Quinta de Vargellas vineyard regeneration
An almost-breathtaking regeneration project has been undertaken at Quinta de Vargellas in the Upper Douro. In a project they called their ‘new old-vineyard model’, Vargellas embarked on a five-year project to rebuild a section of some of the company’s oldest hillside vineyards.
The Douro – cool to be hot
The Douro is one of the oldest vineyards in the world, and it also ranks amongst the hottest, making it a challenging viticultural landscape. Yet the region makes some of the finest still and fortified wines known to man. When all the buzz is about cool climate, why is it cool to be hot in the Douro?
Quinta da Gaivosa
The Gaivosa estate is one of the six Douro properties of the Alves de Sousa family. Its 25 hectares of vines have an average age of 60 years, planted on the typical schist soils of the Douro valley.
The greening of the Douro Valley
A decade ago, the Douro vineyards were a brown, bare-earthed environment, where patches of dry, Mediterranean climate-adapted scrubland juxtaposed with bare earth beneath vines. As a result of a growing use of cover crop, the Douro vineyards are greening over, literally and environmentally.
Douro grapes – lessons for climate change?
Portugal’s Douro valley is a complex, extreme, mountainous vineyard region; and it’s hot. Given the region’s long viticultural history, the vines tend to be well adapted to the extreme conditions. Vines are planted at river level, from around 100m above sea level, to above 500m up the slopes. Vineyard aspects cover the full 360°. In wine terms, these guys are at the vanguard of how to deal with a warming world.
