarcated: Two in the north and central north of the country (Vinho Verde and Dão); three in the south, nearby Lisbon (Carcavelos, Colares and Moscatel de Setúbal), and one in the islands (Madeira). At present, there are much more oenological terroirs protected spread out all over the mainland and islands (See Map 1), and, as a major old world wine country, Portugal boasts two wine producing regions UNESCO world heritage sites: the Douro valley wine district and the Pico island wine region in the Azores.

Map 1

Portuguese wine-growing districts

(Source Authors eleboration of Infovini’s Regiões Vitivinícolas Map)

At the turn of the millennium the importance of wine sector in Portugal can be measured by the following indicators: (i) the cultivated area under vines was around 250,000 hectares (the 8th at world level), which corresponds to 6.8% of the Portuguese agricultural surface, the higher vineyard’s density in EU and in the main world wine countries⁷; (ii) almost 40% of this acreage is dedicated to quality wines (VQPRD), rising this proportion to higher values in the north-west and north-east of the country (See Table 1); (iii) at the same period (1995/2005), the wine production exceeds 7 million of hectolitres (10º world wine producer and 5º EU), corresponding to 4% of EU production and 2.6% of the whole world production; (iv) the value of this production in the agriculture branch is over 8%, less than the French (around 10%), close to the Italian (9%) and higher than the Spanish (3%); (v) exports amount to about 2.5 million hectolitres (3.5% of the world market) and its value rounds 530 million Euros; and (vi) this branch involves almost 250,000 wine farming companies , the majority of small and very small scale, and more than 100 cooperative wineries accounting for half of the wine production.

Table 1

Portuguese viticultural land (2010)

Wine regions	Land in wine (hect)	% total land in wine	Land in VQPRD^c (hect)	% VQPRD^c regional land in wine
Northwest (Minho)	31,010	13.0	29,388	94.8
Northeast (T Montes^a)	68,765	28.9	41,358	60.1
Center (Beiras)	56,663	23.8	12,555	22.2
South Center (Estremadura, Lx e Vale Tejo^b)	52,752	22.2	5058	9.6
South (Alentejo and Algarve)	25,473	10.7	9125	35.8
Mainland Portugal	234,663	98.7	97,484	41.5
Azores	1700	0.7	228	13.4
Madeira	1423	0.6	497	34.9
Total Portugal	237,786	100.0	98,209	41.3

Notes

^aIncludes Douro’s wine district where the proportion of VQPRD wines is much higher (around 85%)

^bIncludes Setúbal Peninsula

^cVQPRD are Quality Wines Produced in a Specified Region

Source IVV, Yearbook 2011 as at 31 July 2010–

The aim of this chapter is to highlight the relevance of vitiviniculture and wine trade to Portuguese economy and society, and to put in evidence the main changes and progresses of this branch since the turn of the nineteenth century.

Wine Tradition in Portug...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• Terroir, Institutions and Improvements in European Wine History: An Introduction
• The “Grapes Country”: Portuguese Viticulture from the Early Nineteenth Century Until the New Millennium
• History of a Vineyard in Champagne: From Eighteenth to Twenty-First Century
• The Development of Winegrowing, Winemaking and Distribution of Wine in the Lower Moselle (Eighteenth–Twentieth Centuries)
• The Mountain Wine, 1800–1900: Case Studies from the Provinces of Sondrio and Trento
• “The Idea of Improvement”: Theorized vs. Practised Vine Growing in Friuli
• The Development of Winegrowing and Oenology in Southern Piedmont and Oltrepò Pavese
• The Improvement of the Production and Quality: The Case of Wine Production in the Eastern Lombardy During the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Provinces of Bergamo and Brescia)
• Viniculture in the Italy of the Mezzadria (Tuscany, Umbria and Marche)
• Viticulture and Winemaking in Abruzzo from the Unification of Italy to the Development of the Cooperation System
• Winegrowing in Slovenia in the Twentieth Century
• Back Matter