Iberia Before Wine

By the time the kingdom of Portugal was born in 1143, its territory had been inhabited for thousands of years. Homo sapiens arrived from the south about 42,000 years ago (Carvalho, A.F. Reference Carvalho, Fiolhais, Franco and Paiva2022), but it is the end of the last major Ice Age – some 20,000 years ago – that brought significant numbers of hunter-gatherers. They migrated north along the Atlantic coast to the Tagus and Mondego estuaries, and then to Galicia, Brittany, and England (Cunliffe Reference Cunliffe2018). That was long before viticulture.

Around 5500 bce, new waves of people arrived in Iberia, mostly from the north-east (Zapata et al. Reference Zapata, Peña-Chocarro, Pérez-Jordá and Stika2004; Bernabeu Aubán et al., Reference Bernabeu Aubán, Lozano and Pardo-Gordó2017; Cunliffe Reference Cunliffe2018; Cortell-Nicolau et al. Reference Cortell-Nicolau, García-Puchol, Barrera-Cruz and García-Rivero2021). They spoke Indo-European languages (Cunliffe Reference Cunliffe2018) and brought with them the ‘Neolithic package’: pottery, agriculture, domesticated animals (goats, sheep, pigs, cows, etc.) and crops (wheat, barley, peas, lentils, etc.) – but not viticulture. Their influence spread along the coast all the way to today’s Portugal, then inland following the rivers. These Neolithic newcomers displaced or absorbed the local hunter-gatherers.

Metallurgy (copper, silver, gold) appeared c. 3000 bce. The mobility of people increased from the Tagus estuary to Galicia, Brittany, and then further north, possibly driven by a quest for metals. Deposits of tin, a key ingredient to turn copper into bronze, existed in Galicia and northern Portugal. The earliest tin-copper bronze in the region is dated c. 2100 bce (Cunliffe Reference Cunliffe2018).

The diffusion of people and ideas from Portugal to the rest of Europe is illustrated by a distinct pottery style, the ‘maritime-bell’ beaker, so named because of its shape. It originated around 2750 bce along the Tagus river (Cardoso Reference Cardoso, Fiolhais, Franco and Paiva2022). A few centuries later, it was found along the coasts of western Europe, and then inland, following the rivers. The spread of this type of pottery coincided with the appearance of Celtic place names (Cardoso Reference Cardoso, Fiolhais, Franco and Paiva2022; Cunliffe Reference Cunliffe2018).

There is DNA evidence (Carvalho A.F. Reference Carvalho, Fiolhais, Franco and Paiva2022) that, by c. 2500 bce, people had developed tolerance for gluten, lactose, and ethanol. This implies that grain, dairy products, and fermented beverages, respectively, were consumed. But the latter involved some type of grain-based beer, not wine.

The population grew, and local cultures and urban centres appeared. The ‘fortified-hilltop’ (castro) culture occupied the north (northern Portugal, Galicia, Asturias) from the early iron age, c. nineth century bce. The Lusitanians populated central Portugal and Extremadura, as the first Phoenician settlements appeared in the south of Spain and the estuary of the Tagus and Sado. The Celtic influence increased in the sixth century bce, leading to the emergence of Celtiberian tribes in central and north-east Iberia.

The wild western Vitis Vinifera Sylvestris was present in Iberia and its fruits consumed before Neolithic times (Buxó Reference Buxó, Dietler and López-Ruiz2009; Peña Cervantes Reference Peña Cervantes, Brun, Garnier and Olcese2020). However, no evidence of cultivation, domestication, or winemaking has been found. The pips of this dioecious grape are near-round while those of the domesticated (hermaphrodite) V.V. Vinifera are elongated (Estreicher Reference Estreicher, Brodersen, Erskine and Hollander2019). Only wild pips are found in pre-Phoenician settlements without evidence of intentional fermentation such as accumulations of pips discarded after pressing, remains of wine presses or wine jars, chemical markers (residue in jars) such as tartaric acid and calcium tartrate, syringic acid and/or malvidin, succinic and/or pyruvic acid, etc. (Garnier and Valamoti Reference Garnier and Valamoti2016).

The Phoenicians

The earliest hint of Phoenician presence near the estuary of the Tagus consists of a few artifacts of near-eastern origin dated to the eleventh century bce (Arruda Reference Arruda, Dietler and López-Ruiz2009). They could have been associated with exploratory visits by daring traders. The Phoenicians were also importing silver from southern Iberia as early as the eleventh century bce (Wood et al. Reference Wood, Bell and Montero-Ruiz2020; Cline Reference Cline2024). But the earliest Phoenician colonies in Sicily, Sardinia, and North Africa were established in the 950s bce. The pace of settlement picked up in the nineth century bce with several important colonies such as Carthage in North Africa (the legendary founding date is 814 bce), Cádiz (founded at about the same time), and Huelva on the Atlantic coast of Spain, close to the border with Portugal. Cádiz grew into a large city, famous for its temple to the god Malqart. Many smaller colonies, 3 to 4 ha in size, dotted Portugal and the southern coast of Spain. The locations of these settlements coincide with river access to mining areas: silver, iron, copper, tin, and so on (Arruda Reference Arruda, Dietler and López-Ruiz2009, Reference Arruda, López-Ruiz and Doak2019, Reference Arruda, Fiolhais, Franco and Paiva2022; Dietler Reference Dietler, Dietler and López-Ruiz2009).

The Phoenicians did not just trade and seek metals. They extended agriculture, went fishing, gathered salt, collected timber, planted vineyards, and made wine. They also brought their language and alphabet. Over time, they assimilated with the local populations, which learned to write. There is evidence (Peña Cervantes Reference Peña Cervantes, Brun, Garnier and Olcese2020; Sanmarti Reference Sanmarti, Dietler and López-Ruiz2009; Harutyunyan and Malfeito-Ferreira Reference Harutyunyan and Malfeito-Ferreira2022) of cultivation and wine production in eastern Iberia since the earliest days of Phoenician settlements. An abundance of domesticated V.V. Vinifera pips dating back to the eighth or seventh century bce have been found at Castillo de Doña Blanca (between Cádiz and Jerez). The oldest surviving ‘lagar’ in Iberia is located there (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

The Phoenician wine press at Castillo de Doña Blanca. Left: The grapes were trodden in the square area. The red arrow points to the opening through which the must would flow. Right: An amphora was placed under the opposite end of that opening to collect the must for fermentation and storage (photo: SKE).

There is no evidence of the domestication of the wild (western) V.V. Sylvestris in early Iberia. Such evidence exists, for example, in early bronze-age Greece (Pagnoux et al. Reference Pagnoux, Bouby, Valamoti, Bonhomme, Ivorra, Gkatzogia, Karathanou, Kotsachristou, Kroll and Terral2021) and southern Italy (Breglia et al. Reference Breglia, Bouby, Wales, Ivorra and Fiorentino2023), where the wild-to-domesticated evolution of pips is clearly visible in the archaeological record. The absence of such a record in Iberia suggests that the Phoenicians brought cuttings of domesticated V. Vinifera with them. Over time, these cultivars crossed with local wild grapes, abundant in the basins of the Tagus, Sado, Guadiana, and other rivers (Harutyunyan and Malfeito-Ferreira Reference Harutyunyan and Malfeito-Ferreira2022). Indeed, there is DNA evidence of wild and domesticated contributions in some of today’s cultivars (Myles et al. Reference Myles, Boyko, Owens, Brown, Grassi, Aradhya, Prins, Reynolds, Chia, Ware, Bustamante and Buckler2011). The results were new ‘Iberia-native’ grapes, probably different on the east and west coasts of the Peninsula. Later, the Romans imported some of their favourite grapes, as did the Cistercians (starting in the twelfth century) who likely brought the Savagnin, the Trousseau (Bastardo in Portugal) and other French cultivars. These contributions further increased the diversity of vines in Portugal. But some Portuguese cultivars are directly related to local wild populations such as the Marufo (a red dioecious grape) and Vinhão (Harutyunyan and Malfeito-Ferreira Reference Harutyunyan and Malfeito-Ferreira2022).

Small groups of Phoenicians from Huelva and Cádiz (Arruda Reference Arruda, Fiolhais, Franco and Paiva2022) sailed to Portugal and settled along the Tagus (Lisbon, Santarém, Almada) and Sado (Abul) rivers in the nineth century bce. They were interested in mining, fishing, salt, timber, and slaves. There is later evidence of metallurgy (iron, silver, gold, bronze), glassmaking, ceramics, as well as cultivation. At first, wine was imported from Málaga and North Africa, but it was soon produced locally (Buxó Reference Buxó, Dietler and López-Ruiz2009). In the middle of the eighth century, there was cultivation and breeding of domestic animals, as well as kilns for making amphorae to store and transport wine, olive oil, and salted fish (Lopez Castro Reference Lopez Castro, López-Ruiz and Doak2019). The volumes of wine and oil produced were small, suggesting mostly local consumption by the elite. In the late seventh century, there were dozens of Phoenician colonies along the Tagus, Mondego, and Guadiana rivers, as well as inland.

By the early sixth century bce, most Phoenician settlements had assimilated with the local populations and lost their near-eastern characteristics. In 539 bce, Cyrus the Great conquered the Phoenician city-states along the coast of today’s Lebanon, while Carthage (in North Africa) was growing into an empire. The Iberian settlements became incorporated into that empire (Dietler Reference Dietler, Dietler and López-Ruiz2009). But a competing power was on the rise: Rome. Its arrival would completely change Iberia and result in a substantial expansion of viticulture.

The Islamic Conquest of Iberia

Following the death of Muhammad in 632, Islam spread rapidly through conquests fuelled by intense religious fervour (Kennedy Reference Kennedy2007). By 641, the Arab armies had conquered (today’s) Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and Iraq. In 661, the new (Umayyad) caliphate established itself in Damascus. The strip of North Africa from Egypt to the Atlantic was Muslim by 700. Its governor, Musa ibn Nusayr completed the conquest of North Africa, the Balearic Islands, and Sardinia.

In 711, Musa’s freedman Ṭāriq ibn Ziyād led some 7000 soldiers (mostly Berbers and some Arabs) into southern Spain, a much larger army than in his earlier exploratory incursions into that region. He consolidated his troops at Jabal Ṭāriq, the mountain (or rock) of Ṭāriq, now Gibraltar. Roderic rushed from northern Iberia to meet the new threat. The armies met at Guadalete. The Visigoths were soundly defeated, Roderic was probably killed, and… that was pretty much it. Apart from limited resistance by a few cities, the Iberian Peninsula was wide open to the newcomers. Nearly eight centuries of Islamic Iberia were beginning (Livermore Reference Livermore1971; Collins Reference Collins1998, Reference Collins2010).

Ṭāriq split his army, took Córdoba and Toledo. Musa was furious: his commander was supposed to lead a scouting expedition, not become a conqueror. That conqueror was to be him (and the loot his). He rushed into Spain with a large Arab army and moved north. Ṭāriq and Musa were soon recalled to Damascus and disappeared from history books.

Zaragoza was sacked in 714 and Narbonne in 720 (Collins Reference Collins2010). An army reached deep into Gaul before being stopped by the Franks near Poitiers in 732. Muslim forces remained in the south of Gaul for another decade before permanently retreating south of the Pyrenees. Roman Iberia had become Al-Andalus; the Baetis river, the Guadalquivir (wādī l-kabīr: ‘big river’); the south-west, Algarve (al-ḡarb: ‘the west’).

But not all the Visigoths had disappeared. Around 718, Pelagius, possibly of Visigoth royal line, fled to the Cantabrian mountains, where he was elected to succeed Roderic by the remnants of the Visigoth nobility. Pelagius defeated a Berber army, a battle ignored by the Arab governor in Córdoba. The first capital of the kingdom was Cangas de Onis. It moved to Santianes de Pravia in 774 and Oviedo in 791. The Reconquista and the kingdom of Portugal later emerged from this rebellious kingdom of Asturias. The Muslims armies should have carried their conquest to that part of the Peninsula, but they considered it to be a low priority. There was nowhere to go from the extreme north of Spain: it faced the Atlantic. Further, the Arabs preferred to fight in plains: mountain ranges often marked the edge of their conquests (Collins Reference Collins1998). The Berbers, used to the mountains of North Africa, were stationed in Galicia and the Pyrenees. However, they were treated as inferiors by the Arabs. Serious Berber rebellions occurred in 731–732 and 739–740, after which the Berber garrisons in Galicia disappeared, allowing the Christian kingdom to expand (Collins Reference Collins2010).

For four decades, the Umayyad Calif in Damascus appointed the Emir of Ifrikiya (North Africa) who, in turn, appointed the Emir of Al-Andalus in Córdoba. Successive Emirs of Al-Andalus felt quite independent of the Calif who was far away and had other pressing issues. They enriched themselves without much supervision. Most of the taxes they raised ended up in their personal coffers, with a cut for their immediate supervisor in Ifrikiya. Their influence was strong in Andalusia, Portugal, central and coastal Spain, but not in Galicia, the northern coast, the Basque region, or the north-west where the Franks were present. The ‘frontier towns’ were Zaragoza, Toledo, and Mérida.

In 750, the leadership of Islam changed. The Umayyads were slaughtered by the Abbasids who seized the caliphate and moved its capital to Baghdad. The Umayyad Abd al-Rahman, grandson of Caliph Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik, escaped the massacre. He made his way to Al-Andalus where he toppled the governor Yusuf al-Fihri in 756. It took him nearly 20 years to impose his authority throughout Al-Andalus. Abd al-Rahman reigned as an Umayyad Emir (767–788). The Abbasid Caliphs never controlled Iberia. But the kingdom of Asturias took advantage of this period of instability and grew.

Abd al-Rahman’s successor, Hisham I, consolidated power, moved against the kingdom in Asturias (Livermore Reference Livermore1971), and sacked Oviedo in 794. He planned a second invasion but died in 796. As a result of these threats, many small fortresses were built from Cantabria to the Duero. That region became Castile, the land of castles. As the kingdom expanded southward, Asturias faded into obscurity while Galicia, León, and Castile gained importance. In 798, Alfonso II raided the Atlantic coast as far south as Lisbon (Collins Reference Collins2010), but al-Hakam I (796–822) promptly recovered that territory.

A hymn dedicated to Mauregatus of Asturias (r. 783–788) refers to the legendary evangelization of Iberia by St. James (Livermore Reference Livermore1971). His tomb is said to have been found in Padrón by Pelagius the Hermit in 814, and then brought to the shrine of Compostela. St. James was later credited for helping the army of León against the Muslims at the mythical battle of Clavijo in 842, as well as at Ourique in 1139 (Martinez-Gros Reference Martinez-Gros2014). Thus, St. James was one of the most-resilient saints in the Catholic calendar, since he was actually beheaded in Jerusalem under Herod Agrippa in 44 ce (Page Reference Page2002). Pilgrimages to the shrine at Santiago de CompostelaFootnote ^c started in the nineth century and continue to this day: many still walk the Camino(s) every year.

Starting in the early nineth century, the power of the emirate in Cordoba slowly eroded because of rebellions and the emergence of powerful local lords. This allowed the Kings of Asturias to gain more territory (Collins Reference Collins2010): Ordoño I (r. 850–866) extended the kingdom to the Minho, and then the Douro. Alfonso III ‘the Great’ (866–910) occupied Porto and Coimbra. He moved the capital to León. His son Ordoño II (r. 914–924) united Léon and Galicia. The Christian kingdom now extended from Coimbra to the Basque region, some 20% of Iberia.

In Córdoba, the fair-skinned and blue-eyed Abd al-Rahman III (r. 912–961) restored Umayyad authority over much of Al-Andalus, and proclaimed himself Caliph in 921. His caliphate survived until 1031. Córdoba became a centre of learning rivalling Baghdad. Córdoba housed the largest library in the world. One of the numerous scholars who thrived there, Al-Zahrawi (Albucassis, 936–1031), was the first to systematically distil grape wine and produce ethanol (Plouvier Reference Plouvier2008).

Abd al-Rahman’s son, Al-Hakam II became the second Caliph, but at his death in 976, his own son Hisham II was only ten years old. Vizier Al-Mansur took charge. He attacked the Christian kingdoms in the north, without success. This led to a civil war, mostly pitting Arabs against Berbers. In 1031, the caliphate broke up into three dozen small kingdoms, the taifas. The more powerful of them were centred in Seville, Badajoz, Zaragoza, and Catalonia. They soon fought each other for supremacy, sometimes forming alliances with Christian leaders in León, Castile, or Aragon. In 1085, the taifa of Seville asked the Almoravids for help in 1085. They were a fundamentalist Berber dynasty centred in Marrakesh. They moved into Al Andalus and took over the taifas. They were appalled to see Jews, Christians, and Muslims coexist, and even consume wine! Tolerance of Christianity, Judaism, and wine quickly disappeared. Saragossa fell to Ramiro of Aragon in 1118. The Almoravids were overtaken by the Almohads in 1145, another fanatic force from north Africa.

On the Christian side, Pope Alexander II began the push for the Reconquista in 1060. Fernando I (r. 1037–1065) formed the kingdom of León-Castile.Footnote ^d His son Alfonso VI, King of León (r. 1065–1109), Galicia (r. 1071–1109), and Castile (r. 1072–1109) conquered Toledo in 1085 but was defeated by the Almoravids. In the west, he pushed the Christian border south to the Tagus.

The Birth of Portugal

Alfonso VI appealed to French knights in his war against the Muslims. Among those who came were Raymond and Henry of Burgundy. They were related to his late wife (Livermore Reference Livermore1971; Collins Reference Collins1998; Hatton Reference Hatton2020). Raymond married Alfonso’s legitimate daughter Urraca in 1090, became Count of Galicia, and had a son, Alfonso Raymundez. Henry married Alfonso’s illegitimate daughter Teresa in 1094, became Count of Portucale, and had a son, Afonso Henriques. At the time, the County of Portucale was just the thin slice of land between the Minho and the Douro. The border between Portugal (south of the Minho) and Galicia (north of it) still exists today.

