Quinta do Vesuvio

Historical records refer to the immense diversity Vesúvio as far back as 1565, describing its orange, lemon, almond, olive and fig trees. For many years it remained a wild, untamed landscape, as much of it still is. In 1830, after a spectacular harvest in the Douro, António Bernardo Ferreira I dreamt up what, according to the Viscount of Vila Maior, was his “fantasy or caprice”. He decided to rename his Quinta das Figueiras, Quinta do Vezúvio, first spelt with a ‘z’ reflectin gold Portuguese spelling.

This baptism was a tribute to his love affair with the Quinta. Over the previous seven years he had invested his life and wealth into the property. And then, during the harvest of 1830 his Quinta bore its first fruit. The story of Ferreira’s obsession encompasses many of the most famous Quintas in the Douro Superior. Vesúvio, though, was his showpiece and his jewel. In the Allegory marking his death in 1835 it is only Vesúvio, of all his Quintas, that is depicted in the background and engraved on the effigy in the foreground.

Bernardo bought the property in 1823, at that time called Quinta das Figueiras, from the Viscount de Lapa. When he bought it, the property was mostly covered with wild scrub stretching up the mountainside and an abundance of fig trees, which gave it its name. He had a vision for this magnificent slice of the Douro Valley.

He set out to create something magnificent. His transformation of this Quinta was not governed by any short-term objectives: it was a life-long investment. It took his team of five hundred workers thirteen years to carve vineyards out of the steep slopes and plant thousands of vines. But his visionary modernization efforts transformed the Douro and some years later, the wines from Quinta do Vesúvio would command the highest prices of any Portuguese wine in the United Kingdom, which was at that time the most important market for wine.

In 1827, he built the monumental winery, with its eight granite lagares, each holding 24 pipes of wine, its oak beams and huge chestnut vats, each capable of holding the equivalent of one lagar of Port. This original winery is where all of Vesuvio’s Port is still made today. Bernardo reflected after his winery was completed, “All the English have poured praise on my lodge and hold that they cannot find another adega to match mine in the Douro… stating frankly that both in Oporto and the Douro, nobody has better wines.” At that time, Vesúvio and the surrounding Quintas in the Douro Superior were outside the region demarcated by law. So Bernardo made the brave and unprecedented move of exporting his wines directly from his properties to the United Kingdom. His aim was to persuade the authorities of the great quality of wines from the Douro Superior and hence the need to extend the demarcated area. After his death Barão Joseph James Forrester would take up this standard. And it was a battle which, posthumously, they won.

Quinta do Vesúvio is situated far upriver in the Douro Superior, 120 kilometres from Portugal’s Atlantic coast and only 45 kilometres from the border with Spain. The Quinta’s special reputation for producing outstanding wines goes back into the nineteenth century, when the Viscount of Villa Maior wrote, “All this wine is made scrupulously and to perfection… this Quinta was made as if for princes…”

Vesúvio has a total area of 326 hectares (806 acres), of which 133 hectares (329 acres) are planted with vines. The rest, almost two-thirds, has been conserved in its natural, wild state. Many other things grow at Vesúvio besides vines: oranges, lemons, figs, almonds, walnuts, grapefruits, pomegranates and many more exotic fruits and herbs.

Vesúvio also has great variations in altitude, from 130 metres at the riverside to 530 metres at the top of the ridge. Being so far in land, the Quinta experiences climatic extremes, reaching very high temperatures in summer and very low in winter. It is extremely dry, with an average of only 400mm of rain falling each year.

Vesúvio specialises in making remarkable Vintage Ports and Douro D.O.C red wines. The Symington family, the leading family of winemakers in the Douro Valley, personally makes all Vesúvio’s wine. The nineteenth century winery is one of the largest in the Douro and one of the last places on earth where grapes are still trodden by human feet, according to a time-honoured art, practised for centuries, millennia even.

The winery at Vesúvio, built in 1827 and unchanged since then, is a testimony to a largely lost art of winemaking. Every year in the autumn men and women gather here in the cool of the evening to tread the grapes that they picked that day.

It takes approximately 50 people to tread one lagar, a process that is conducted in two phases: first there is the “corte”, in which the treading team march rhythmically forward and backward in several lines, arms interlocked for at least two hours; this is followed by the “liberdade”, or liberty, when the treaders enjoy themselves, dancing and singing to the sounds of the local village band; they’re still treading, but randomly and leisurely.

The original eight granite lagares still remain, although today we say there are nine, since one has been divided in half. Each of these original eight lagares is capable of holding 24 pipes of Port (1 pipe = 550 litres). They lie side by side in a long row beneath the sturdy oak beams of the 1827 winery. Every massive granite slab of the lagares was brought from further up the Douro River by ox cart all the way from the border with Spain.

Above the earth floor, on the level beneath the lagares, are the large vats made of old chestnut wood. After the grapes have been trodden the must (fermenting grape juice) is run-off the lagar and transferred by gravity into the respective vat beneath beneath where it marries with the pure grape spirit thus becoming Port. This is one of the last places in the world where wine is still made this way, a method and an art referred to by the writers of the Old Testament.

Today, an ingenious but simple cooling system has been installed to help control the temperature to ensure that the fermenting musts progress at the right speed. Other than this, everything remains the same as it has been for millennia.

Although mesmerizingly beautiful and grand, Vesúvio betrays also its original purpose: not an aristocratic house but the Douro office of an estate manager. There is no elaborate entrance. Instead you enter the house through a small door into the kitchen. Today there is also a spectacular shaded terrace overlooking the river, which has become the heart of the house. But in Dona Antónia’s day life at the Quinta gathered around her office. The Symington family has preserved the house almost entirely as Antónia left it and it retains all its original charm.