PORT: Through the Douro

With hot and dry growing conditions, a confusing mass of indigenous varietals and damaging storms, Port faces big challenges in the Douro Valley. But, says Richard Woodard, quality is at a high and the trade is poised to move forward

Quinta do Grifo nestles in one of the wildest and most isolated vineyard locations in Europe. Taking its name from the huge griffon vultures that wheel and soar among the cliffs overhead, it faces Spain across one of the loneliest stretches of the Douro. At night, the silence is absolute.

Grifo was bought by Rozès in 2004, joining near neighbour Quinta de Vega Redonda in a roster of Douro Superior vineyards that also includes Quinta de Canameira, just downstream from the border town of Barca d’Alva. This frontier country is a different world from the famous quintas of the Cima Corgo – electricity has only just reached Canameira – but are the vineyards any good?

Not surprisingly, Rozès general manager Antónia Saraiva thinks they are. The hot and dry conditions – even by Douro standards – suit Tinta Amarela in particular, he believes, discouraging the grey rot which can be such a problem further down the valley. Similarly, he argues, Touriga Franca can achieve better results here than in the vineyards around Régua.

This exciting potential has tempted Vranken-owned Rozès into a planting programme which will expand the total area under vine across the three quintas to over 100 hectares by 2009. And, while the traditional Port varieties feature strongly, there’s room too for lesser lights like Amarela, Sousão, Tinta Francisca and Tinta Brazileira.

Such an investment comes with inherent risks. With the Douro’s 40,000ha of vineyards currently producing more wine than the world needs, planting on any large scale is open to question, even if these grapes are mostly destined for high-end premium Ports and Douro table wines.

Then there is the climate. It’s not just the remoteness of the valley’s far-eastern stretches that have led the major shippers to shy away from the Douro Internacional: this is one of the driest parts of Europe, with typical annual rainfall of less than 400mm, roughly 40% less than in the Cima Corgo.

This leads Symington Family Estates joint managing director Paul Symington to question the future of the Douro Superior’s upper reaches. “Its potential is probably decreasing,” he argues. “If all the predictions regarding the effects of global warming on the Douro Valley are to be trusted, it will soon become too hot and too dry to grow grapes there. There will be a tendency to move the vineyards to higher areas and further west, where it is cooler and damper.”

Similarly, David Guimaraens, chief winemaker at The Fladgate Partnership, believes the combination of extreme dryness and excessive solar exposure can create “unbalanced” wines in warmer years. “Even the granting of irrigation rights – thus far only permitted for new plantings and in extreme circumstances – may not stop berries being burnt in the hottest months”, he says.

The famous five
The jury may still be out on the potential of vineyards like Quinta do Grifo, but there is less argument on the question of grape varietals. Ever since five red varieties were selected for block planting in 1981 – Touriga Nacional, Touriga Franca, Tinta Barroca, Tinta Roriz and Tinto Cão – this “top cinco”, and Touriga Nacional in particular, has received a disproportionate amount of attention.

Disproportionate because, as Symington points out, only 3% of the Douro’s vines are Touriga Nacional, mainly because its undoubted quality is matched by its capricious nature in the vineyard and stingy cropping levels.

Older vineyards remain a hotch-potch of different varietals, making viticultural management and harvesting a logistical nightmare. But they also give added layers of complexity which are evident in the bottle, says Guimaraens. “Some of the best Douro table wines are coming from old vineyards, like Doña Maria, Dirk Niepoort and Crasto,” he says. “All of these have a mixture of grape varieties.”

As such, the focus on fewer grape varieties among the youthful table wine industry – often only Touriga Nacional, Touriga Franca and Tinta Roriz – is understandable in commercial and viticultural terms, but may lead to the creation of one-dimensional wines.

“For Port, I’m working with and actively planting nine different grape varieties,” says Guimaraens. “The secret to the complexity of any wine from the Douro is how you mix it… Many are like spices to complement the major varieties – Barroca, Cão are very important. Amarela I consider difficult but important; Rufete and Francisca are there too. It may only be 5-10%, but it’s an added layer of complexity.”

For Saraiva, the focus on the top cinco is commercially understandable, but has led to other grapes being neglected. Sousão he loves for its colour and elegance, despite low yields – and the company is beginning to understand it better in terms of exposition and soil. “We talked to some older people working in the vineyards,” he says. “They know these things – sometimes people in the universities don’t have all the answers.”

The Symingtons too have a burgeoning interest in some of the forgotten stars of the Douro vineyards. Paul Symington reveals that the company is planning to plant a new vineyard within the next couple of years filled with 15-20 Douro varieties “that have basically been forgotten”, in his words. The twin objectives are to safeguard the Douro’s viticultural heritage and – hopefully – to rediscover varietals of potential.

However, Symington counsels against placing too much emphasis on grapes which will remain bit-part players in vineyard terms. “Sure, we experiment with Sousão and others, but the first priority is to get good, mature fruit from Touriga Nacional, Touriga Franca, etc,” he says.

As if to illustrate the point, Symington believes that the “wrong” Tinta Roriz planting material has been used in the Douro “for many years”. The company has not planted any new Roriz in five years and is currently investigating no fewer than 25 Roriz clones to find the one best suited to the Douro (see box).

Whatever the weather
The Douro’s vineyards have other challenges too: rain may be an infrequent visitor to the valley, but storms can do great damage to its trademark terraces when they do come.

Fladgate’s introduction of laser-guided bulldozers in 2002 has created a three-degree slope to new vineyards, allowing gradual run-off to a given drainage point. The system is now being introduced in Spain’s Priorat region as well.

And the environment is, as elsewhere in the wine world, a growing concern. Guimaraens is a keen advocate of single-row terraces and, contrary to traditional Douro thinking, “learning to live with weeds”, cutting them mechanically in the spring. The result in vineyards using this system has been the total elimination of residual herbicides, and a 95% reduction in contact herbicides to boot, he says – and he is now campaigning for the building of two-row terraces in the region to be banned on environmental grounds.

Many would say that Port shippers and growers have been relatively slow to get to grips with the viticultural intricacies of the Douro, but the huge strides made in the past two decades or more are coming to fruition. The quality of Port – at lower price-points in particular – has arguably never been better as a result.

But there is still much to be done. In general, the older, mixed vineyards have evolved to a point where they can give excellent quality and complexity when managed properly; and modern, block-planted estates with the right varietals add efficiency to this model.

But that leaves the vineyards planted in the 1970s and 1980s which, in Guimaraens’ eyes, were too often geared to mechanisation rather than overall quality, with planting material that is “not the best”. For him, replanting those vineyards will be the major task of the next decade or two. Thanks to the learning curve of recent years, it is a challenge for which the Port trade is increasingly well-equipped.

db © September 2008