Barbeito

Vinhos Barbeito was founded in 1946 by Mário Barbeito de Vasconcelos and has since then always been run by members of our family.
At the time of Barbeito’s foundation over 30 other Madeira Wine exporters were operating in the business. Little by little, Mário Barbeito gained clients in many parts of the world, always trying to build a good and close relationship with them. Some of our actual clients and suppliers are still from his time.

Mário Barbeito passed away in 1985 and his daughter Manuela de Vasconcelos, took over the general management of Vinhos Barbeito. She was already working for the company since 1976.

One of Manuela Vasconcelos most important tasks was to continue her father’s work of strenghthening relationships with customers and promoting our wines at prestigious wine fairs around the world. This policy is still maintained to this day.

In the preparation of our wines we take advantage of the fact that they are aged in three distinct warehouses, all with different climatic characteristics and different expositions to the sun. This fact enables us to obtain an enormous variety of wines aged by the canteiro method. All of these characteristics contribute to the Barbeito's unique style: the long and fresh acidity after taste.

Warehouse C is located in Câmara de Lobos where the weather conditions allow us to have a more gentle wine with less acidity and colour. These wines however, need a longer period of aging. In this warehouse the annual evaporation is in average 3%. Here we have casks with capacities between 300 and 700 liters.

The second warehouse (A) is the biggest and is located on our family's property in Funchal. Of all warehouses it is the one that is more exposed to the sun. Here annual evaporations can reach up to 5%. which means that within a short period of time we obtain wines which are very concentrated in acidity, sugar and colour. Here we have casks with capacities between 350 and 2.000 liters.

Our third warehouse (B) is located in our winery. Here the aging conditons are quite different due to the winery being a two story building. The aging process in this warehouse is done in 2 stages: during the first 5 to 7 years the wines are aged in 620 liter casks stored on the 1st floor of the building where the evaporation level is approximately 5% per year, allowing us to obtain strong wines in colour, acidity and sugar. After those first years of maturation when transferred to the lower floor and into larger casks, the evolution of the wine is stopped because on the ground floor the annual evaporation is only around 2 to 3%. Here the temperatures are lower and constant during the whole year. This way, the aging is gentler and consequently the colour, acidity and sugars of the wines are maintained on a steady level originating well balanced wines.

In the early years our company concentrated its efforts in the production of bottled wine. New concepts of marketing in the Madeira wine business were introduced as well as innovative packaging like the wickered flagon. The quality of our wines gained an excellent reputation among consumers which helped to strenghten Barbeito’s image in the international market.

As time went by our company increased its activities and ended up involved in the bulk wine business in the beginning of the 70’s. This involvement brought many changes in Barbeito’s daily operations due to an excessive growth in production.

The competition among exporters in the bulk wine business was very high and small companies like ours had to strive to keep that area of business active and profitable.

However, during the 80’s we started realizing that Barbeito’s involvement in that kind of exports were damaging the quality of the bottled wine that was produced.

The difficult decision to stop exporting wine in bulk only came in 1991 with the entrance of Ricardo Vasconcelos Freitas to the company. In fact, 1991 was the year of the beginning of many changes in Vinhos Barbeito, being one of the most important the joint venture with the Kinoshita family, with whom we had already a close commercial and personal relationship since 1967. This decision enabled us to concentrate our efforts in just ageing, producing and blending the best quality wines. It was like going back to the past, when our grandfather just wanted to produce and sell good bottled wine, even if only in small quantities.

In 1991 another important change occurred in our company: for first time someone from our family became responsible for the making of the wine. In 1993, after two years learning the “secrets” of our wines’ style and character as well as studying modern techniques of wine making, Ricardo Freitas faced alone his first grape harvest.  Thinking of the future, we began building a working team in which all members work under the same motto: produce good quality wines with a unique style.

Since then Vinhos Barbeito never stopped investing in the purchase of good quality grapes to make fine wines. To achieve that goal, year after year, we work to establish closer relationships with farmers.