Is the Douro unsustainable?
With climate change decreeing that grape-picking begin ever earlier – now often mid-August rather than the traditional September – it’s once again urgent to consider the sustainability of Portugal’s most internationally renowned wine region.
The Douro is currently slipping into a chasm between its reputation as a great wine region and political and institutional inertia that deny the region a sustainable economic and social footing.
The visitor to the Douro Valley is struck by the timeless peace and calm of this extraordinarily beautiful mountainous vineyard. However, beauty can deceive. The Douro is currently fighting for a sustainable future, with the outcome up in the air and the community divided into disputing factions: progressives versus traditionalists, smallholders versus large producers, growers of grapes for Port versus growers supplying grapes for Douro DOC non-fortified wines … And the climate versus every vine in the region, distributing heat spikes, droughts, summer storms and hail, like some terrible retribution.
In an article published in Público, in May 2022, veteran Portuguese wine industry commentator Pedro Garcias remarked, “the problems of the Douro are almost as old as prostitution”. É verdade!, the Portuguese might concur.
What exactly are the problems Garcias was referring to? For anyone just tuning into the Douro story, here’s a brief recap:
The down side of the Douro’s wonderful diversity of sun expositions and altitudes is its exceptionally low yields per hectare, a little over 4,000 kg (with climate change now, this can be even less in some years), compared with yields three or even four times higher in the US or Australia, and two to three times higher in France and Italy.
The Douro is the largest vineyard in the world where almost all the grape picking is still done by hand. Wages are low and temperatures can exceed 40ºC at harvest time.
These viticultural difficulties are exacerbated by an economic distortion. Put simply, prices paid for grapes grown for producing Port, the region’s historic wine, are far higher than the prices paid for grapes grown for producing Douro DOC table wine, still considered in some quarters as a bit of a vinous upstart.
There is also oversupply of grapes destined for Douro DOC, with no limit on quantity such as exists for grapes grown for Port production.
Douro DOC grapes are often sold below cost, making it difficult for smallholders to look after their vineyards. This lack of sustainable income has led to increasing abandonment of farms and widespread depopulation, while the average age of farmers is rising and labour becoming scarcer. To quote British wine writer Jancis Robinson, “the number of grape farmers in the Douro fell from 38,695 to 19,633 between 2010 and 2020 – a drop of 49%. And even today, 61% of those farmers own less than a hectare of vines and tend them only at weekends while holding down another, more lucrative job”.
It would be myopic to ignore the connection between the low prices paid for Douro DOC grapes and the prices for which Douro DOC wines are sold in world markets, prices which by no means reflect the real cost of production.
Paul Symington, respected former Chairman of Symington Family Estates, leading Port shippers who are also among the most successful pioneers of Douro DOC wines, reflects: “Douro wines are mostly priced at retail as if produced from the world’s lowest cost and highest yielding vineyards, when the reality is they are produced in one of the world’s lowest yielding and most expensive and challenging vineyards.” This discrepancy perpetuates a devalued image of the region totally incompatible with the quality of many of the wines being produced in the Douro today.
In a conversation in February 2020, David Guimaraens, Head Winemaker at The Fladgate Partnership – producers of premium Ports which include Taylor’s, Crofts and Fonseca – told this writer: “There’s an economic sustainability issue in the Douro, and sadly we haven’t been very intelligent in adapting our rules in the region. An inability to change the rules in the same way the region has changed has led to a lot of poverty and hardship. Our biggest challenge is to make sure we have the same rules for both Port and Douro DOC, and tragically we don’t have this. We all have a responsibility to get our act together.”
Two independent studies have alerted the powers that be about the plight of the Douro: a review by the consultants Quaternaire and a report by the University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro (UTAD), a university closely associated with the Douro through its influential oenology course. Both reports got suffocated by the long grass of Portuguese officialdom …
Echoing Guimaraens, Symington adds: “I’ve made myself a little unpopular pushing the Secretary of State to initiate the regulatory reforms I believe necessary.” Symington contributed a long article to Público back in October 2017, which caused quite a stir but not, however, the tornado apparently needed to create action in Portugal’s corridors of power.
The population of Provesende, the village near Symington’s private Douro vineyard, has shrunk over the last century from 2,000 to 200 inhabitants, and the village school closed years ago, from lack of demand.
In 2022, Olga Martins, CEO of Douro wine producer Lavradores de Feitoria, came up with an idea that took a new approach to some of the Douro’s apparently intractable difficulties. At the time, her idea seemed promising and Raymond Reynolds, leading UK importer of Portuguese wines, described Martins’ initiative as “a major step in the right direction”.
Martins’ initiative ‘Trust & Respect’ was inspired by fair trade practices and the ethical approach to producing and selling of B Corporations. A pioneering project in Portugal, the idea was for grape growers, and in particular wine producers, to sign up to a certain number of best practices based on three sustainable ‘pillars’: economic, social and environmental.
Farmers would be paid a ‘fair’ price for their grapes, and producers pay workers a sustainable wage and provide training to produce wines that employ environmentally respectful farming methods. Adhesion to these best practices would earn participants the Trust & Respect seal and the right to place the scheme’s logo on their bottles. The University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro (UTAD) sponsored Martins’ initiative and provided technical support to evaluate exactly what could be considered ‘fair’ practice.
Martins is convinced consumers in many markets (for example Scandinavia) are sensitive to sustainability issues and prepared to pay more for wines when they know these are produced according to sustainable practices. She hoped her initiative would appeal to forward-looking producers and provide an opportunity to leapfrog bureaucratic dawdling.
In an email to this writer, Martins wrote: “Through Trust & Respect, I hope we can increase the average price of our wines and, even more important, increase the price for a kilo of grapes. We would like to stop grape growers selling up and leaving their land, and keep more people in the region, living better quality lives to guarantee a sustainable future for the Douro.”
Today, despite these discussions and Martins’ idea, not much, if anything at all, has shifted. While the international reputation of the Douro continues to grow and enterprising wine producers continue to open up the region to quality wine tourism, the same economic and social sustainability conversations churn on.
Martins’ Trust & Respect idea seems to have got lost in the sinuous meanders of the Douro Valley. In June this year, it was announced Olga Martins will be leaving Lavradores de Feitoria to focus, with her husband Jorge Moreira, on their own Douro vineyard, Poeira.
Anyone who loves Douro wines will want to gaze up at the bright Douro night sky, pick a star, and wish the Portuguese authorities to engage with the broader brush of vigorous regulatory reform, to finally place the Douro and its wines on the sustainable path it deserves. Time is not on the Douro’s side.