Raymond died in 1107. Alfonso Raymundez inherited Galicia in 1111. At the death of Alfonso VII in 1126, he also became the King of León-Castile. This is why Galicia remained attached to that kingdom. Henry died in 1112. Teresa ruled Portucale with her lover, the Galician Fernando Pérez de Traba. This relationship made her very unpopular with the clergy and nobility of Portucale. These nobles and the young Afonso Henriques defeated Teresa and Traba at the battle of São Mamede in 1128. Afonso became Count of Portucale, and decided to enlarge his county. He was unsuccessful in the north (Galicia) but very successful in the south by conquering land under Islamic rule. In 1139, he defeated the Almoravids at Ourique, and his soldiers proclaimed him King. He renounced the suzerainty of León-Castile and became Afonso I (r. 1139–1185), the first Burgundian King of Portugal. His capital was Coimbra.

However, his cousin Alfonso VII of Galicia-León-Castile considered Portucale to be a county within his kingdom. Tempers flared. The Pope intervened: wasn’t it more important for Christian Kings to fight the Muslims, not each other? Alfonso VII reluctantly recognized the independence of Portugal in Zamora in 1143, but proclaimed himself Emperor, thus superior to a King. Afonso made a deal with the papal representative: he would become the vassal of the Pope (with an annual tribute of 4 ounces of gold), not of the Emperor (Oliveira and Vasconcelos e Sousa Reference Fiolhais, Franco and Paiva2022). The tensions between Portugal and Castile were just beginning.

Numerous monastic military orders were present in the region. Henry’s wife Teresa was the first to invite them to Portugal (Oliveira and Vasconcelos e Sousa Reference Fiolhais, Franco and Paiva2022). In 1112, she gave to the Hospitallers the Benedictine monastery of Leça. They later established a commandery in Aboim. They had Houses in Coimbra and Lisbon in the late twelfth century, and became militarily active in the Portuguese Reconquista. In 1128, Teresa gave the castle of Soure and its territory to the Templars knights. They established several communities north of the Tagus and were instrumental in the conquest of Santarém. They were renamed the Order of Christ after the suppression of their order in 1319. The monks of the (Spanish) Order of Santiago arrived in Portugal in 1172. They were active in the conquest of the south, and then settled in Sétubal. The Portuguese Militia of Évora (later: Avis) received a Master from Afonso I in 1176. The orders of Évora and Christ were closely associated with the Kings of Portugal. They later fought the Moors in North Africa.

Having defeated the Muslims at Ourique, Afonso’s next conquests were Santarém and Lisbon. Bradford (Reference Bradford1983) recounted these events as told in the Chronicle of the English-Norman priest Osbern: English, Flemish, and German crusaders were on their way from northern Europe within the second Crusade. They arrived in Porto in June 1147, and were offered ‘good cheap wine’ by the local bishop. It must have been good enough or the crusaders thirsty enough: he convinced them to help take Lisbon from the infidels. They sailed south to the Tagus where Afonso I offered them the spoils of the city in exchange for their help. There was a slaughter and considerable looting, but Lisbon became Portuguese. One of the English crusaders, Gilbert of Hastings, became the first bishop of Lisbon. The origin of the close links between Portugal and England dates back to that period (Freeman Reference Freeman, Gregory and Trotter1997).

The relations between Portugal and Castile continuously fluctuated from friendly to hostile (Palenzuela Reference Palenzuela2003). Portugal had emerged from a county that was originally a part of the kingdom of León-Castile, which had yet to fully accept its independence. Both kingdoms were fighting together against Islamic forces in the Peninsula. But successful fighting led to the acquisition of new land, and how to divide that land and draw the boundaries became a source of conflicts. Yet, several Portuguese Kings had Castilian wives (Manuel I had three in succession) and at least seven Castilian Kings had Portuguese wives. This did not prevent conflicts. In 1165, Fernando II married Urraca, daughter of Afonso I. Four years later, Afonso besieged Badajoz which was defended by the same Fernando, this time allied with the Almohads (Sottomayor-Pizarro Reference Sottomayor-Pizarro2022). Afonso was seriously injured and taken prisoner there. But two years later, the same Fernando helped Afonso against the same Almohads who had attacked Santarém.

In 1179, Pope Alexander III confirmed Afonso’s (and his descendants) rights to the throne of Portugal. Afonso died in 1185, having created the kingdom of Portugal and extended its border from the Douro to the Tagus. He also made sure that the conquered land was productive, and in Christian hands.

The Reconquista of the south of Portugal involved much fighting by his son Sancho I, grandson Afonso II, great grandson Sancho II, and his brother Afonso III. The last Muslim stronghold at Faro fell in 1249. Portugal, as we know it today, was complete. Issues associated with the ownership of Algarve were resolved at the Treaty of Badajoz in 1267. The final borders between Portugal and Castile were fixed by Denis of Portugal and Fernando IV of Castile at the Treaty of Alcañices in 1297. These borders are almost the same today.

The Spanish Reconquista ended much later. Sancho VIII of Navarre, Alfonso VIII of Castile, Afonso II of Portugal, and Peter II of Aragon defeated the Almohads in 1212 at the critical battle of Las Navas de Tolosa. The Almohads left Iberia in 1238. Various Christian Kings took Majorca (1230), Valencia (1238), Córdoba (1236), Sevilla (1248), Jerez (1264), and Murcia (1266). The Muslims were left with the Nasrid emirate of Granada (1238–1492). The Black Plague considerably delayed the end of the Reconquista. Finally, Grenada fell to Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabelle of Castile in 1492.

Wine in Islamic Iberia

Except under the fundamentalist Almoravids (1085–1145) and Almohads (1147–1238), the Muslim attitude toward wine was not hostile. Seven verses of the Qur’an discuss wine (Pickthall 1999). Only two of them (Surah 5.90 and 5.91) strictly forbid wine and associate drinking with Satan. Four verses (Surah 2.219, 4.43, 16.67, and 83.25) are much more nuanced, or only condemn excessive drinking. And then, Surah 47.15 describes four rivers in the gardens of paradise ‘where those who fulfill their duties to Allah’ are rewarded: in the first river flows unpolluted water; in the second, milk which does not turn sour; in the third, ‘wine delicious to the drinker’; and in the fourth, honey. It is unclear how a Satanic drink became a reward in paradise. Fundamentalists (then and today) only remember Surah 5.90 and 5.91. Can the other verses be ignored? The Abbasid Caliph Al-Mahdi (775–785) enjoyed down-to-earth pleasures, as shown in his poems (Glubb Reference Glubb1969)

Arab and Persian poets often included wine in their verses, such as Omar Khayyám (1048–1122): ‘While you live, drink! For once dead, you shall never return. Or: Drink wine. This is life eternal. This is all that youth will give you. It is the season for wine, roses, and drunken friends.’

In Islamic Iberia, moderate drinking was tolerated, but public intoxication was punished by prison until sober followed by public whipping. Only non-Muslims were allowed to produce wine, and precious little (if any) of it was exported. But everybody was fond of nabibi, a raisin-based sweet wine. The Arabs also cooked sikbaj (‘sik’: vinegar and ‘bāj’: stew). Its descendant is today’s escabeche: fish or meat marinated and cooked in (grape) vinegar. When Almanzor, vizier of al-Hakam II, ordered the uprooting of vineyards near Jerez, the winegrowers argued that they produced raisins for the troops going to jihad: only about one-third of the vineyards were uprooted. In 1147, on their way to the siege of Lisbon, the crusaders reported that wine and vineyards were abundant in the countryside along the Tagus (Stanisławski Reference Stanisławski1970; Freeman Reference Freeman, Gregory and Trotter1997).

Christians and Jews were subject to a special tax called jizya. In return, they received autonomy in practising their religion. One annual tax bill was (Collins Reference Collins1998): 1 dinar, 4 measures of wheat, 4 of barley, 4 jugs of grape juice, 4 of vinegar, 2 of honey, and 2 of oil. But fresh grape juice will ferment and become wine unless it is boiled first to kill the yeast. No such heat treatment was mentioned.

Background

Portugal was at war with Islamic forces until the fall of Faro in 1249. As new Iberian territory was conquered by various Christian kingdoms, there were continuous border disputes between Castile and Portugal. They occasionally involved invasions and wars. England had friendly relationships with Portugal since the middle of the twelfth century, but its relationships with Castile, a French ally, were often hostile.

The twelfth and thirteenth centuries were good for trade in Europe. This was the peak of the Medieval Warm Epoch, which lasted from 800 to 1300 (Behringer Reference Behringer2015). The harvests were often above average, the population was growing, large cities emerged, the demand for goods increased, trade flourished, silver was available, and the interest rates were low (Childs Reference Childs1992). Law, medicine, and other basic topics were taught in the first European universities: Bologna (1088), Oxford (1096), Salamanca (1134), Paris (1160), Cambridge (1209), etc. The Estudo Geral, created in Lisbon in 1290, moved to Coimbra in 1308, was back in Lisbon in 1354, and then returned to Coimbra in 1377. The University of Coimbra is the oldest in Portugal.

The good thirteenth century was followed by a calamitous fourteenth century (Tuchman Reference Tuchman1978). It began with the onset of the Little Ice Age (Fagan Reference Fagan2000; Behringer Reference Behringer2015). The Baltic sea froze in 1303–1304 and 1307; the Venice lagoon froze in 1311 and 1323; the vintage in Bordeaux was miserable in 1315; there was a general vintage failure in France in 1316; 1322 was the coldest winter in memory. A famine of biblical proportions hit western Europe. Because of its favourable location south-west of Europe along the Atlantic ocean, Portugal was less affected than France or England. But the Black Death devastated the entire continent. It reached Portugal in the fall of 1348. Within six months, at least one-third of the population had died (Rodrigues Reference Rodrigues2017). Benedictow (Reference Benedictow2006) estimated that by the end of the first wave of the plague, nearly 60% of the population of Europe had died. This had huge social consequences. Many properties were abandoned and/or unclaimed. A number of them became church property (Da Cruz Coelho Reference Da Cruz Coelho, Fiolhais, Franco and Paiva2022). In much of Europe, this pandemic marked the end of the feudal system. The plague returned in 1361, 1369, 1373–1374, and 1388–1390, albeit with much smaller death rates.

The confiscation of the English duchy of Guyenne by Philipe VI of France triggered the Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453) with England, a dynastic struggle about the crown of France. This conflict spilled into the Iberian Peninsula because of dynastic crises in both Castile, a supporter of France, and Portugal, an ally of England (Palenzuela Reference Palenzuela2003; Gouveia Monteiro Reference Gouveia Monteiro, Fiolhais, Franco and Paiva2022).

In 1357, Afonso IV of Portugal was succeeded by his son Pedro I (‘the Cruel’, r. 1357–1367). He was the uncle of Pedro I of Castile (also ‘the Cruel’, r. 1350–1369). In 1367, Pedro of Portugal was succeeded by his son Fernando I. Two years later, in Castile, Enrique of Trastámara killed his half-brother Pedro (allegedly, with his own hands) and proclaimed himself Enrique II. But he was illegitimate. Fernando (of Portugal) claimed the throne of Castile as the great-grandson of Sancho IV, while John of Gaunt (Duke of Lancaster and son of Edward III) claimed the same throne through his second wife Constanza, daughter of Pedro of Castile. Now France risked losing Spain – a precious ally – if either claim was successful. Enrique waged inconclusive wars against Portugal, died in 1379, and was succeeded by his son Juan I, also considered illegitimate. And then came another twist of fate, this time on the Portuguese side: in 1383, Fernando died without a male heir. His daughter, Beatriz, was married to Juan I of Castile who promptly claimed the throne of Portugal and invaded the country. The people of Portugal would have none of it: they acclaimed Fernando’s half-brother João, Master of the Order of Avis, and illegitimate son of Pedro of Portugal. Confusing?

Portugal turned to England for help. John of Gaunt seized that opportunity and sailed with some 600 longbowmen. The French sent Gascon troops and knights to support their ally, Castile. Juan invaded Portugal and marched on Lisbon. The climax occurred in 1385 at Aljubarrota. A well-organized Portuguese force of about 10,000 men assisted by the English longbowmen promptly routed a much larger but disorganized Castilian force assisted by French knights. The latter, unwisely, charged against the devastating longbows.Footnote ^f

The decisive Portuguese victory at Aljubarrota secured Portugal’s independence and João I’s claim to the crown of Portugal. He became the first King of the House of Avis and reigned until 1433: a 38-year period of peace and prosperity. In 1386, he and Richard II sealed the Treaty of Windsor. It promised eternal friendship and confirmed the political, military, and commercial alliance between Portugal and England. This treaty has been ratified multiple times and is still in effect today. As for John of Gaunt, his efforts to gain the throne of Castile came to nothing. However, his daughter Philippa of Lancaster married João in Porto in 1387. She kept contact with her brother Henry IV and then her nephew Henry V until her death in 1415, thus reinforcing the ties between the two kingdoms. She also mothered several children, among them Henrique, later nicknamed ‘the Navigator’ even though the extent of his navigation was limited to being a passenger on two short crossings of the strait of Gibraltar. Philippa’s only surviving daughter, Isabella, became duchesse of Burgundy. At the time, it included the economically important Flanders.

By the end of the fourteenth century, Lisbon had become the centre of the kingdom and was a frequent residence of the King. The city was simmering with political, commercial, and ecclesiastic activity. This attracted merchants, dignitaries, and ambassadors from England, Flanders, Italy, and other trading powers (but not France).

The Beginning of the Portuguese Wine Trade

Since its earliest days, the leaders of Portugal were keenly aware of the importance of international trade. Wine was one of the most important commodities. The conquest of Lisbon was achieved with the help of English, French, Flemish, and German crusaders, but the English seem to have developed strong friendships, and trade links followed. Lisbon, which had been an important port in Roman times but much less so under Islamic rule, regained its importance after 1147. At that time, the banks of the Tagus produced most of the wines in the country.

The main shipping routes linked the Mediterranean to England and Flanders – in particular, Bruges, where everything was traded (Childs Reference Childs1992, Reference Childs2009). Ships coming from the Mediterranean often stopped in Lisbon. England exported mostly wool, cloth, and minerals. It imported wine, oil, fruits, grain, as well as iron from Spain. In the thirteenth century, England got most of its wines from nearby Rouen in Normandy as well as from the Loire, Anjou, and the Rhine. As for Portugal, its most important trading partners were Flanders and England. It exported olive oil, grain, fruits, honey, salt, sometimes cork and – starting in the middle of the thirteenth century – wine, but at first only in small quantities. That trade grew. The Portuguese wines for export were sometimes strengthened by the addition of raisins (Loureiro Reference Loureiro2024). The yeast would feed on the added sugar and increase the alcohol content. These wines travelled better, and sometimes had a little residual sugar as well.

Portuguese merchants were active in England. King John granted them safe conduct in 1202 (Simon Reference Simon1906). His son Henry III granted letters of safe conduct for up to 100 merchants from Lisbon and Coimbra (Benham Reference Benham2022). In 1295, the first shipment of wine from the Entre-Douro-e-Minho region was shipped from Viana do Lima (Viana do Castelo) in the north of Portugal (Loureiro et al. Reference Loureiro, Monteiro and Mendes2025). In 1303, Edward I’s Carta Mercatoria granted merchants from France, Castile, Portugal, Navarre and other countries permission to stay in England and trade as they wished, in exchange for paying taxes (Simon Reference Simon1906; Childs Reference Childs2009). In 1341, Edward III imposed a tax of 2 shillings per tun (900-litre barrel) of imported wine, which was then sold at £5 (Simon Reference Simon1906). In 1352, Edward III granted a one-year letter of safe conduct to Portuguese merchants and ships. That year, 18 Portuguese ships brought 651 tuns of wine to England. This is much less than Castile, which brought over 4300 tuns that year (Childs Reference Childs1992). The following year, a commercial treaty between Portuguese merchants and Edward III guaranteed the safety of traders. In 1386, two English trading posts were active in Viana and Monção, in the north of Portugal (Loureiro et al. Reference Loureiro, Monteiro and Mendes2025).

In the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, Portuguese wine was part of a general cargo. The contribution of Portugal to England’s wine imports was no more than 5% (Childs Reference Childs2009). Castile shipped more wine to England than Portugal, while entire fleets of French and Rhenish wine arrived in England. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Portugal shipped a few hundred tuns of wine per year to England. For comparison, Edward III ordered 1000 tuns of wine from Bordeaux just for his coronation in 1327.

Following the treaty of Windsor, the wine trade between Portugal and England increased: six to ten Portuguese galleys arrived every year in England. Most merchant ships carried about 100 tons of cargo, but that grew to some 300 tons in the fifteenth century. The majority of Portuguese wines came from the Lisbon area. Some were sweetened with raisins, but many were dry: the customs they paid upon arrival in England were for non-sweet wines (Childs Reference Childs1992). Smaller quantities of wine came from other regions of Portugal: in 1412, Henry IV bought 96 pipesFootnote ^g of (probably sweet) wine from Algarve (Simon Reference Simon1906).

Medieval wines were short-lived. ‘New’ wines were a few months old – the most recent harvest. ‘Deteriorating’ wines were over one year old. Aged wines were very rare. The short lifetime was caused by a lack of understanding of the fermentation processes, bad hygiene (e.g. re-using poorly cleaned barrels), absence of precautions to prevent oxidation (ullage), and low alcohol content. Indeed, the harvest was normally done as soon as the grapes were mature for fear that birds or foxes would feed on them, or that poor weather would ruin the crop. As a result, the sugar/acid ratio was often low, leading to unstable wines: maybe 10% alcohol or less. For this reason, wines were not shipped during the summer months as the heat caused them to deteriorate. For example, ‘new’ Bordeaux wines were shipped in the fall (they arrived in England in time for Christmas) and the ‘wines of rack’ were shipped in the spring (they arrived by Easter).

The various wines were referred to by the region of production (Gascony, Loire, Rhine, Spain, Algarve, etc.) or the port of origin. The colour was mentioned (white or red) but rarely the grape. Some of the names in customs records were confusing because the English spelling was phonetic and depended on the way one person pronounced a word and another understood it. An unusual name in a foreign language could become something unexpected in the written records. For example, in 1353, the London Guild Hall Letter Books reports the unloading of 109 tuns of ‘wine de la Rebasele’ arriving from Lisbon (Simon Reference Simon1906). As spelled, this does not refer to anything known. Some wine was produced at Ribadesella but that is in Asturias and 109 tuns would be an unusually large one-time shipment from that region. Further, it is highly unlikely that a ship would sail from Asturias to London via Lisbon. Manuel Ferreira suggested that ‘Rebasele’ could simply be a bad spelling for ‘Ribatejo’. The banks of the Tagus produced most of the Portuguese wine at the time, and these would arrive from Lisbon.

In thirteenth- to fifteenth-century England, an often-mentioned wine was recorded as ‘Osey’, ‘Osoye’, ‘Osaye’, ‘Asoye’, ‘Aussay’, and other variations of the name. Two hundred tuns of it were shipped in 1482 (Simon Reference Simon1906). Simon (Reference Simon1906) argued that it had to come from Portugal because of the context in which it was mentioned. No Portuguese source mentions that name, but then no local custom record prior to the sixteenth century has survived (Childs Reference Childs1992). Osey could be a corruption of ‘Azóia’. But which one? Two dozen towns or villages in Portugal are called Azóia or include it in their name. Freeman (Reference Freeman, Gregory and Trotter1997) has reviewed the topic and associated Osey with Santa Iria de Azóia, a small town located a few miles north-east of Lisbon on the north bank of the Tagus. It is very close to the old port of Sacavém. The wines from the region, collected there for shipping, could have been named by the English merchants as coming from Azóia. The association of Osey with Azóia is still being debated (Loureiro Reference Loureiro2024). It has been suggested that Osey was a fortified or sweet wine (Rose Reference Rose2011). Although it is possible that simple alembics were used to distil wine in Portugal as early as the twelfth century, the very small amounts of alcohol produced were for medical use and were probably toxic: distillation produces methanol which must be removed (the ‘head’, maybe the first 10% or so). The earliest records of wine distillation for human consumption date back to the early sixteenth century. Osey cannot have been a fortified wine. But raisins might have been added, and ‘sweet’ is possible. However, in 1365, Edward III ordered all sweet wines ‘to be arrested’ only to clarify a little later that he did not intend that Osey, Algarve, and Spanish wines ‘should be reputed sweet’ (Simon Reference Simon1906; Childs Reference Childs1992). We may never know.

In 1293, King Dinis of Portugal recognized the Merchant Exchange, an organization of merchants and shipowners that acted as an insurance: the members contributed capital to defray the cost of accidents, business expenses (including bribes), and piracy. The latter was a growing problem. No country had a professional navy patrolling the seas to guarantee the safety of merchants’ ships. As trade increased along Atlantic routes, so did piracy by Breton, Norman, or English opportunists. As early as 1227 or 1228, Spanish ships were robbed near the English coast (Childs Reference Childs1992). Between 1317 and 1321, several Portuguese ships were attacked and their cargo stolen (Simon Reference Simon1906). In 1338, England offered Royal protection to merchants, including men-of-arms on board merchant ships. Yet, in 1402, several Lisbon merchants complained that their ship was seized at sea with 74 tuns of wine (Simon Reference Simon1906).

In the early fifteenth century, at the height of the Hundred Years War, the situation became so dire that Henry IV sent an armed fleet to Bordeaux to fetch his wines, and merchants organized shipping in convoys. Yet, ships were still captured, looted, burnt, and the crews sometimes thrown overboard. England reacted by ordering the nobility to provide ships with crew, archers, and armed men to attack pirate ships. As a reward, they could keep the cargo. Big mistake. They soon attacked pirates and merchants alike. In 1403, the merchant ship La Katerine sailed from Lisbon with 47 tuns of wine. It was taken in the Channel by Norman pirates, who were themselves attacked by English sailors. But they kept the ship and its cargo as their reward, to the dismay of the Portuguese merchants (Simon Reference Simon1906).

Upon arrival in England, the wines were charged import duties (Simon Reference Simon1906) and the King (ab)used a privilege called recta prisa: his choice of two tuns of wine from every wine-laden ship arriving at a port where royal officers had been appointed. In 1280, Edward I got himself 238 free tuns of wine (Simon Reference Simon1906). This rule, the taxes and fees, and the severe restrictions imposed on foreign merchants arriving in London (where and how long they could stay, to whom they could sell, etc.) resulted in smuggling through smaller ports, especially Bristol (Jones Reference Jones2012). That port had a ‘searcher’, an official charged with collecting taxes and preventing ships from being loaded or unloaded illegally. But the searcher had to purchase his job from the Lord Treasurer of England, received very low wages, and had to pay his deputies out of pocket to inspect the ships. The solution was to forget to inspect a ship from time to time, or undercount a cargo – for a bribe of course. Some searchers became very wealthy.

The French wine trade with England took a nosedive after the end of the Hundred Years’ War in 1453. England entered a tumultuous period known as the Wars of the Roses (1455–1487), during which Edward IV prohibited the import of wine from any French province that had once belonged to England. Wine merchants had to prove that their wine was, say, from Spain or Portugal, and not Bordeaux. This was near-impossible if a ship had made a stop in Bordeaux at any time. As a result, some French wines were shipped to Ireland (Waterford or Cork) and then smuggled to England. Other wines were shipped to Spain or Portugal, decanted into Spanish or Portuguese barrels, and then shipped to England. Portugal also shipped its own wines to England. But Portugal never shipped to France. The Bordeaux constable’s account for wine duty lists only one Portuguese ship for the entire fifteenth century (Childs Reference Childs1992). The best Portuguese wines were shipped to England and Flanders, or consumed by the local elites. These wines sold at prices comparable with those fetched by Spanish or French wines (Simon Reference Simon1906).

Background

In the early fifteenth century, the Renaissance was spreading from Italy, signalling a period of curiosity, invention, and exploration that changed the western world. Spices and luxury goods from the Far East arrived along the silk roads and were then shipped across the Mediterranean by Venetian and Genoese traders. Countless middle-men took a cut of that trade. Gold and slaves travelled across the Sahara to North Africa, benefiting cities such as Cairo or Tunis. Castile and Aragon were busy finishing their Reconquista. England was at war with France (until 1453), and then with itself (Wars of the Roses). Neither the English East-India Company nor the mighty Dutch Vereinigte Ostindische Compagnie yet existed: they were established in 1600 and 1602, respectively. France did not have much of a navy until 1624. But the Portuguese explorers were ready in the early 1400s. They sailed along the west coast of Africa, to Atlantic archipelagos, and later to India, the Spice Islands and the Far East, Brazil, and then around South America into the Pacific Ocean. Portugal owned the waves and made a fortune.

The beginning of these explorations was the conquest of Ceuta from the Moors in 1415 (Duarte Reference Duarte, Fiolhais, Franco and Paiva2022). The city had been a formidable fortress for centuries but, in the early fifteenth century, it was no longer so. As the considerable Portuguese fleet arrived, the city’s inhabitants and most defenders simply fled. Ceuta fell in a few hours. The gain was mostly strategic: with Ceuta under Portuguese control, and then Gibraltar conquered by Spain (in 1462), the entrance to the Mediterranean was in Christian hands and the threat of piracy greatly reduced. A new ship was designed, the caravel (Hatton Reference Hatton2020). With its two triangular sails, it could navigate against the wind in a zig-zag pattern. It was operated by a small crew of 20 to 30 sailors, thus reducing the quantity of food and drinking water required for long journeys. The astrolabe, which used fixed starts as reference points, and the compass allowed deep-sea navigation.

The man behind the early Portuguese explorations was the Infante Dom Henrique (1394–1460) (Russel Reference Russel2001; Page Reference Page2002; Oliveira Reference Oliveira, Fiolhais, Franco and Paiva2022). He participated in the conquest of Ceuta in 1415. Four years later, he was appointed governor of Algarve, which included the Portuguese possessions in North Africa. In 1426, he became Grand Master of the Order of Christ and used its funds to sponsor explorations. Henrique led the Order in a foolish expedition against Tangier in 1437. He barely escaped with the shirt on his back and left his younger brother Fernando a hostage with a promise to return Ceuta to Muslim control. Ceuta remained Portuguese, Fernando died in captivity, Henrique was to blame.

Henrique organized expeditions along the west coast of Africa in search of gold, ivory, and slaves. The southern limit of such explorations was Cape Bojador – the ‘Cape of Fear’ – south of which life was thought to be impossible. When Gil Eanes discovered a passable route around Cape Bojador in 1434, life farther south was found to be just fine. The first Portuguese fort was built in 1445 at Arguin (modern Mauritania). But explorations into the gulf of Guinea, much closer to the source of gold and slaves, were complicated by the counterclockwise currents and winds in the south Atlantic (Figure 6).

Figure 6.

Dominant currents in the Atlantic (darker-blue arrows). Note the strategic location of Madeira, Canaries, and Cabo Verde when sailing south from Lisbon, and the Açores on the way back. The 1493 (thin dash) and 1494 (thick dash) demarcation lines between Spain and Portugal are shown (map SKE).

In 1441, three important Black captives were brought from Africa to Algarve, and then exchanged for Black slaves. Dom Henrique needed slaves to cultivate the Algarve where malaria was endemic. Soon, more slaves, as well as gold and ivory, arrived by sea from the west coast of Africa: the Portuguese had bypassed the Muslim land-based trade routes across the Sahara. In 1443, the Casa da Guiné was founded to regulate and tax that trade. In 1452, Pope Nicholas V’s bull Dum Diversas granted to the King of Portugal the ‘power to attack, conquer and subjugate Saracens, pagans and other unbelievers and enemies of Christ […] and to reduce their persons into perpetual servitude.’ This papal blessing of slavery provided a cover for centuries of abuse. The African trade with Portugal quickly exceeded 1000 slaves per year. The Cabo Verde islands were discovered in 1458. Portuguese explorers reached Sierra Leon in 1460, the year Dom Henrique died.

The explorations continued. The fort of São Jorge da Mina was established by João II in 1480. It would become a major African trade hub. In 1488, Bartolomeu Dias reached the Cape of Tempests – soon renamed a more reassuring Cape of Good Hope (Givens Reference Givens2022). Within a decade, Vasco de Gama sailed along the east coast of Africa, and then across the Indian Ocean to Calicut. The Portuguese reached Ormuz (1509), Goa (1510, their base for Far East explorations), Malacca (1511), and Macau (1513). This sailing was greatly helped by the settlements in Madeira and the Açores. Soon, Portuguese interests shifted to India (Subrahmanyam Reference Subrahmanyam2014): the Casa da Guiné was absorbed into the Casa da Índia in 1513. Portugal had settlements in Madeira, Açores, Cabo Verde, São Tomé, Angola, India, Brazil, Indonesia, etc. It traded with Japan and established a base in Nagasaki (1543). Now the Portuguese had bypassed the Silk Roads. These explorations involved ‘Greed and God’ (Hatton Reference Hatton2020), as summarized by the Jesuit António Vieira: ‘preachers take the gospel, traders take the preacher’. Massive amounts of wealth arrived in Lisbon (Givens Reference Givens2022). Legislation prohibited viticulture in most of the new Portuguese colonies (Simon Reference Simon1906), which received wines from Portugal, thus providing a lucrative outlet for its lesser-quality wines.

The first competition followed Columbus’ 1492 trip across the Atlantic. In May 1493, Pope Alexander VI (the Spaniard Rodrigo Borgia) issued the Bull Inter Caetera which divided the new world between Spain and Portugal: the lands discovered and to be discovered west of a line drawn from the north to the south pole passing ‘one hundred leagues towards the west and south from […] the Açores and Cape Verde […]’ belonged to Spain, and those east of it to Portugal. Even though one hundred leagues was a comfortable 550 km, Portugal quickly argued that the line was too close to the Açores and should be moved another 270 leagues to the west. The 1494 treaty of Tordesillas (Bown Reference Bown2012) achieved just that. It gave to Portugal a large slice of Brazil (yet officially undiscovered).

This treaty was one of the last acts of João II (1481–1495). He had promoted the exploration of the Atlantic and insisted on absolute secrecy about discoveries and the locations of settlements and forts. João had dealt harshly with Jews fleeing Spain (Green Reference Green2007; Bethencourt Reference Bethencourt2009). A first wave of refugees followed the establishment of the Papal Inquisition in Spain (1478). A much larger wave resulted from the Edict of Expulsion (1492) and the reorganization of the Spanish Inquisition under the feared Dominican Tomás de Torquemada. João granted residence to a few hundred families (for a large fee), while others got transit visas for up to eight months. João imprisoned those who extended their stay.

The future of Portugal looked bright. Lisbon had become very wealthy and attracted dignitaries, merchants, and bankers from much of Europe. Portugal enjoyed a virtual monopoly of the sea trade with Africa, India, and the Far East. Ships kept on arriving, loaded with precious cargoes, of which the King got 20%. The new galleon, much larger than the caravel, had a capacity of 600 tons. Yet, the population of Portugal was at most 1.5 million (Palma and Reis Reference Palma and Reis2019), about one-quarter that of Spain. There were just 3000 to 4000 Portuguese in the entire Indian Ocean, about 90% of them male. Very few settled permanently. The Portuguese also had to deal with local established powers (Subrahmanyam Reference Subrahmanyam2014). Portugal’s grip on most of its distant colonies was tenuous.

In 1500, a 13-ship expedition to Calicut led by Pedro Álvares Cabral sailed a little too far west into the Atlantic. It encountered the ‘Terra de Vera Cruz’, soon to be renamed Brazil because of the abundance of the brazilwood – the national tree of Brazil. It has a dense orange-red core, and is used in musical instruments and dyes. Cabral sent one ship back to Lisbon with the official news of the discovery of Brazil, conveniently past the deadline for revoking the treaty of Tordesillas (Bennassar Reference Bennassar2014). The economic potential of Brazil was evaluated by adventurers such as Amerigo Vespucci and Alfonso Gonçalves: besides abundant forests and precious woods, there were few indigenous people to trade with. Thus, for a while, Brazil remained a low priority: Portugal was busy with trade in Africa, India, and the Spice Islands. But this was about to change.

João II died in 1495 and was succeeded by his 26 year-old cousin Manuel I ‘the Fortunate’ (1495–1521). During his reign, the Portuguese empire reached its greatest extent. Portugal enjoyed a golden age (Hatton Reference Hatton2020) which continued through the first decade of the reign of his son, João III (1521–1557). Manuel had far more wealth than he knew what to do with, resulting in extravagant and wasteful spending. Following Vasco de Gama’s 1497–1499 trip to India, Manuel had five elephants brought back: they walked before him as he rode through Lisbon, preceded by a rhinoceros (Gois 1566). He never wore the same clothes twice, and gave tax exemptions to the nobility, severely reducing the country’s tax base. In 1520, he established Portuguese as his administration’s language, replacing Latin.

Manuel did not have a personal animosity toward Jews and conversos. He freed those imprisoned by João II and encouraged them to convert. But when he sought the hand of Isabella (a daughter of the very Catholic Ferdinand and Isabelle), she agreed but demanded that all the Jews be expelled from Portugal first. That was about 10% of the total population. Manuel played for time. He gave the Jews more than one year reprieve, and ordered them to depart from Lisbon in the fall of 1497. As they assembled to leave, he had them baptized, and gave these unwilling new conversos a 20-year amnesty. For him, the problem was solved: technically, there were no more Jews in Portugal. He married Isabella. But the new conversos had everything to fear from the Inquisition (Green Reference Green2007; Bethencourt Reference Bethencourt2009). Further, the ‘old’ Portuguese Christians were quite sceptical about them. This sparked violent riots in Lisbon (1504) and Évora (1505). The situation of the conversos became a lot worse under João III. In 1536, he implanted the Inquisition in Portugal. Three years later, his brother, Cardinal Henry, became the first Inquisitor General. A flood of accusations against conversos followed. Inquisition prisons overflowed and tribunals were established in Lisbon, Évora, Coimbra, Tomar, Lamego, and Porto. The Inquisition quickly spread to the colonies. Goa, the capital of the Portuguese Viceroy of India, became the seat of the bloodiest Inquisition tribunal.

The Jesuits arrived in Portugal in 1540, the year the Order was created. They established religious schools in Portugal (Coimbra in 1542) and its colonies: Funchal in 1570, Ponta Delgada in 1591, etc. The Jesuits also got involved in government, soon holding important positions at the court. But their true allegiance was to the Pope, not to Portugal or its king.

The wine trade was booming. Portugal exported 600–700 tuns of wine per year to England, and more to Flanders (Childs Reference Childs1992). In 1539, more than 20 French and English ships were in Lisbon to fetch wine. In 1555, a fleet of 18 Portuguese ships loaded with wine sailed to The Netherlands (Simon Reference Simon1906). Quality wines were shipped from Lisbon and Setúbal. The robust wines from the Douro valley, known as ‘red-Portuguese’, were of poor quality (Bradford Reference Bradford1983). Most low-alcohol red wines from the nearby Vinho Verde region were thin and did not travel well, except for Monção which exported clarets to England.

The Portuguese colonies in Africa, Asia, and the Far East experienced difficulties during the reign of João III (Page Reference Page2002; Givens Reference Givens2022): Portuguese ships were increasingly looted by pirates. And then, formidable competition arrived as the English, French, and Ottomans became eager to get a slice of the pie. The supply of spices increased and the prices collapsed. In Lisbon, the flow of money was drying up. In 1532, João began to withdraw Portuguese garrisons from the Moroccan coast and end, or at least slow down, the expansions in Africa and Asia. Portugal gradually left its possessions in India and Indonesia (Subrahmanyam Reference Subrahmanyam2014). The English and Dutch would become the dominant powers there.

In addition, there were dynastic problems at home. João III’s only surviving child was the sickly João. In 1552, he was married to Juana Maria, daughter of Charles I of Spain. But the condition was that, should João III and Prince João die without a male heir, the crown of Portugal would merge with the crown of Spain (Givens Reference Givens2022). Prince João died in 1554, with Juana Maria pregnant. She delivered a son, Sebastião. When João III died in 1553, the future of the Avis dynasty rested on the shoulders of the three-year-old Sebastião. The regency was assumed by his grandmother and then his great-uncle Cardinal Henrique.

Sebastião received an unflinching Catholic upbringing. He assumed power in 1568, surrounded himself with young and inexperienced ministers, and dreamt of a crusade against Islam. In August 1578, he and his army sailed to Morocco. He was warned that the Emir was waiting for him with a substantial force, but ignored that threat. He was advised to stay close to the coast, making it possible to supply his troops or retreat should the need arise. He ignored this as well. Sebastião led his army south into the desert, in August, with little water and few supplies. The battle at Alcácer-Quibir was a disaster. Sebastião disappeared (probably killed), much of his army was killed, captured for ransom, or sold into slavery. In Portugal, Cardinal Henrique assumed the throne but then died on his birthday, January 31, 1580. This marked the end of the Avis dynasty. Philip II of Spain became Felipe I of Portugal (1581–1598): one crown, two administrations. This marks the beginning of an economic decline in Portugal that lasted until the 1640s (Palma and Reis Reference Palma and Reis2019).

Spain gained Portugal, the Portuguese colonies and the income they produced, as well as the deep-water port of Lisbon on the Atlantic. In exchange, Portugal got… nothing. Felipe I rarely visited Lisbon. His son Felipe II (1598–1621) and grandson Filipe III (1621–1640) ruled from Madrid. These kings prioritized Spanish wines over Portuguese ones. Portugal’s traditional friends became its enemies. The English and Dutch seized some Portuguese strongholds in Asia, Africa, and Brazil. Portuguese ships became fair game for the English navy. The feared Francis Drake attacked Cabo Verde in 1585 and Lisbon in 1587. The Spanish rule was authoritarian, taxes increased, as did demands to participate in Spanish wars. In 1588, a large part of the Great Armada against England sailed from Lisbon (Howarth Reference Howarth2001). This expedition ruined both Spain and Portugal and seriously affected Portuguese naval power. In 1589, Felipe I ordered the expulsion of all the English merchants residing in Portugal. The wine trade between Portugal and England continued, in secret (Simon Reference Simon1906) but, after 1597, tensions grew between the Anglican English merchants and the Inquisition (Bradford Reference Bradford1983).

From 1568 to 1648, Spain was at war in the Low Countries, resulting in the seven (Protestant) northern provinces seceding from (Catholic) Hapsburg rule. The Netherlands quickly became a major maritime power and dominated the world trade, including wine. The Dutch became aggressive against Portuguese colonies and temporarily controlled large parts of Brazil. Spain was also involved in the bloody Thirty-Years’ war (1618–1648), and in smaller conflicts involving France and England. Wars are expensive. Taxes and inflation increased. And so did the unhappiness in Portugal, resulting in riots against Spanish rule.

In 1640, Spain was at war with France and fighting a rebellion in Catalonia. The Portuguese nobility initiated the revolution that led to the restauration of independence (Hatton Reference Hatton2020). It started with a visit by the Duke of Bragança – a descendent from an illegitimate branch of the house of Avis. He showed little interest in claiming the crown until his wife Luísa famously claimed that she would ‘rather be queen for a day than duchess for life’. Yet another strong woman leading a man. Thus started the reign of João IV (1640–1656). The resumption of close economic and military ties with England soon followed. Portugal quickly recovered Angola and São Tomé from the Dutch. The restoration formally ended under the rule of João’s son, Afonso VI, with the Treaty of Lisbon (1668) and the recognition by Spain of the House of Bragança.

In the meantime, the importance of Brazil had grown. Its first cash crop was sugar. The first sugar mill (engenho) was built in São Vicente in 1532. Production soon took off as nobles, Jesuits, Benedictines, and even conversos got into that lucrative business. By mid-century, more than 20,000 Portuguese had moved to Brazil. There were 60 engenhos in 1570, powered by large numbers of African slaves (Bennassar Reference Bennassar2014). The peak of 60,000 tons of sugar was produced in 1610. Brazil also shipped tobacco, hides, diamonds, hard wood, and so on. The Companhia Geral do Comércio do Brazil, founded in 1649, had a monopoly on all that trade.

The presence of several groups of volcanic islands in the Atlantic greatly facilitated the sailing to and from Africa, Asia, and the Americas. From north to south, they are the Açores, Madeira, Canaries, and Cabo Verde. The dominant currents in the Atlantic (Figure 6) show the strategic importance of the archipelagos for long-haul voyages. Madeira was the first victualling stop for (mostly empty) ships sailing from Portugal. They would then make a brief stop in Cabo Verde before sailing either to Brazil, Africa, or around the Cape to India and the Far East. On the way back, the ships – full of trade goods – often stopped in the Açores before returning to Lisbon.

The Canary islands, sometimes visible from the coast of Morocco, were known since antiquity. Pliny the Elder (23/4–79 ce) wrote that the Carthaginians first explored these islands, which were then forgotten. A Genoese-Portuguese expedition visited them in 1336 (Fernández-Armesto Reference Fernández-Armesto1987) and in 1345, Ferdinand I of Aragon claimed to have ‘turned the eyes of our mind to the subjugation of the Canary Islands’. Castile and Portugal both claimed them. The issue was resolved in favour of Castile (treaty of Alcáçovas, 1479) but Madeira and the Açores became Portuguese.

The Madeira archipelago (four islands) is some 1000 km off Europe. When the Portuguese first arrived in 1419 (Candido Reference Candido, Fiolhais, Franco and Paiva2022), Madeira was uninhabited and covered with forests, hence the name (in Portuguese, madeira means wood). The Açores (Azores, nine uninhabited islands) located 1600 km off Europe, were first spotted in 1427. Both archipelagos were colonized in the summer of 1439 under Dom Henrique (Fernández-Armesto Reference Fernández-Armesto1987). They became famous for their wines. Cabo Verde, discovered in 1458, attracted far fewer Europeans. It played a role in the transatlantic slave trade and produced sugar, cotton, salt and fish.

Madeira

The colonization involved captaincies (donatarias) subordinate to Dom Henrique. This system encouraged wealthy nobles to invest in the islands (Fernández-Armesto Reference Fernández-Armesto1987; Vieira Reference Vieira1996). The captains gave grants of land (sesmerias) to settlers provided that they developed it for a specified length of time, typically five years, after which the land was theirs. They exported products to Portugal without paying duties. The tenants who worked the land often received as much as half the crops. The captains had a monopoly on flour mills, bread ovens, salt, and mining. They also had jurisdiction, but serious cases could be appealed to the Infante. After 1501, land could be purchased, rented, or inherited.

The first captains were João Gonçalves Zarco (in Funchal), Tristão Vaz Teixeira (in Machico), and Bartolomeu Perestrello (in Porto Santo). The settlers brought with them wheat, vine cuttings, fruit and vegetable seeds, sugar canes, sheep, and so on. Slaves were imported to do the hard work (Vieira Reference Vieira1996; Candido Reference Candido, Fiolhais, Franco and Paiva2022). The first ones were Guanches from the Canaries, Muslims from North Africa, and Blacks from sub-Saharan Africa. Criminals and other undesirables were also exiled to Madeira. The early years were turbulent.

But forests were burnt and land was cleared to make room for crops. The first terraces (to retain rainwater) and levadas (to provide irrigation and drinking water) were built (Figure 7). The levadas are 0.5 to 0.6 m-wide water channels carved into the side of the mountains with a gentle slope (0.5 to 1%). The first ones, on the south side of the island, were financed by the Genoese and served to irrigate sugar canes.

Figure 7.

Terraces in Madeira. The thin clear line along the cliff in the middle of the photo is a levada. There are now over 3000 km of levadas in Madeira (photo SKE).

The crops performed extremely well in the rich soil and sub-tropical climate of Madeira, especially the grapevine and sugar cane. Until the middle of the fifteenth century, sugar was a rare and expensive luxury (Galloway Reference Galloway1977; Valkanou Reference Valkanou2020). The limited medieval production was controlled by the Genoese (in Cyprus), Venetians (in Crete), and later Spaniards (in Sicily). Dom Henrique acquired cane plants and hired experienced sugar workers from Sicily, and sent them to Madeira. The first sugar mill was operational in 1452 and, by 1460, Madeira had become the largest sugar producer in the world. Madeira also exported grain, wine, and timber – mostly to Portugal.

Portuguese, Genoese, Venetian, Florentine, and later Flemish sugar dealers moved to Madeira. Some of them married the daughters of the local nobility as a way to merge with the upper society. One of them was Christopher Columbus (Vieira Reference Vieira2010; Candido Reference Candido, Fiolhais, Franco and Paiva2022). He joined the Genoese community in Madeira in 1478, where he fine-tuned his navigation skills. He married Filipa Moniz, the daughter of Bartolomeu Perestrello, in Porto Santo. His son Diego was born there. But Columbus gained fame for his 1492 transatlantic crossing, not his brief and unsuccessful career in the sugar business.

Madeira’s ‘sugar high’ was intense but brief. In the late 1400s, ∼100,000 arrobas (15 kg each) of sugar were produced. Dozens of ships loaded with sugar sailed from Madeira to Lisbon, England, and Northern Europe (Childs Reference Childs1992). The deputies of the 1481–1482 Cortes praised the wealth of Madeira (Candido Reference Candido, Fiolhais, Franco and Paiva2022). There were about 3000 slaves in Funchal around 1550, for a total population of some 20,000 (Hancock Reference Hancock2009). Most of them were involved in the work-intensive sugar production. In the early sixteenth century, sugar canes were successfully planted in São Tomé, an island off the coast of Guinea. By 1535, the production of sugar in Madeira was down to 68,000 arrobas and had grown to 200,000 in São Tomé. Madeira’s sugar canes were attacked by a parasite, the soil became depleted, and the production dropped substantially. In the early 1600s, sugar from Brazil flooded the market: 60,000 tons in 1610, as compared with Madeira’s peak of 2500 tons in 1506 (Vieira Reference Vieira2010). About half the Madeira slaves were sent to Brazil.

Vineyards had also been planted in Madeira since its earliest days (Liddell Reference Liddell1998). A wide range of cultivars were imported from mainland Portugal (Vieira Reference Vieira1993). Dom Henrique ordered cuttings of Malvasia Candida from Crete to be planted there as well. They would produce malmsey, the rarest and most famous Madeira wine. Other types of Malvasia were planted as well. As early as 1455, Funchal was already surrounded by vineyards. But until the 1550s, Madeira’s economy relied on sugar, with wine a distant second (Hancock Reference Hancock2009).

Because of Madeira’s location within the Atlantic system of currents, Funchal was the port of call for ships on their way to distant colonies. They loaded water, fresh foods, and wines – often used as ballast. The first English attempt to reach Madeira and fetch wine was by William Weston in 1481 (Keys Reference Keys2009), but the first wines exported from Madeira were probably (Vieira Reference Vieira1993) sent to France’s François I (1515–1547), and the first Malmsey shipped to London arrived in 1537 (Simon Reference Simon1906).

During the dynastic union with Spain (1580–1640), wine exports from Portugal dropped because Spain promoted its own wines. But European merchants recognized the opportunity and moved to Madeira. Soon, consulates opened in Funchal: Flanders in 1608, France in 1626, and England in 1658 (Cossart Reference Cossart1984). When Portugal restored its independence from Spain, vineyards had replaced not just sugar canes but all the other crops as well: Madeira produced only wine. All other necessities of life (food, clothing, tools and other manufactured goods) were imported. Being entirely dependent on a single crop would prove unwise.

The demand for Madeira wine in the colonies and England increased (Vieira Reference Vieira1996) to the point that fake ‘Madeira’ wines appeared on the market. The falsifications (Liddell Reference Liddell1998) involved blending malmsey with lesser wines, mixing (inferior) wines from the north with the (better) wines from the south of the island, importing wines from the Canaries or Açores (worth about one-third the price) and mixing those with local wine. Madeira wines were also shipped to the Açores or Lisbon, blended there with cheaper local wines, and sold as real Madeira. Regulations were passed in 1768 to prevent cheating, but enforcement was difficult.

Shakespeare (1546–1616) mentioned these wines several times in his plays. In ‘Henry IV’, John Falstaff offered his soul to the devil for ‘a cup of Madeira and a cold capon’s leg’. This is of course impossible since Henry IV reigned from 1399 to 1413, before Madeira was even settled. But the verse suggests that a cup of Madeira had a value comparable to Falstaff’s soul. It must have been pretty good (or Falstaff’s soul pretty bad). In ‘Richard III’, the Duke of Clarence was stabbed and then drowned in a butt of Malmsey. Shakespeare did not specify where that wine came from, and many assumed it to be Madeira. But the Duke was executed in 1478, before the first known shipment of Madeira. It is more likely that this Malmsey came from Crete: the Venetians were actively trading Cretan wines in England at the time.

The Jesuits arrived in Madeira in 1570 and opened a college in Funchal (it is now part of the University). They sought the best locations for vineyards and produced high-quality wines. They received a small vineyard, now called Fajã dos Padres, west of Câmara de Lobos. It still produces the most famous Malmsey on the Island. The access to the vineyard is difficult but spectacular. Fajã dos Padres was within the Jesuits’ huge ‘Quinta Grande’ estate, which they kept until their expulsion from Portugal in 1759 (see later).

Soon after Portugal declared its independence from Spain in 1640, it resumed its friendly relations with England. Madeira became again part of the English trading network in the Atlantic. It greatly benefited from the Navigation Act of 1660 and the Act of Navigation of 1665 (Bazenga et al. Reference Bazenga, Ribeiro and Sequeira2012). The Navigation Act prohibited the import into England in foreign ships of any commodity which was not of their own country. The goal was to prevent the Dutch from bringing wines into England. But the wines from Madeira and Açores could be exported free of taxes to any part of the British Empire on English-built ships (Vieira Reference Vieira1993). The islands now benefited from a quasi-monopoly for shipments of wine to north America. This market grew considerably in the eighteenth century.

None of the trade and tax advantages applied to the wines from the (Spanish) Canaries. And then, the Anglo-Spanish war (1654–1660) closed the Canary wines access to the English market. The 1662 marriageFootnote ^h of Catarina de Bragança to Charles II of England further consolidated the links between Portugal and England. The wines from Madeira dominated the Atlantic trade (over 75%) while the Açores accounted for less than 10%. The Canary wines had nowhere to go but Spain. The demand for Madeira wines was beyond the island’s production capacity. The total wine production in these years is difficult to estimate because many exports were free of duties and left no trace in custom records. Liddell (Reference Liddell1998) wrote that 10,000 to 20,000 pipes were produced annually (depending on the quality of the harvest). These numbers are consistent with the descriptions left by travellers to the islands.

English merchants settled in Funchal (Liddell Reference Liddell1998): Robert Willoughby in the 1590s (Minchinton Reference Minchinton1990), Richart Pickford in 1638, William Bolton in 1676, and so on. By 1680, about one-third of the 30 merchants involved in the import–export trade in Funchal were English (Cossart Reference Cossart1984), but they handled much more than one-third of the trade. Bolton was exporting wine and importing foods and other necessities on his ships. He was also a banker. From 1695 to 1714, Bolton wrote numerous letters to Robert Haysham in London (Simon Reference Simon1928). They are filled with precious details about life and winemaking in Madeira. Then came James Leacock in 1741, Francis Newton in 1745, John Blandy in 1808, just to name a few. By the end of the seventeenth century, the English merchants organized into a chamber of commerce, the ‘British Factory’ (Bazenga et al. Reference Bazenga, Ribeiro and Sequeira2012), as they did in Porto. It was financed by a levy on shipments. The merchants traded in North America, Brazil, the West and East Indies, as well as England. Typical trade routes went from England to Portugal, Madeira, North America, and back.

In the late 1600s, there were three qualities of Madeira: the best wines for export everywhere except Brazil, an intermediate quality for Brazil and the crews of ships, and the lesser wines for local consumption. The best white cultivars were the Malvasia and Verdelho (the latter accounted for about two-thirds of the acreage), and the red Tinta Negra. Another common white grape was called ‘Vidonia’ (Liddell Reference Liddell1998). The grape harvest took place in September or early October. The new wine was racked in January and sold by Easter. Any wine over a year old was hard to sell. The Madeira wines at the time were not the ones we know today. They were not fortified and were drunk young. The wine for export was white, sometimes ‘tinted’ by the addition of a little red wine, occasionally enriched with raisins or cooked must (Loureiro and Malfeito Ferreira Reference Loureiro and Malfeito Ferreira2021). The red wine was consumed locally. The best cultivar was the Malvasia. Its rich malmsey fetched the highest price but there was little of it and its lifetime was short.

Açores

The colonization of the Açores archipelago started at the same time as Madeira and followed a similar model of captaincies. But the Açores, much further away from the mainland than Madeira, attracted few settlers: it took decades to populate the entire archipelago (Loureiro and Malfeito Ferreira Reference Loureiro and Malfeito Ferreira2021). The process began with the small island of Santa Maria, which is where the first Açores wine was made. Settlers then arrived on the much larger island of São Miguel, and the central group was colonized: Terceira, São Jorge, Graciosa, Faial, and Pico – probably around 1470–1480. Last came Flores and the tiny Corvo island. Álvaro de Ornelas was the first captain of Pico, until 1482. His successor Joz Van Hurtere was born in Burgundy, and the first captain of Terceira, Jácome de Bruges, was Flemish. The early settlers came from Algarve and Alentejo, as well as northern France and Flanders. They came together with Franciscan and Carmelite friars. The Jesuits arrived in Terceira in 1570 and opened a school in Ponta Delgada in 1591. Their presence was recorded in Pico in 1649 (Loureiro Reference Loureiro2009).

Cattle, sheep, and goats were imported from the mainland, and fishing was abundant. Wheat, oranges, and vines thrived. Grapevines were planted in areas that could not be used for grain: the coastlines of Pico, Graciosa, and (much less) São Miguel (Silveira e Sousa Reference Shrady2004). The sugar cane did not perform as well as in Madeira. This effort was abandoned when sugar plantations flourished in Brazil in the mid-sixteenth century. Many Açores settlers moved there to seek better living conditions.

The vineyards were most successful on Pico, the ‘black island’ as much of its surface is covered with black lava flows. Only three or four percent of its surface consists of arable land. The island has no rivers, drinking water, or natural harbour. The landowners and merchants established themselves on the nearby island of Faial where life was more comfortable and a harbour was built. Only the workers lived on Pico. They dug tidal wells for drinking water: the rainwater that accumulates underground is pushed upward by the tides as salt water has a slightly higher density than sweet water.

The Açores were not on the trade routes to the colonies but on the way back (Figure 6). The ships that stopped in the Açores were often loaded with colonial goods and did not add much cargo. What they added was wine. The first mention of the quality of Pico wines relative to the other islands was by the priest/historian Gaspar Frutuoso (1522–1591) in his ‘Saudades da Terra’: ‘Throughout the land [Pico] there are many vineyards, which produce good wine and better than on all the islands … grapes of all varieties, Muscatel, Verdelho, Mourisco, Açaria and others…’ (Loureiro and Malfeito Ferreira Reference Loureiro and Malfeito Ferreira2021). This was the first mention of Verdelho in Pico, before any mention of it in Madeira (they are the same). Its origin is debated. It may have been brought by Franciscan friars. It is a direct parent of today’s Arinto dos Açores and Terrantez do Pico, which are distinct from the continental Arinto and the Terrantez in Madeira, respectively.

The vines were planted in basaltic lava soil, which can be very smooth (lajido soil). Pickaxes, iron bars, and other tools were needed to crack layers of lava and plant the vines (Loureiro Reference Loureiro2009; Loureiro and Malfeito Ferreira Reference Loureiro and Malfeito Ferreira2021). The broken lava rocks were used to build enclosures, the currais (corrals), about 1 m high (Figure 8). They protected the vines from the strong ocean winds and, at night, released the heat they accumulated during the day. All the vineyards were located at low altitudes, close to the ocean, and the vines grew low to the ground. The pipes of freshly-pressed wine were transported to the edge of the water and often pushed by swimmers toward small ships. Three-quarter-full barrels floated better and were easier to haul on the decks of ships, where they were filled. Once loaded, the ships crossed the narrow channel to the harbour of Horta on Faial. Thus, the wines from Pico were often labelled ‘Faial’ because they were shipped from there. Jefferson mentioned Madeira, Port, Claret (Bordeaux), and ‘Fyall’ (Faial). He sought Faial wines even during his time in Paris (Hailman Reference Hailman2009): they all came from Pico.

Figure 8.

Ancient currais protect the vines from ocean winds. Pico mountain dominates (photo SKE).

In 1650, a record 30,000 pipes of Pico wine were exported to the Netherlands, Flanders, Denmark, and Hamburg by the Labat brothers. Many cultivars were involved, most of them white (Verdelho, Moscatel, Mourisco, Açaria, Alicante, Boal, etc.) and a few red (mostly Bastardo and Tinta Negra). They grew in the same vineyard and their grapes were pressed together. Weaker wines were sometimes strengthened by the addition of cooked must (arrobe), an ancient Roman technique. The added sugar ferments until the level of alcohol is too high for yeast to survive. The result is a stronger and sometimes sweeter wine, which travels better and has a longer lifetime.

Background

For over a thousand years, most wines were short-lived, white or light in colour, with low alcohol levels: they spoiled quickly. In the seventeenth century, spirits distilled from wine, suitable for human consumption, started to be used to fortify wines. It increased their lifetime and allowed them to be transported over long distances without spoiling. This appears to have been instigated by the Dutch or Flemish as they were the first to provide boilers and necessary know-how (see the next section). The Dutch word bandewijn, burnt wine, is the origin of ‘brandy’.

The fortification of wine came along with a push to improve winemaking techniques, such as better hygiene, use of sulphur wicks (mèches soufrées) to disinfect barrels, ullage to compensate for the evaporation in wine barrels, and careful selection of cultivars. All of this aimed at the production of more stable wines with longer lifetimes. Fortification transformed both Madeira and Port wines. Bottles sturdy enough to age wine were invented in the 1630s, but became widely used much later.

Following its independence from Spain in 1668, Portugal was broke. Brazil saved the day. It produced sugar, timber, tobacco, hides and silver, but then gold was discovered in the Mantiqueira mountains in 1694. The state of Minas Gerais turned out to have the richest gold deposits in the world. The production exceeded 25 tons per year in the 1720s (Hatton Reference Hatton2020), when diamonds were discovered there as well. The Bragança became fabulously wealthy. João V (r. 1706–1750) boasted: ‘My grandfather feared and owed; my father owed; I neither fear nor owe.’ The amount of gold reaching Portugal declined by the end of his reign as smuggling (much of it to England) and tax evasion increased, while alluvial gold became rare (Boxer Reference Boxer1969).

Strong ties with England were re-established as João IV needed England’s support for its Restauration war with Spain as well as fighting against the Dutch in Brazil. The 1654 Favourite Nation treaty allowed England to trade with Portuguese colonies, lowered custom duties, and gave substantial privileges to English merchants. The often complicated relations between France and England became even more so. Louis XIV’s Comptroller-General of Finances, Colbert (1661 to 1683) implemented strict protectionist policies which caused England to temporarily forbid the import of French wines. In 1679, the English Parliament again banned the import of French wines, this time to prevent Charles II from collecting wine taxes. Imports from Portugal jumped from 427 tuns in 1678 to 1000 tuns in 1679, and then 4000 tuns in 1682 (Phillips Reference Phillips2002). Such increases strongly suggest that much of that wine was in fact French – shipped through Portugal and transferred into Portuguese barrels. Embargoes were in place during the Nine-Years’ War (1688–1697) and the War of Spanish succession (1701–1714). Every time, English wine imports from Portugal and Spain increased: over 2000 tuns and three hogsheads of wines from the Douro valley made their way to London from 1669 to 1683. For 1694/95, the numbers were 915 butts, 353 casks, 1198 hogsheads, seven pieces, 15,930 pipes, and 34 tuns, as well as 51 casks, five hogsheads, four pipes, and three tuns of brandy (Simon Reference Simon1906). But these wars were bad for the Atlantic trade. There are few records of Madeira in those years. Sack (especially from Jerez) became more popular in England (Simon Reference Simon1906), possibly because Madeira wines were difficult to find.

The commercial part of the Anglo-Portuguese 1703 Methuen treaty (Phillips Reference Phillips2002; Antunes and Salvado Reference Antunes, Salvado, Fiolhais, Franco and Paiva2022) benefited the wine trade, especially the red wines from the Douro valley and the Atlantic Islands. Madeira wines, already popular in England, could now be exported to North America without passing through London first. The English import taxes on Portuguese wines were set at less than two-thirds those applied to French wines, and English merchants could establish trading house in Porto: Cockburn, Warre, Croft, etc. Most Port wines were already fortified. The Portuguese economy experienced a solid growth until 1755 (Palma and Reis Reference Palma and Reis2019). However, the Methuen treaty provided English textiles easy access to the Portuguese market. At first, Brazilian gold corrected that imbalance. In the long term, England was the clear winner.

On 1 November 1755, most of Lisbon was destroyed by a huge earthquake and tsunami, followed by fires: one of the worst natural disasters ever to hit Europe (Shrady Reference Shrady2008; Pereira Reference Pereira2009; Françoso Reference Françoso, Fiolhais, Franco and Paiva2022). Tens of thousands of people died and many more were injured, out of a total Lisbon population of about 250,000. José I (1750–1777), sheltering in a tent in Belém, was overwhelmed. Sebastião de Carvalho e Melo proposed to ‘bury the dead and feed the living’. The King put him in charge (Shrady Reference Shrady2008). He started by forcing the fleeing population back to Lisbon and ordering the public hanging of (suspected) looters. He organized the reconstruction of the capital, with wide avenues and public parks, and financed it with a 4% tax on all retail sales in the city (Page Reference Page2002). Carvalho was efficient and hard-working, with a definite authoritarian streak. He was soon given quasi-absolute powers, and eliminated those who opposed him. In 1759, he expelled the Jesuits from Portugal and its colonies: they had become a state within the state. He reformed the educational system, reduced the power of (but could not eliminate) the feared Inquisition, and destroyed many of their files. In 1761, he banned slavery in mainland Portugal, but not its colonies where slaves were needed.

Carvalho’s impact on the history of wine involved strictly regulating Port wines and delimiting their area of production, starting in 1757. His regulations sharply increased the quality and reputation of these wines. In 1769, Carvalho became Marquês of Pombal and is often referred to simply as ‘Pombal’. His power evaporated when José I died and his daughter Maria I (1777–1816) became Queen. Pombal ended up in internal exile and died soon after.

In 1789, the storming of the Bastille prison in Paris triggered the French Revolution. Four years later, Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette were publicly guillotined. This was duly noted by all European monarchs, whose thrones suddenly felt fragile. After a few bloody years of revolutionary rule in France, Napoleon emerged as First Consul then, in all modesty, Emperor. Multiple coalitions were unable to stop his territorial expansions. France soon controlled much of western Europe, but not all of it: England is an island, and Nelson was a very successful vice-admiral. He defeated the French navy off the coast of Egypt in 1798, and crushed the French and Spanish navies at Trafalgar in 1805. Napoleon gave up hope of invading England, and decided to blockade it instead. That marked the beginning of a very troubled period for Portugal (Gates Reference Gates2001; Esdail Reference Esdaile2015).

Napoleon’s general Junot ordered Portugal to close its ports to English ships, confiscate English property, and imprison or expel all the English merchants. Portugal tried to compromise and play for time, but there was no time. In the fall of 1807, the French and Spanish armies invaded Portugal. Just days before their arrival in Lisbon, Queen Maria I, Prince regent João, and the entire court (about 10,000 people), courageously boarded ships bound for Brazil and fled the country under the protection of the British Royal Navy (Wilcken Reference Wilcken2005; Mello e Souza Reference Fiolhais, Franco and Paiva2022). They took with them as much of the country’s treasures as the ships could carry. The French took over Portugal, but the population resisted. The talented Arthur Wellesley, future Duke of Wellington, was sent to the rescue (Hatton Reference Hatton2020). He pushed the French away from Portugal and built 152 fortifications north of Lisbon (Robertson Reference Robertson2010). They stopped the 75,000 French troops under marshal Massena during the third French invasion. These wars destroyed the Portuguese economy (Palma and Reis Reference Palma and Reis2019), and brought famine and misery across the country.

The French also had problems in Spain. It was ruled by Napoleon’s appointed King, his older brother Joseph – locally known as ‘Pepe Botella’ for his love of wine. The Spanish popular rebellion began in 1808 with the ‘Dos de Mayo’ uprising in Madrid, which quickly spread across Spain. Napoleon’s war against Portugal had become the Peninsular War (Gates Reference Gates2001; Esdaile Reference Esdaile2015; Robertson Reference Robertson2010), a very brutal affair illustrated by Goya’s 82 ‘Disasters of War’ prints. The French were ultimately expelled in 1813, while Napoleon was suffering an even worse defeat in Russia. After a brief exile in nearby Elba, Napoleon returned to France only to suffer his final defeat at Waterloo (1815). He was sent to the distant island of Santa Helena where he died a few years later. The end of Napoleonic wars marked the beginning of a long economic recession throughout Europe.

João VI was enjoying a comfortable life in Rio de Janeiro while Portugal was effectively ruled by the unpopular Lord Beresford. He had his hands full with the Liberal Revolution which began in Porto in 1820. He sailed to Rio to consult with the King but, upon his return to Lisbon, he was prevented from docking. He sailed to England instead. João VI finally returned in 1821. His son Pedro remained in charge in Brazil, promptly proclaimed Brazil’s independence (1822), and appointed himself emperor. In Portugal, João VI accepted the liberal constitution of 1822 which established a constitutional monarchy with limited powers.

After João’s death in 1826, Emperor Pedro named his 7-year-old daughter, Maria de Gloria, Queen of Portugal and his brother, Miguel, regent. Miguel ignored the new constitution and claimed absolute power. Pedro returned to Porto, starting the War of the Two Brothers (1831–1834) – as if Portugal needed yet another conflict. The English intervened and settled the situation: Miguel abdicated and Pedro became regent. Much of the country was destroyed and Portugal was ruined with considerable debts, mostly to England. In 1834, Pedro abolished all religious ordersFootnote ⁱ and confiscated their estates. These were auctioned off, but this raised insufficient funds to make a meaningful difference.

The economic and political situation was bad across all of Europe. The year 1848 was marked by violent popular anti-government rebellions in major European capitals, including Lisbon (Rapport Reference Rapport2008). In France, the Second Republic replaced the monarchy, but other authoritarian regimes remained in power.

The state of Portuguese viticulture in the nineteenth century was summarized by JullienFootnote ^j (1816) and Jullien and Jullien (Reference Jullien and Jullien1866). In 1816, he wrote that Portuguese wines were generally inferior to Spanish ones except for those produced in the Alto Douro and Setúbal. Many wines were field blends with up to 67 cultivars growing in the same vineyard! He noticed that along the Minho, the vines were trained high above ground, often on trees. Some still are today (see later). Alentejo produced just enough wine for its own needs. The dry or sweet fortified wines from Carcavelos and Oeiras were shipped to England as ‘wines from Lisbon’. The best table wines came from Colares. In the 1866 edition, the comments are similar but with substantial new plantings in Alentejo. He ranks only the Port wines as ‘first class’. The red wines from Minho and Estremadura as well as the white muscat wines are ‘second class’. All the other Portuguese wines were ranked below that. His comments on Madeira and Açores are in the relevant later section, as are those on Port.

On 27 May 1871, Antero de Quental (1842–1891) discussed the reasons for Portugal’s decline. He singled out the long period of religious conservatism (he referred to the Inquisition as ‘the nation’s grave’); the political centralization imposed by absolute rule; the economic structure during the age of discoveries: too much easy gold, too little hard work, no fiscal management; and the brain drain associated with the expulsion of the Jews. He did not mention that, starting around 1760, the industrial revolution was fundamentally transforming England and other western countries while Spain and Portugal were falling behind.

Queen Maria de Gloria died in 1853. Her successors Pedro V, Luís I, and Carlos I tried to stabilize and modernize the country, but the economic situation remained poor. And then the world’s vineyards were attacked by several American plagues: powdery mildew (oïdium), phylloxera, and downy mildew. Portugal declared bankruptcy in June 1892, then again in May 1902, causing additional disruptions to an already impossible financial climate. Carlos I was assassinated in 1908. His son Manuel II, the unfortunate last King of Portugal, only reigned for a few months. The October 1910 revolution established the first Portuguese Republic. Manuel went into exile in England. None of this established political stability, with 45 unsuccessful governments in 16 years (Hatton Reference Hatton2020).

Portugal was initially neutral during the First World War, but had three strategic reasons for entering the war: preserve its colonies in Africa – strategically important for Britain; counter the Spanish neutrality; and gain a seat at the table at the end of the war (Hatton Reference Hatton2020). In March 1916, it provoked Germany into declaring war by seizing German and Austrian ships. And then, as a political gesture, Portugal sent 55,000 men to the western trenches in 1917. Most of them perished. In retaliation, German U-boats went into Funchal harbour in December 1916 and torpedoed several ships. They did it again in December 1917.

The end of the First World War did not bring economic relief to Portugal, or anybody else. Europe was broke and its population depressed by years of senseless destruction. The ‘Spanish Flu’ pandemic killed more people worldwide than the First World War. Portugal experienced a period of hyper-inflation and its currency, the escudo, collapsed. Viticulture badly needed large investment to rebuilt the vineyards, modernize ancient wine-making equipment, and mechanize viticulture. No money was available. The government was powerless.

In 1926, the political and financial crises led to a military dictatorship under General Óscar Carmona. Two years later, he appointed António de Oliveira Salazar, professor of political economy at the University of Coimbra, as finance minister (Léonard Reference Léonard2014a; Hatton Reference Hatton2020). He ruthlessly raised taxes, slashed spending, balanced the budget, and stabilized the currency, all within about one year. Dissenting voices were silenced. In 1932, Salazar became Prime Minister and President of the Council of Ministers, giving him near-absolute power. President Carmona became a figurehead. Salazar was extremely socially conservative and fervently Catholic. People commented: ‘God in Heaven, Salazar on Earth’.

In 1933, Salazar introduced a new constitution, the Estado Novo. Now the State regulated everything: the size of companies, production, prices, exports, and so on. Everything was placed under the supervision of an administrative body appointed by the state. Fundamental freedoms such as the right to free expression or association were replaced by censorship and a political police. In 1936, Salzar established a mandatory youth movement, the Mocidade Portuguesa, reminiscent of Hitler’s youths. In 1942, the political police became the PIDE (Polícia Internacional e de Defesa do Estado), feared for its use of torture and secret prisons: Tarrafal (in Cabo Verde), Aljube, the fort in Peniche, Caxias (Lisbon area), the fortress of São João Baptista (on Terceira in the Açores), amongst others. International disapproval of the Salazar regime was illustrated in the highly-critical 22 July 1946 issue of Time. The magazine became illegal in Portugal for years.

Salazar focused on Portuguese goods such as corks, olive oil, and especially wine. Wine and viticulture generated jobs and provided much-needed foreign currency. When he gained power, the Portuguese wine market was in disarray. In 1933, the Federation of Winemakers of Central and Southern Portugal was established, a cooperative charged with removing excess wine from the market and storingFootnote ^k it, in order to stabilize prices. In 1937, it was replaced by the Junta Nacional do Vinho (similar juntas were created for olive oil, fruits, etc.). The junta had a budget, broad responsibilities over production and trade, proposed new laws that were quickly enacted. Small wineries were incorporated into cooperatives with technical assistance services. They improved the organization and cost management.

Salazar kept Portugal away from the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). He wished to keep Portugal neutral during the Second World War but, in the early years, leaned on the side of Hitler and Mussolini. Portugal traded with both Axis and Allied forces, especially in tungsten,Footnote ^l a metal used in ammunition and, later, for the nozzle of German rockets. The Açores were a critical asset because of their central position in the Atlantic ocean (Herz Reference Herz2009).

Salazar had allowed the German navy to establish a supply service in Horta (Faial island) for U-boats. They devastated allied shipments of war material and troops on their way to England and Europe’s battlefields. By 1941, several million tons of precious cargo had been sunk by an increasing number of U-boats. Protecting the convoys along the central Atlantic route became a very high priority. In the fall of 1943, Churchill invoked the 1373 Windsor Treaty, Salazar agreed, and a Royal Air Force group established a functioning air base at Lajes Field on Terceira. Germany’s supply base in Faial could no longer be used, and the U-boat threat to shipping in the central Atlantic was considerably reduced. The United States pressured Salazar to accept an American presence at Lajes Field, which was expanded to accommodate heavy bombers. From the Açores, they could easily reach European targets. The Ally presence in the Açores was the key to Portugal becoming a founding member of NATO in 1949.

At the height of the Second World War, wine exports were at an all-time low. They recovered afterwards, but slowly. Only 1500 pipes of Port wine were exported to England in 1952, as compared with an annual average of over 30,000 pipes in the 1930s. The wine growers still produced high-quality grapes but that wines had nowhere to go. Precious little money was coming in, and many winemakers faced bankruptcy.

This is when Fernando van Zeller Guedes stepped in with an ambitious project: produce inexpensive, high-quality, fun-to-drink table wines that would appeal to a broad audience. His father owned Quinta da Aveleda in the Vinho Verde region, where the winemaker Eugène Hellis had created just such a wine in 1939: the Casal Garcia vinho verde. It was very popular and ended up being exported all over the world.

Fernando wanted to work with the unsold (red and white) grapes from the Douro, and then, other regions. Fernando had deep connections in the wine industry and found 15 co-investors to start a new company: Sociedade Comercial dos Grandes Vinhos de Mesa de Portugal, now known as SOGRAPE (Pereira Reference Pereira2003). The company leased space and equipment in a cooperative in Vila Real. Fernando went on his way across the Douro Valley by foot, bicycle, or donkey to purchase wines. By the summer of 1943, SOGRAPE released its first wines: Cambriz, Vila Real Branco, Granado Tinto, and… Mateus rosé. The latter was something new for Portugal, and it was slightly sparkling with a sweet touch.

Mateus was an immediate success, and came to define Portuguese table wines for several decades. The shape of its bottle was inspired by the canteen used by soldiers in the First World War. At first, these wines were shipped to Brazil, then to colonies in Africa, but soon became an international hit. The Matteus reached the English market in the late 1950s. Twenty years later, some 50 million bottles were shipped to 120 countries, including the USA. Today, the company is global, owns many wine estates and brands. A great success story that emerged from the misery of the Second World War.

Portugal joined the UN in 1955, the European Free Trade Agreement in 1959, and the Monetary Fund in 1961. The Portuguese economy started growing at healthy pace (Palma and Reis Reference Palma and Reis2019). But Salazar was adamant about keeping the Portuguese colonies in Africa. This resulted in independence wars in Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau, starting in 1961. These unwinnable wars absorbed a large fraction of Portugal’s annual budget. Many younger Portuguese fled the country (mostly to France) to avoid misery and conscription into the army. Salazar suffered a stroke in 1968 and died two years later. His dictatorship survived until 1974. Before addressing the subsequent evolution of Portuguese wines, we should go back and discuss wine-related issues for the period 1640 to 1974.

Madeira and Açores

After the renewal of ties between Portugal and England in 1640, the Atlantic trade resumed (Vieira Reference Vieira1993; Hancock Reference Hancock2009). A substantial boost resulted from the Navigation Acts of 1651 and 1660. They allowed wines from Madeira and Açores (but not the Spanish Canary Islands) to be delivered tax free on British ships to the West Indies and North America without having to stop in England first. The importance of the North American market increased substantially (Vieira Reference Vieira1993; Loureiro and Malfeito Ferreira Reference Loureiro and Malfeito Ferreira2021). George Washington served Madeira to his guests at his wedding in May 1759, and John Adams wrote in his diary that he often drank ‘a large portion’ of it (Vieira Reference Vieira1996).

The Methuen treaty (1703) provided more protections to Portuguese wines in British markets, while Spanish and French wines were taxed heavily. Madeira benefited for several reasons. First, the geographical location of the islands made it an almost required stop for ships sailing from Europe to the colonies. Second, Madeira wines already had a strong reputation and were in big demand. Third, the British merchants were exceptionally well organized there and many of them were involved in shipping as well. In contrast, the Açores were on the return path from the colonies, the reputation of their wines was not as strong, and the (mostly Portuguese) wine merchants in Faial did not carry the same business weight as those in Madeira: there was no equivalent of a ‘British Factory’ in Faial.

Most Madeira wine dealers were Portuguese, but the largest volume of sales was handled by English traders (Cossart Reference Cossart1984). They did not blend well with the local population. They belonged to the Anglican Church while the people of Madeira were strongly catholic. Further, the trader’s goal was to maximize profits. They purchased pipes of wine at the lowest possible price, then sold and shipped it at a much higher real market value: the demand often exceeded the supply (Vieira Reference Vieira1993). The profits did not reach the local growers and winemakers. And then the same British traders also imported (on the same ships) all the foods and basic necessities for the island – which they sold at marked-up prices. The local population struggled while the British merchants and the British Factory became very wealthy. It funded a church, a hospital, and even a burial ground for its members: until 1761, non-Catholics had to be buried at sea (Cossart Reference Cossart1984).

The number of pipes shipped from Madeira rose ten-fold from the 1650s to 1815, with a peak of 60,000 pipes in 1794 (Hancock Reference Hancock2009). In the Açores, the wine production increased on Pico and São Jorge under the supervision of Carmelite and Franciscan friars as well as Jesuit priests, but never reached the Madeira levels. The estimated production was just 8000 pipes in 1632. It jumped to 30,000 in 1649, and then to a record 40,000 in 1658 (Loureiro and Malfeito Ferreira Reference Loureiro and Malfeito Ferreira2021). After that, the production stabilized around 20,000 pipes a year. The number of exported pipes was of course much less.

Madeira was the wine powerhouse of the Atlantic. For much of the eighteenth century, it produced about three-quarters of all the wine exported. The Açores and Canaries produced only 5 or 6% each. In order to improve the visibility of their wines, the Açores merchants often labelled them with names associated with Madeira. The Pico wines reached the port of Horta on Faial where the merchants ‘improved’ them to make them taste like Madeira. They probably added raisins to increase the sugar content and achieve higher levels of alcohol (Loureiro and Malfeito Ferreira Reference Loureiro and Malfeito Ferreira2021).

In the few locations where the Verdelho matured exceptionally well, late harvests allowed the production of passado, a very special wine which naturally ferments up to 18 to 19% alcohol (see later). The Jesuit priest António Cordeiro (1641–1717) claimed that this wine ‘in no way yields to what in Madeyra is called Malvazia’. It was shipped to Russia, often as ‘Malvasia de Faial’ even though it actually was a Verdelho de Pico. It reached the court of the Tsars of Russia in the eighteenth century, via London (Vieira Reference Vieira1989). Bottles of it were found in the Tsar’s cellars after the Russian Revolution of 1917.

In 1776, the representatives of the 13 North American colonies signed the Declaration of Independence and toasted the event with Madeira (Hatton Reference Hatton2020). Since Madeira wines appear together with wines from the Açores in North-American customs records of the eighteenth century (Andrews Reference Andrews Ch1964; Francis Reference Francis1973), it is possible that wines from Pico were also part of the celebrations.

Ships from North America brought flour and other basic food items to Madeira and returned loaded with wine (Vieira Reference Vieira1989). That trade was disrupted during US Revolutionary War (1775–1783): Portugal was an ally of England and American ships were banned from all its harbours (Hancock Reference Hancock2009). Some trade continued with British ships, but shipments to North America dropped by two-thirds. Yet, these exports accounted for almost 60% of total Madeira exports, and most of the cereals consumed on the island came from North America (Vieira 2012). The population of Madeira grew from ∼50,000 in 1754 to ∼80,000 in 1797: with less money coming in, the demand for imported foods and other goods increased. When poor crops or difficult war years caused a drop in food imports, many people in Madeira survived on roots and fruits.

During the Revolutionary War, wine stocks piled up in Madeira warehouses (Hancock Reference Hancock2009). This provided the impetus to find ways to age these wines gracefully. This involved long exposures to heat.Footnote ^m Since the mid-1700s, American importers realized that Madeira wines that had travelled across the tropics and the equator tasted much better than the wines of the same vintage that remained in Funchal. The wines had spent months at sea, continuously shaken and exposed to tropical temperatures. Somehow, this rough treatment accelerated the aging process and considerably improved the wines. This would be highly detrimental to ‘normal’ wines, but Madeira wines were fortified, acidic, and at least partly oxidized. The wines from Açores also benefited from such transport.

The first deliberate shipping of young wines to the West Indies to accelerate their aging occurred in 1749 (Hancock Reference Hancock2009). By 1775, it had become well established. These vinho da roda were sought after and sold for much higher prices than Madeira wines that had not travelled (Vieira Reference Vieira1996; Liddell Reference Liddell1998). A few vinho da roda were still produced in the early twentieth century. Croft (Reference Croft1787) wrote:

In order to reduce the costs associated with such long shipping, Pantaleão Fernandes, a merchant in Funchal, improved his wines by keeping them in the sun for extended periods of time (Vieira Reference Vieira1996; Liddell Reference Liddell1998; Loureiro and Malfeito Ferreira Reference Loureiro and Malfeito Ferreira2021). The idea of heating wines on land in ‘hot houses’ was there to stay. A lot of experimentation was required to find the optimum temperatures, the heating and cooling rates, and the length of time, but the estufagem system was born and gradually replaced the expensive trips across the tropics. The first estufa in Funchal was a storage area heated with stoves: moderate heating for 6 months or so achieved results comparable to a long tropical trip. However, excessive heat caused wines to get an unpleasant ‘burn’ flavour and low residual alcohol. The temperature had to be controlled and the wines placed in properly sealed barrels to prevent the alcohol from evaporating. A good method involved a series of rapid heating to 70–80^oC followed by slow cooling (Vieira Reference Vieira1996). Experimentation continued for decades. Wine-heating stoves were also used in the Açores with Pico wines in the late eighteenth century. This was done in Faial by storekeepers. The fortified wines spent 30 days at 60^oC, and were then exported as ‘Pico-Madeira’.

In the first edition of his ‘Topographie’, Jullien (1816) wrote that the Madeira wines had a solid reputation, with an annual production of 25,000 to 30,000 pipes. The most esteemed wine was made with the ‘Candida’ (Malvasia Cândida) grape and improved with age. He mentioned (but did not name) three white cultivars (probably Sercial, Boal, and Verdelho), and wrote that their ‘white [wines] are dry, refined, and almost as expensive as malmsey’. He also mentioned that two red grapes (probably Bastardo and Tinto) produced wines for local consumption. He did not discuss any heat treatment.

In the fourth edition of his ‘Topographie’ (Jullien and Jullien Reference Jullien and Jullien1866), Jullien wrote that the best wines were made in the south part of the island, and listed six white cultivars: Malmsey (the best), Vidonia (the most abundant), Boal, Sercial (rare and excellent), Muscadel, and Alicante. The red grapes were the Bastardo, Tinta Negra, and a table grape called Ferral. The wines were fortified following fermentation and then the ‘barrels of wine were left in estufagem for several months, which mimicked 5–6 years of aging or travel to India’. But the wines in estufa did not achieve the quality of the vinho da roda. Jullien also described another aging process: ‘burying tightly closed and wrapped bottles in a hole filled with horse manureFootnote ⁿ for 6 to 12 months’. Who came up with that idea is a mystery.

After the Revolutionary war, the Madeira and Açores trade with North America picked up, but now in competition with Spanish and French wines. This was somewhat compensated by sales in Northern Europe and Russia. At that time, most of the island wines had either undergone heat treatments in Madeira or Faial, or had travelled for months. Some wines were bottled with a label indicating where and on which ship(s) they had been. Aged wines shipped in pipes (the most common situation) had the vintage year marked on the barrel. Such wines were sold at a premium and were in big demand. The taste for older Madeira wines increased. Soon, wealthy customers demanded 5-, 10-, or even 15-year-old wines (Hancock Reference Hancock2009).

The sweetest, rarest, and most delicately-flavoured Madeira wine was made from the Malvasia Cândida. As its production was very small (80 to 100 pipes), it was often sold in hogsheads. The Sercial, Boal, and Bastardo, were more abundant, but the most planted grape was the Verdelho (Hancock Reference Hancock2009). Several cultivars often grew in the same vineyard, were harvested together, and the wine was sold as ‘Madeira’. The Sercial grown at higher altitudes produced a highly-praised dry white wine. The red Tinta Negra was ubiquitous and used in blends. From best to worst, the wines were labelled Malvasia, London Particular (a blend of Verdelho and Boal), London Market, New York, Virginia or Jamaica, and Common or Cargo (Loureiro and Malfeito Ferreira Reference Loureiro and Malfeito Ferreira2021). Since the late seventeenth century, a Madeira made of water-diluted Verdelho was shipped to the American market as ‘Rainwater’. It was said to have originated when some unbunged pipes were accidentally left outside in a storm. On Pico island, the best white grapes were the Alicante, Boal, Galego, Verdelho, and Terrantez do Monte. The red grapes were the Bastardo and Tinta.

The British occupied Madeira in 1801–1802, at the very beginning of the Napoleonic wars, in order to prevent any French attempt to occupy the islands. The British returned during the Peninsular war, from late 1807 to 1814 (Liddell Reference Liddell1998; Bazenga et al. Reference Bazenga, Ribeiro and Sequeira2012). At that time, 26 British firms (Leacock, Cossart, Gordon, Newton, Lawton, and so on) had an effective monopoly on the export of wines and the import of foods and other necessities (Minchinton Reference Minchinton1990). The foods came mostly from North America which was also the main recipient of Madeira wines. Other markets for the best Madeira wines included England, continental Europe, and Russia. The colonies received lower-quality wines.

A legend links Napoleon to a 1792 Madeira. As he was on his way to his exile in Santa Helena in the summer of 1815, his ship stopped in Funchal. He acquired (or received?) a barrel of 1792 Madeira from the British consul who was paid in gold coins (or was not paid at all?). Different versions of the story specify that it was a Sercial or a Boal. This wine remained untouched (or was partly consumed?) in Santa Helena, and then returned to Funchal where it was acquired by Blandy’s in 1822 and then bottled in 1840. This whole story may have originated (Croft-Cooke Reference Croft-Cooke1961; Liddell Reference Liddell1998) with a Dr Grabham.Footnote ^o He purchased many old Madeira wines, including a famous 1792–1840 (vintage-bottling years). According to his son, ‘this 1792–1840 never had any connection to Napoleon’ (Croft-Cooke Reference Croft-Cooke1961). Since Napoleon was the most famous person in the world in 1815, one would expect numerous local accounts of a story linking him to Madeira wines. But there is no contemporary account. There is also no record of a ship arriving in Funchal from Santa Helena in 1822 (Liddell Reference Liddell1998). The ‘Napoleon-Madeira’ connection was first printed in the Daily Telegraph on 8 October 1941. However, bottles of ‘1792–1840 Blandy Madeira’ and ‘Blandy’s Extra Reserve - Solera 1792’ did exist – without mention of a grape. Sir Winston Churchill tasted the ‘1792–1840’ during his vacation in Madeira in 1950. But its connection to Napoleon was made up.

From 1800 to 1815, the demand for Madeira wines exceeded the supply and Madeira exported some 15,000 pipes per year, without much competition since many European ports were closed because of the Napoleonic wars. After 1815, trade embargoes disappeared, European ports reopened, and large quantities of wine from France and Spain flooded the European and colonial markets. The harvest was very poor in 1816, the ‘year without summer’ caused by the eruption of Mount Tambora (Klingaman and Klingaman Reference Klingaman2013). Sales were slow. Madeira exports dropped by two-thirds (Liddell Reference Liddell1998). Much of the 1819 to 1821 harvests went unsold. Some 20,000 pipes awaited a buyer in 1820 (Vieira Reference Vieira1993), and that grew to 40,000 in 1824 (Liddell Reference Liddell1998). Exports to North America dropped from the old 3000–3500 pipes a year to just 150 in 1827. Merchants only bought wine at very low prices. The situation in the Açores mirrored that in Madeira. The large demand characteristic of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries never returned.

Tastes were changing. The annual exports of Madeira to England dropped from ∼6000 pipes (before 1815) to ∼800 in 1841 (Liddell Reference Liddell1998). George IV (r. 1820–1830) drunk Sherry instead of Madeira, which was hard to get (Vizetelly Reference Vizetelly1880). The British Factory, founded in 1638, was abolished in 1838. As steam replaced sails, ships no longer had to follow the winds and currents (Figure 6). The Suez canal opened in 1869. This diverted the ships on their way to India and the Far East away from the Atlantic. Yet, almost all the food consumed in Madeira was still imported. For the local population, these were years of pain, tears, and hunger. Thousands emigrated from Madeira to Brazil. And then, things got much worse.

Madeira

In the early twentieth century, only about 20% of the vines were high-quality grafted V. Vinifera grapes. Most were direct producers, hybrids, and the productive but lower-quality Tinta Negra (Cossart Reference Cossart1984). Blended Madeira wines were commonly considered to be cooking wines. The old high-quality vintages and soleras existed but there were few of those.

In 1913, three Madeira firms (Hinton & Sons, Welsh & Cunha, and Henriques, Camara, & Co) formed the Madeira Wine Association Company, a private company designed to share production costs and increase global exposure. During the First World War, exports peaked at just over 11,000 pipes (in 1916), but then the Russian market disappeared because of the Revolution. There was a brief boom at the end of the war with almost 20,000 pipes exported (Liddell Reference Liddell1998), but then the global economy declined, the USA imposed a strict Prohibition, and the Great Depression started.

In 1925, under the leaderships of Blandy, Leacock, and Mullins, the Madeira Wine Association Company became the 13-member Madeira Wine Association. It grew to 28 British and Portuguese firms in 1934. They standardized the production of Madeira, the blending was made from common stock, and the accepted styles of Madeira were established. Only the vintage and solera wines remained characteristic of individual shippers. The Association evolved into today’s Madeira Wine Company.

The Salazar regime imposed strict regulations. The Federação dos Vinicultores do Centro e Sul de Portugal (1933) became the Junta Nacional do Vinho (1937) which controlled the production of all Portuguese wines. It established a Delegation in Madeira in 1940. The Madeira Wine Association was ready to interact with it, and later played an important role in the Appellation Controlée negotiations (Câmara Reference Câmara2023).

The years of the Second World War were difficult for the wine industry everywhere, including Madeira. Several old styles were abandoned, such as ‘London Particular’ or ‘Old East Indies’. They were replaced with labels which misused the names of famous cultivars: ‘Good Companion Bual’, ‘Duke of Clarence Malmsey’, and so on, actually contained no (or very little) Boal or Malmsey (Liddell Reference Liddell1998). The name simply referred to a style of wine: ‘Sercial’ indicated dry, ‘Verdelho’ medium, ‘Boal’ sweet, etc. These wines were shipped in bulk and bottled at their destination. The most important market were the Scandinavian countries.

Just as in Porto, the new regulations on wines and exports resulted in a drop in the number of firms: 119 before the Second World War, 29 in the 1950s, 14 in the 1960s, and 11 before the 1974 Carnation Revolution. Only a few of those handled most of the shipping (Câmara Reference Câmara2023). Cooperatives were established to stock excess production and stabilize the prices, but they were not very successful in Madeira. In 1957, incentives were given to increase planting and grafting traditional high-quality cultivars, which made up only 26% of the total vineyard area. Progress was slow. In 1972, subsidies were offered to land-owners to replace bananas and other crops with high-quality cultivars. Their number increased by 150% within a decade.

Açores

The great pre-oïdium wines were long gone. Much of the production involved direct producers and hybrids which were not exported. Some grafting was done but did not solve the persistent problems with oïdium and other moulds. Funding was severely lacking. The renaissance of Açores wines followed Portugal’s admission to the European Union.

Background

In the early hours of Thursday, 25 April 1974, the radio played the (forbidden) song Grândola, Vila Morena. This was a signal for what would be known as the ‘Carnation Revolution’ (Léonard Reference Léonard2014b; Rezola Reference Rezola, Fiolhais, Franco and Paiva2022), a virtually bloodless coup which toppled Caetano (Salazar’s successor) and the Estado Novo. The coup was led by mid-level army officers convinced that Portugal was moving in the wrong direction and that the bloody colonial wars in Angola, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique could not be won. The revolution succeeded in less than 24 hours and a provisional government was put in place. Establishing a functioning democracy took longer.

The colonial wars ended and the African colonies became independent. Soon, some 800,000 Portuguese moved from the former colonies back to Portugal, causing major logistical problems. The government nationalized banks, insurances, and other core businesses. It expropriated some 12 million hectares of land that were owned by a few privileged families.

After decades of one-party rule, Portugal now had numerous political parties. In 1975 and 1976, the country voted. Mário Alberto Soares’ socialist party came out first, but well short of an absolute majority. Soares started his first term as Prime Minister. For a while, there was considerable political chaos (15 governments in 11 years) and financial difficulties exacerbated by a world-wide oil crisis. Successive governments were formed and collapsed, new elections were held, but the country moved forward. After much debate, a new constitution replaced the Estado Novo. The International Monetary Fund came to the rescue – in exchange for painful austerity measures.

The critical year was 1986: Portugal and Spain joined the European Economic Community. Some €46 billion became available in 1989 (Pedro Reference Pedro2014). Over time, 2000 km of highways, 248 water stations, and 662 schools were built. The literacy rate increased from 67% in 1974 to 90% in 2013. More people purchased cars and drove on the new highways; modern equipment became available for agriculture and viticulture; tourism picked up. Lisbon hosted the ‘Expo’98’ world fair. Despite all of this, the national debt kept increasing: from 15% of the gross domestic product in 1974 to 128% in 2013. This meant high unemployment and high taxes.

Three more wine regions were demarcated: Trás-os-Montes, Alentejo, and Douro (for table wines). The wine industry modernized with new equipment and up-to-date viticultural and winemaking techniques. The DOC (Denominação de Origem Controlada) appellation system was made consistent with European ones. On 1 January 1986, a new central organization became operational: the Instituto da Vinha e do Vinho (IVV). It provides the legal framework, coordinates with European policies, regulates at the national and regional level, and supervises the entire Portuguese wine sector.

The wines from the Douro, Madeira, Açores, and even Vinho Verde had been internationally known for centuries. Far less was known about other Portuguese wine regions. They were producing quality wines: the problem was often transport. Because of poor infrastructure (no roads or easily accessible waterways), some deserving wines could not reach a harbour economically. For centuries, the successful wine regions were located near a harbour (e.g., the Lisbon area and wines from the Tagus, or Porto and wines from the Douro) or along important shipping routes (e.g., Madeira). Before modern roads, railways, and/or canals, overland transport was expensive. Several Portuguese wine regions first appeared on world markets late in the twentieth century. Now though, the needed infrastructure was in place and these wines moved from relative obscurity to world-wide fame. It is now common to see articles in wine magazines such as the Wine Spectator and books such as Mayson (Reference Mayson2020) discussing the wide range of Portuguese wines and cultivars. There is indeed a lot to discover in this amazing wine country.

The Wine Regions of Portugal

The highest-ranked wine-producing areas now have a specific DOP (Denominação de Origem Protegida), which comes with the strictest regulations. Then come the regional IGP (Indicação Geográfica Protegida) labels, and finally there are regional and table wines. Note that one discovers amazing wines under one of the lesser classifications, sometimes by choice, sometimes because the vineyard happens to be in the wrong location.

The IVV list of authorized cultivars includes 151 white, 21 rosé, and 173 red, for a total of 345. Some of these cultivars originate from Spain, France, Italy, Austria, etc. Portugal has approximately 250 indigenous cultivars, about 100 of which have been carefully described more than a century ago (Cincinnato da Costa Reference Cincinnato da Costa1900). This number testifies to the antiquity of Portuguese wines. However, it is only half as many as in the Republic of Georgia where wine has been produced for over 8000 years (Estreicher Reference Estreicher, Brodersen, Erskine and Hollander2019). Some cultivars have different names in different regions or countries. For example, the Tinta Roriz (or Aragónez, or Valdepeñas) is the Spanish Tempranillo, and the Jaen is called Mencía in Spain. Sometimes, the same (or very similar) name is used for different cultivars: the Terrantez do Pico is distinct from the Terrantez in Madeira; the Arinto dos Açores is not the same as the Arinto in mainland Portugal. But the Verdelho is the same in Madeira, Pico, and mainland Portugal.

Portugal has 14 wine regions, 12 of them in continental Portugal (Figure 15), plus Madeira and Açores. Each region has a control and certification body such as a CVR (Comissão Vitivinicola Regional) supervised by the IVV. Within these regions, 31 viticultural areas have achieved the DOP level. Other vineyards belong to the IGP appellation. The country produced just over 7.5 million hl in 2023. As today’s wines are not yet ‘history’, I restrict myself to brief comments. The percentage of Portugal’s total area under vine and the percentage of the country’s total wine production are indicated.

Figure 15.

Twelve of the 14 wine regions of Portugal (Madeira and Açores are not shown). The region names (from the map at https://www.ivv.gov.pt/np4/regioes/) do not all match those listed on the left column of the same page. Map modified by SKE with permission from the IVV

Vinho Verde (13%, 12.2%. DOP: ‘Vinho Verde’; IGP: ‘Minho’) has been exporting wine to England since the thirteenth century from the port of Viana de Castelo (north of Porto). The soil is mostly granite and the nearby Atlantic ocean strongly influences the (rainy) climate. The region is best known for its crisp and aromatic white vinho verde (Alvarinho, Loureiro, Trajadura, Arinto, etc.), some are sparkling, and some age nicely. Minho also produces red wines from a dozen cultivars such as the Vinhão, Amaral, Borraçal, or Alvarelhão.

Trás-os-Montes (5%, 1.3%, ‘beyond the mountains’. DOP: ‘Trás-os-Montes’; IGP: ‘Transmontano’) is a remote and rugged region separated from the coast by the Marão and Alvão mountains. The climate is continental with very hot and dry summers and bitterly cold winters. The region was first planted in Roman times but was always – and still is – isolated. Many vineyards are old, the yields are low, but the quality is high. A range of cultivars are planted: the white Códega do Larinho, Fernão Pires, Gouveio, Síria, etc. and the red Bastardo, Tinta Gorda, Touriga Nacional, Rufete, Trincadeira, and so on.

Douro (25%, 20.7%. DOPs: ‘Porto’ and ‘Douro’; IGP ‘Duriense’) is the most famous region of Portugal because of the fortified Port wines. The local governing body is the Instituto dos Vinhos do Douro e do Porto, I. P. The region stretches east to west from the Spanish border to about 90 km east of the city of Porto. It is protected from Atlantic influence by the Serra do Marão mountains. The sub-regions are Baixa Corgo (‘below the Corgo’, a tributary of the Douro), Cima Corgo (‘above the Corgo’: the ‘heart of the Douro’), and the hot and dry Douro Superior.

Over 100 cultivars are authorized. The ‘big five’ in red are the Touriga Nacional, Tinta Roriz (Spanish Tempranillo), Tinta Barroca, Tinto Cão, and Touriga Franca (formerly: Francesa), but many others are excellent: Tinta Amarela (also called Trincadeira), Sousão, Touriga Franca, etc. White cultivars (Arinto, Cercial, Donzelinho branco, Folgazão, Gouveio, Malvasia Fina, Encruzado, etc.) used to make up some 10% of Douro’s planting, but their importance is increasing.

Making traditional Port wines involves foot-treading (often with mechanical feet) in large 2-foot (∼60 cm) deep stone lagars, to extract tannins, colour, and flavouring compounds. Maceration lasts for two or three days and then 154-proof grape spirit is added to kill the yeast. The result is a wine with 20% alcohol and 9 or 10% residual sugar. The wine is kept for two years in barrels and then decisions are made about which type of Port it will become. All the wines will be tasted by an official panel before approval. All ruby Port spends less than 6 years in casks, and tawny Ports longer than that. Strict rules apply to the various types of Ports, the most recent date back to 2022.

The highest-ranked ruby Port is the vintage, which involves the best wines from two or three vineyards (quintas), spends two years in casks, is then bottled (unfiltered) and aged. Blends produce more complex, longer-aging, wines. A vintage is declared only when the conditions are good enough, which occasionally involves successive years, such as 2016–2017, or 1991–1992. Next are single-quinta vintage. As the name indicates, they are vintage Ports from a single vineyard, often bottled in years when a true vintage is not declared. Crusted Ports normally involve wines from three different vintage years (the year on the label refers to the bottling date). Then come the late-bottled vintage (LBV) Ports which spend 4 to 6 years in wood. The ‘traditional’ or ‘unfiltered’ ones keep on aging in the bottle. Finally, the common ruby Ports are labelled ruby reserve.

The highest-ranked tawny Port is from a single vintage year: the Colheita. It spends at least 7 years in wood, often much longer. Niepoort’s Garrafeira is a special category. Then come blends which sometimes involve very ancient wines. The categories are 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years old, and VVO or W (over 80 years old) which is very, very old indeed. Taylor Fladgate produced a ‘Kingsman edition’ 90-year-old tawny. The number of years is not the exact average age of the blend but corresponds to wines with specific organoleptic characteristics and rarity. Finally, the common tawny Ports are labelled tawny reserve.

The white Ports start with the vintage Colheita, then Ports with indication of age: 10, 20, 30, 40 years old, and finally reserve white, which are often dry. The sweetness is described as extra dry, dry, semi-sweet, sweet, very sweet, and Lágrima.

Since about 30 years, remarkable dry (red and white) table wines have been produced with the DOP ‘Douro’ appellation (Quinta da Pacheca, Ramos-Pinto, etc.). A well-known example is a collaboration of five estates, known as the ‘Douro Boys’: Quinta do Vallado, Niepoort, Quinta do Crasto, Quinta Vale D. Maria, and Quinta do Vale Meão.

Távora-Varosa (1.2%, 0.1%. DOP: ‘Távora-Varosa’; IGP : ‘Terras de Cister’, the land of the Cistercians) is so named because the first Cistercian monastery, São João de Tarouca, was built in the region in 1143. The DOP Távora-Varosa (named after two Douro tributaries) includes ‘Méthode Champenoise’ sparkling wines for which the region is famous (the Murganheira estate has memorable deep cellars carved into granite). Many small properties dot this mountainous plateau. The main cultivars are Pinot Noir, Aragonez, Tinta Barroca, Touriga Franca, Touriga Nacional in red, and Malvasia Fina, Chardonnay, Pinot Blanc, Cerceal, Gouveio, Bical, and Femão Pires in white.

Bairrada (5%, 3.3%. DOP: ‘Bairrada’; IGP: ‘Beira Atlântico’) is best known for the productive Baga, a thick-skin, acidic, and tannic grape that produces some of the best red wines in Portugal. Quite a few single-variety (Baga) wines are bottled in the region. Many growers ferment with stems, adding even more tannins. These are wines for ageing. The name Bairrada refers to ‘barros’, the clay which dominates in the soil. The strong Atlantic influence means relatively high rainfall and moderate temperatures. In addition to Baga, there are other red cultivars such as the Alfrocheiro, Camarate, Touriga Nacional, or Jaen, which, individually or together, make up 85% of the clássico wines. The white grapes are primarily the Maria Gomes (or Fernão Pires), Arinto, Bical, and Cercial.

Dão (7%, 3.7%. DOPs: ‘Lafões’ and ‘Dão’; IGP: ‘Terras do Dão’) is an ancient wine-producing region with rolling hills and granitic soil. It is located south-east of the Douro but has a more moderate climate. It is said that the famous (red) Touriga Nacional and (white) Encruzado originated from Dão. The Encruzado has an unusual and desirable property: it hardly oxidizes at all. The leading wine producer in the region is SOGRAPE, but there are numerous other winemakers, most of which work in a very traditional manner. The reds are made with the Touriga Nacional, Alfrocheiro, Tinta Roriz, and Jaen. They age beautifully. The whites come from the Encruzado, Bical, Cercial, Malvasia Fina, and Verdelho. It is common for these wines to be in thick Burgundy-style bottles.

Beira Interior (6%, 2.5%. DOP: ‘Beira Interior’; IGP: ‘Terras da Beira’) is in mountainous eastern Portugal and enjoys a continental climate. It produces a wide range of wines from over 80 authorized cultivars. The dominant one in red are the Rufete, Marufo, Touriga Nacional, Alfrocheiro, Trincadeira, Touriga Franca, etc. and in white, the Síria, Arinto, Fonte Cal, Malvasia Fina, Arinto, etc. There are also rosé grapes such as the Gewurtztraminer or Malvasia fina roxa, etc. Some sparkling wines are produced.

Lisboa (10%, 20.4%. DOPs : ‘Encostas d’Aire’, ‘Óbidos’, ‘Alenquer’, ‘Arruda, Torres Vedras’, ‘Lourinhã’, ‘Bucelas’, ‘Carcavelos’, and ‘Colares’; IGP: ‘Lisboa’) was formerly known as Estremadura. This region includes archaeological sites along the Tagus dating back to early Phoenician settlements. Lisbon was also from where wines were shipped to Rome and to their troops in northwestern Europe, and later to England. Three of the seven DOPs are very close to Lisbon: Bucelas, known for its Arinto, Sercial, and Rabo de Ovelha white wines; Colares where the own-rooted Ramisco (in red) and Malvasia Branca (in white) vines flourish in sandy soil; Carcavelos – where Pombal had his estate – with the red Castelão, Preto Martinho, and white Galego Dourado, Ratinho, Arinto. Carcavelos is becoming a part of the greater Lisbon.

Tejo (7%, 10.1%. DOP: ‘Do Tejo’; IGP: ‘Tejo’), formerly known as Ribatejo, has abundant vineyards, cork-oak forests, olive trees, etc. It has six sub-regions (from north to south): Tomar, Santarém, Chamusca, Cartaxo, Almeirim, and Coruche. The climate is warm, there are many types of soil, and many cultivars are allowed: in red, Baga, Camarate, Trincadeira, Aragonez, Touriga Nacional, etc., and French grapes such as Merlot or Pinot Noir; in white, one finds the Arinto, Fernão Pires, Verdelho, Chardonnay, Alvarinho, etc.

Península de Setúbal (4%, 7.9%. DOPs: ‘Setúbal’ and ‘Palmela’; IGP: ‘Península de Setúbal’) includes one of the most renowned sweet wines in the world: the fortified Moscatel de Setúbal, made from late-harvest Moscatel de Setúbal (Muscat Alexandria) and Moscatel Roxo grapes. The red wines from Palmela (Castelão and Trincadeira) are excellent as well. The landscape varies from flat and sandy to the hilly and picturesque such as the park of Arrábida.

Alentejo (15%, 16.4%, além Tejo: ‘beyond the Tagus’. DOP: ‘Alentejo’; IGP: ‘Alentejano’) stretches over about one-third of mainland Portugal but accounts for only 5% of its population. The region has many cork-oak forests. Numerous ruins of Roman villas are in this region, some of which have been excavated. It has eight subregions, with different soils and microclimates. There are numerous old-vine vineyards on the slopes of the Serra de São Mamede as well as large wine estates (such as the 1600-acres Esporão) in the plains. Alentejo is very hot in the summer. Many cultivars are authorized, for example Alfrocheiro, Aragonez, Castelão, Tinta Caiada, Trincadeira, Alicante Bouschet, and Moreto in red; Antão Vaz, Arinto, Fernão Pires, Rabo de Ovelha, and Roupeiro in white.

Algarve (0.8%, 0.1%, ‘al Gharb’, the West. DOPs: ‘Lagos’, ‘Portimão’, ‘Lagoa’, and ‘Tavira’; IGP: Algarve) has vineyards along the south and west Atlantic coasts of Portugal. Algarve wines were exported to England as early as the thirteenth century (Simon Reference Simon1906). The abundant white cultivars are the Arinto, Malvasia Fina, Manteúdo and Síria, and the dominant red ones are the Castelão and Negra Mole.

Madeira (0.4%, 0.1%. DOPs: ‘Madeira’ and ‘Madeirense’; IGP: ‘Terras Madeirenses’) has recovered from the immense hardships of the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century. It is an autonomous region of Portugal since 1976. Only six shippers are left, down from about 160 before oïdium. After Portugal joined the EEC, hybrids and American vines were banned and replaced by V. Vinifera cultivars. Tinta Negra is the dominant (red) grape. Four noble white grapes make up some 15% of the total planting. From sweetest to dryest (and from sea level to the higher altitudes), they are the Malvasia, Boal, Verdelho, and Sercial. There are several types of Malvasia: M. Cândida (only ∼3 ha left), M. Branca, etc. The Boal or Bual is the rare Malvasia Fina. The Verdelho is the most abundant. The thin-skinned and late-ripening Sercial is rare but produces very delicate wines that need ageing. There is very little left of the wonderful Terrantez, but more of it is being planted. The red Bastardo is still authorized but is (almost?) totally gone. The Madeira wines are fortified and undergo heat treatments: for common wines, several months in heated tanks around 45^oC (cuba de calor), the intermediate quality in casks stored in steam-heated room (armazém de calor), while the best stay in barrels under the tropical sun (canteiro).

The top-quality Madeira wines is the vintage (single-harvest), which must spend at least 20 years in casks. The colheita is also a single-harvest wine but spends just over 5 years in casks. Then come blended wines (several vintage years) with average 15 (‘extra reserve’), 10 (‘special reserve’), or 5 (‘reserve’) years of age. They must contain at least 85% of the cultivar mentioned on the label, the rest is usually Tinta Negra. The garrafeira must be 100% of the cultivar specified on the label. The common rainwater is a pale, lighter style. Because of the length of time they spend in barrels, the Madeira wines are not just fortified, heat-treated, and aged, but also oxidized. This combination renders them very resilient, a characteristic that was especially precious in the early days of the wine trade.

Açores (1%, 0.1%. DOPs: ‘Graciosa’, ‘Biscoitos’ (on Terceira island), and ‘Pico’; IGP: ‘Açores’) are modernizing and beautifully recovering from their near-total destruction in the middle of the nineteenth century, especially by oïdium. The Açores became an autonomous region in 1976, when most cultivars were still hybrids and direct producers. After Portugal joined the EEC, V. Vinifera cultivars were replanted, and the Verdelho, Arinto dos Açores, and Terrantez do Pico recovered. The local Arinto and Terrantez are specific to these islands, resulting from a cross between the Verdelho and some other V. Vinifera. Over 30 cultivars are authorized, but the Verdelho, Arinto, and Terrantez are the backbone of Açores wines. On Pico island, viticulture still uses the traditional currais (Figure 8). Old abandoned, vegetation-covered, vineyards are being cleared and replanted. We are still far from the area that was under vine in the mid 1850s. Wine is even produced on the island of Santa Maria, where the first Açores wine was made.

Historic Wines

The Association of Historic Wines of Portugal is a private organization established in 2008 to protect Portuguese wine culture and heritage. It proposed a class of historic wines, the Vinhos Históricos de Portugal. This is not an official classification (it is independent of the IVV), but recognizes unique wines and viticultural practices resulting from a combination of geographical origin, traditional grape varieties, use of ancestral viticultural and oenological practices (Loureiro Reference Loureiro2009; Almeida Costa et al. Reference Almeida Costa, Marano-Marcolini, Malfeito-Ferreira and Loureiro2021). Portuguese television has produced a series of documentaries on these historic wines.Footnote ^t

The Vinho Verde Enforcado is produced from Enforcado, Arjões, and Ramadas grapes growing in elevated trellises or on tall poplar trees, which often surround a piece of land in which food crops are grown. The grapes are harvested using tall ladders. The wild v.v. sylvestris vines are tree-climbing plants, and some of their domesticated descendants are as well (Harutyunyan and Malfeito-Ferreira Reference Harutyunyan and Malfeito-Ferreira2022). The Etruscans, and later the Romans, often grew their vines near a maple or willow tree for them to climb. This ancient viticultural technique is making a comeback in Italy: vite maritata (‘married vine’ – married to the tree) is now found again in several Italian regions. There are similarities with the vinho verde enforcado.

The Palhete Medieval de Ourém are tinted white wines made using medieval monastic practices. White grapes are fermented without skins and poured in barrels up to 80% capacity. The barrels are then topped off with juice and skins of long-macerated red wine (‘tinta’, Figure 4). The contact occurs through a hole in a clay vase filled with red wine and skins placed on top of the barrel.

Two historic (red, white, or light-coloured) wines are made in large (∼1000 litre) clay jars, similar to the Roman dolia, in Alentejo. The inside of the jars is coated with a thin layer of hot pitch. These wines now have their own official regulations:

The Vinho de Talha (Figure 5) involves crushed grapes which are left to naturally ferment in the clay jars. Long wooden sticks are used to push the skins into the juice during the fermentation, after which the skins drop to the bottom. The vinho de Talha are often ‘filtered’ using simple woven baskets and the wines contain much of the lees. There are definite similarities with traditional Georgian wines fermented with skins, pips, and stems in buried kvervi.

The Vinho Petroleiro, Palhetes of Vila de Frades (Friar’s village), also involve large clay jars. The wines differ from the vinho de Talha by the way they are tinted: vineyards have about 20% red and 80% white grapes which are harvested and crushed together resulting in a colour that resembles petrol, hence the name. This ‘recipe’ comes from old documents found at São Cucufate. Now in ruins, this monastery dedicated to Saint Cucufas was built on top of a large Roman villa.

The Vinho do Chão de Areia de Colares are ungrafted Ramisco (red) and Malvasia (white) grapes which grow in thick (several metres) sand near the Atlantic shore, and are protected from the wind by palisades. The vines grow as they please, and a single (long) cutting planted deep into the sand ends up producing a large bush where each branch crawls on the sand and over time, developing its own roots. The Colares wines have low-alcohol content but are fresh, crisp, and age beautifully.

The Vinho de Pico (Açores) are dry white wines produced from noble cultivars that grow in protected currais (Figure 8), mostly on Pico but also on Graciosa and Terceira islands. Historically, the most famous was the passado, obtained from Verdelho grown in a few special vineyards. This unfortified wine disappeared following the oidium crisis, but has now been revived as the ‘Czar’ wine by Fortunato Garcia. This wine ferments spontaneously up to 19% alcohol in two steps: the usual Saccharomyces Cerevisiae yeast ferments the wine up to about ∼15% and the process stops for a few months. But then, a new fermentation starts (this does not happen every year). No one knows for sure which yeast is responsible for this, but S. Bayanus was suggested by Fábio Rocha. The passado has a total acidity between 6.7 and 7.2 g/litre, and residual sugar between 20 and 40 g/litre (in some years, more than 60). These wines have their own appellation.

It was nice to see that new generations of winemakers are taking over some of these old traditions. Ancient skills are easy to lose and, once lost, oh-so difficult to recover. These winemakers do not focus exclusively on historic wines, and also produce (amazing) modern-style wines.

Summary

Even though the wild (western) V.V. Sylvestris was abundant in the Iberian peninsula for thousands of years, there is no evidence of domestication, viticulture, or winemaking until the first Phoenicians colonies in the eighth century bce. They established colonies near the mouth of various rivers, including the Tagus. The lack of evidence of a wild-to-domesticated Vinifera transition suggests that the Phoenicians brought cuttings of domesticated vines with them. At first, the wine production was modest, mostly for local consumption with limited trade.

Viticulture expanded after the Roman invasion of the Peninsula. Some of the wine produced along the Atlantic coast of Iberia made its way to Rome, some was shipped to Roman troops in northern Europe, but most of it was for the local market: the Roman legions consumed a lot of wine.

As Rome collapsed, ‘barbarian’ tribes (Suebi, Vandals, Alans) temporarily invaded the Peninsula, but then the Visigoths expelled them and established a kingdom. They enjoyed wine: viticulture continued, but the wine trade did not. After the Berbers and Arabs invaded in 711, parts of the Peninsula were under Islamic rule until the fifteenth century. Apart for the occasional fanatic rulers such as the Almoravids or Almohads, viticulture remained tolerated and wine produced, taxed, consumed, but not traded beyond the borders of the Peninsula.

The Reconquista progressed slowly. The kings of Asturias took advantage of Berber uprisings and internal disputes associated with the succession of an Emir or Caliph. The northern-western part of the Peninsula was re-conquered first, and this led to the emergence of Afonso, son of Henry of Burgundy, count of Portucale. At the time, this was just a thin slice of land between the Minho and the Douro rivers. Afonso fought his way south against the Arabs, successfully besieged Lisbon in 1147, and became King of Portugal. In order to maintain law and order in his newly-conquered territories, Afonso invited Cistercian monks and gave them land. They built monastic estates and organized wine production – leading to white wines ‘tinted’ to resemble to blood of Christ.

The wine trade with England began in the early days of Portugal. England imported considerable volumes of wine, mostly from France, some from Spain, and less from Portugal. But for Portugal, this was no doubt an important source of income. The English–Portuguese links were formalized in a series of treaties, starting with the 1386 political, military, and commercial Treaty of Windsor, which is still in effect today.

The age of maritime exploration arrived early in Portugal, at a time when Spain was busy with the Reconquista, England and France were at war, the Netherlands did not exist, and the Venetians and Genoese were busy in the Eastern Mediterranean. Portugal explored the west coast of Africa, then rounded the cape to reach the far East, and sailed across the Atlantic to Brazil. It established colonies, discovered new riches and monopolized important trade routes – for a while. Portugal prevented viticulture in its colonies in order to provide a market for its own lesser-quality wines. The exceptions were Madeira and the Açores, which were parts of Portugal rather than colonies.

Long-distance shipping meant that wines spent weeks or months at sea, crossing the tropics and the equator, exposed to constant shaking and sometimes high temperatures. Most wines went bad. A major development was the fortification of wines. This allowed them to survive long journeys without spoiling. Distillation is a very ancient art, but the distillation of wine was first achieved in the late tenth or early eleventh century in Islamic Spain. The small amount of alcohol produced at the time was for pharmaceutical purposes. Large amounts of brandy suitable for human consumption and wine fortification became available in the early sixteenth century. The Flemish and Dutch merchants promoted it. They also encouraged better winemaking practices: strict hygiene, topping off barrels to compensate for evaporation, selection of higher-quality cultivars, and so on. Within a few decades, winemakers accepted the changes and produced not just fortified wines for shipping but also the first Madeiras, Sherries, Ports, etc. Some wines were intentionally aged. That had not happened since Roman times. Distillation and fortification changed the way people understood wine and consumed it.

Port wines became very popular in England, leading to a push for increased production. Producers started to cut corners and increased volumes by importing and mislabelling wines. The quality dropped, and so did the demand and prices. The crisis was resolved following the 1755 earthquake and the appointment of Pombal as a powerful prime minister. He quickly created a strong supervising administration for Ports. It imposed strict rules on the production and shipping, delimited the area allowed to produce Port wines, and limited the influence of English traders. Even though the powers of the Companhia were reduced after Pombal’s internal exile, the model had been shown to work. Strict rules were reinstated in some form or another at later times.

Throughout the history of Portuguese wine, viticulture and innovations were often stimulated by traders, most of them English. They knew the market, purchased wines, and made a profit. But it is the people of Portugal who did the hard work in the vineyard and then produced the wine. This is still true today.

The French Revolution, followed by Napoleon’s power grab, affected all of Europe. His invasion of Portugal degenerated into the terrible Peninsular War, during which the Portuguese economy all but collapsed. Napoleon’s demise was followed by a European-wide recession. And then came a series of disasters, starting with oïdium (especially devastating in Madeira and Açores) and phylloxera. The latter forced growers to replant their vineyards using selected V. Vinifera cultivars grafted onto American rootstock. The First World War and the Great Depression complicated matters, as little or no funding was available for the enormous task at hand. And then came the Second World War. After 1945, most of Europe started to rebuild. For viticulture, this involved planting single-cultivar vineyards with vines aligned in straight rows. Later, this allowed tractors to do much of the hard work. Technology quickly improved, changing the way grapes were pressed and macerated, wine was matured, then bottled and sealed with proper (Portuguese) corks.

Spain and Portugal fell behind because dictatorships prevented free enterprise, investment, and competition. This all changed after the 1974 Carnation Revolution and Portugal’s admission to the EEC in 1986. The wineries quickly caught up and the results exceeded expectations. Today, Portugal produces an amazing array of wines from a surprisingly large number of native cultivars. There are hundreds of small producers, each of whom crafts unique wines that seem to be a perfect match for the local foods. Some winemakers still use medieval presses that improved on Roman ones, others use foot-treading in lagares – especially in the Douro region. Portugal is a must-visit country for wine lovers and wine-lovers to be.

Statistics published by the International Organization of Vine and Wine show that the world consumption of wine is dropping, a trend that started after the Second World War. Until the mid twentieth century, almost every European drank wine, especially with meals. But then soft drinks arrived, as did an ever-increasing variety of beers and other alcoholic beverages. Today, liquor stores and restaurants offer a vast array of options for drinking. Portugal still leads the world in per-capita consumption of wine, followed by Italy, France, Switzerland, and Austria. But it is fun to select the appropriate wine for every meal. After all, there are only a handful of carbonated beverages but thousands of different wines.

Climate change and global warming are growing threats to viticulture. One of Portugal’s initiatives involves a non-profit organization (PORVID) which specializes in polyclonal vine selection. So far, over 30,000 clones of some 200 grapes have been preserved and are tested throughout the country. This preserves the genetic diversity and increases the resilience of Portuguese cultivars.

The World Health Organization is urging the Portuguese government to discourage alcohol consumption. But simply measuring the quantity of ethanol in a drink gives an incomplete picture. Wines, especially red wines, are macerated for up to several weeks. The process extracts a lot from the grape: tannins, antioxidants (e.g. resveratrol), and hundreds of compounds, including minerals that contain calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, fluoride, iron, and so on. Their interactions with the human body are complex and poorly understood, but they affect digestion, blood circulation, and numerous other functions. Quality wine is much more than just alcohol and water. While all ethanol molecules are the same, not all alcoholic beverages are the same. Discourage your friends from taking shots of cheap tequila or vodka, but encourage them to sip a Terrantez do Pico with grilled shellfish, taste a Medieval de Ourém with a properly-sliced leg of Pata Negra, or savour an old Baga with dinner. After the First World War, many countries enforced some form of alcohol prohibition. France did not, but encouraged her citizens to look for quality: ‘drink well, drink a little, in order to drink for a long time’. Paraphrasing Sir Clement Raphael Freud:

If you stop drinking good wine, you don’t actually live longer: it just seems longer.