Past and present, tradition and modernity.
Summary of contents:
Part I.
- How it all began, a journey through the history of the family and Van Zeller & Co.. Origins and historical references.
- Cristiano van Zeller, a life in the Douro. Before the "new Douro", the adventure of the region's D.O.C. Douro wines. The Douro Boys.
- The present. The new life of Van Zellers & Co.. The new generation, Future projects.
- New concepts and a new language.
- Getting to know the vineyards, where the wines are born. The old vine factor, its importantce, a living heritage. Characterising the vineyards.
- Viticulture,preservation and sustainability. Traditional techniques. The "curettage".
Part
II.
- Winemaking, the success of traditional methods.
- Wines that tell stories. Port wine and D.O.C. Douro wines.
- The markets. Business volume and exports.
- Reflections on the future.
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| "Crafted by Hand", Van Zellers & Co. 30 and 40 years old tawny Ports. |
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| Nimega, 1683. |
Their activity began
as general merchants, as négociants, dedicated to general and
diversified wholesale trade and international business, which obviously also included wine business, and they ended up establishing themselves in
Portugal in the 17th century. There are several documental records that mention various members of the
Van Zeller family, merchants and traders, who were established in Portugal and
did business in the kingdom's capital, at least since the end of the 17th
century, and there were also several references to the presence of various Van
Zellers in the city of Porto. Between the end of the 17th century and the
beginning of the 18th century and "at least at the end of the 17th
century, references to the presence of various Van Zellers in the city of
Oporto multiplied, especially descendants of Arnaldo João van Zeller, from
Nimega". "Between 1680 and 1690, for example, Henrique,
Guilherme and João van Zeller appear as merchants in Oporto, importing various
goods from northern Europe." (1)
However, the only male line to remain in Portugal is that of Cristiano van Zeller's seventh grandfather, Arnaldo João van Zeller, who was born in Rorterdam in 1703, who came to Portugal to be a witness at the wedding of a right cousin and ended up leaving his family home in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, to move permanently to the city of Porto in 1720.
"It was,
however, the offspring of another son (Luís Francisco van Zeller, from
Rotterdam), of the aforementioned Arnaldo João van Zeller, from Nimega, who
came to settle in Porto. Arnaldo João van Zeller, son of Luís Francisco van
Zeller and Joana Harles, born in Rotterdam in 1702, came to Porto, probably in
the early 1730s, and married Ana Francisca Henckell, daughter of the wealthy
Hamburg businessman Pedro Henckell"(1) and the british Ana Maria
Palmer, who lived in Porto. Ana Francisca was the heiress of two Port wine
merchants, her father Peter Henckell and her grandfather Samuel Palmer, and was
also a direct descendant of the first English wine merchant to trade in Porto,
Walter Maynard, who established himself in Porto as a wine merchant in 1650. In
turn, Walter Maynard had married Leonor da Silva Moura in 1654, the daughter of
Francisco da Silva Moura, who had established himself as a wine merchant in
Porto since 1620, which allows us to establish an uninterrupted link
to the wine trade in the family's ancestry since that date.
And it was in the city of Porto that he developed his activity as a wholesale merchant (with the designation "Arnaldo João van Zeller & C.ª"), probably also linked to the business of his father-in-law Pedro Henckell ("Pedro Henckell & C.ª") who was, at that time, one of the city's biggest merchants, also already linked to the wine trade, especially on behalf of the English Palmer family.
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| (Van Zellers & Co.) |
A foreign family name, "Writing Vanzeller is one of the exotic surnames, that is, extra peninsular". (Luiz de Mello Vaz de S. Payo).
An important family in 18th century Porto, the van Zeller’s would become linked to the tradition and history of the city, our country and the Douro region and its wines. Over the years, since the first van Zellers settled in Portugal, they would be linked to other families and nationalities, descendants of English and German traders. At least since the 17th century, in the van Zeller family tree, there have been links to other families with foreign origins - Palmer, Maynard, Kopke, Henckell and Whittinghall - who were connected to trade, in which Port wine was already very important, at least since 1620.
In 1730, the van Zeller family were active traders and declared wines at the customs office in the city of Porto, without, however, being mentioned on the wine exporters list.
Later, Arnaldo João's descendants continued in the wine business, founding a Port wine company and in 1780, "Van Zellers & Cª Lª." was officially founded (a name that would have been used for the first time in 1675, according to Cristiano van Zeller), by two of Arnaldo João's sons, Pedro, the eldest son (from whom Cristiano van Zeller descends) and his brother, Arnaldo. They thus started out in a more specific wine trade, with the official foundation of the company at the beginning of the golden age of the Port wine trade, at that time a business dominated by British companies. The company, one of the oldest in the sector, was one of the largest at that time and was part of the list of non-british exporters that in 1792 would be established by the Companhia Geral de Agricultura dos vinhos do Alto Douro.
Old records show that the first offices and warehouses of Van Zellers & Co. in Vila Nova de Gaia were located in the house where Ramos Pinto's head office is nowadays located, on Avenida Ramos Pinto, facing the river Douro on the Gaia quay, and some warehouses adjoining the main building. There are old documents that refer the process of building these warehouses between Pedro van Zeller (1736-1802), Cristiano van Zeller's sixth grandfather, and a Mr. Neville. (from the inscription that currently exists at the main entrance to the Ramos Pinto building: "These buildings were built in 1708 by João Estevenson, an old non-British merchant. Due to the alignment of the street below and for a better public prospect, in 1788 modifications were indicated by the Sergeant Major Engineer, to Mr. Pedro Wanzeller, a professed Knight of the Order of Christ, who was then the owner of the said buildings.").
It was around this time that Van Zellers & C.ª established commercial relations and explored the first maritime wine trade routes between Portugal and the Baltic states, which were then, in the 18th century, part of the Russian Empire. This trade took on great importance in the time of Tsar Peter the Great, and Pedro van Zeller, son of Arnaldo João (and CvZ's sixth grandfather) was appointed Russian consul in Porto by the Empress Catherine of Russia. In the 18th century, the company had a naval fleet of more than 27 ships.
On 14 May 1767, Pedro van Zeller married the English Maria Isabel Wittenhall, who was notable for her pioneering role in the introduction of the smallpox vaccine in Portugal (she administered herself more than ten thousand vaccines).
For his part, the son of Pedro van Zeller, Francisco van Zeller (and Cristiano van Zeller's fifth grandfather), was a merchant and one of Porto's eminent figures. He was one of the financiers of Wellington's Anglo-Portuguese army during the Napoleonic wars and was also one of the signatories of the first Portuguese Constitution of 1822.
In 1811, Van Zellers & Cª established itself as one of the leading Port wine merchants, becoming the 5th largest at the beginning of the 19th century, exporting more than 10,000 barrels a year.
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| Van Zellers & Co. old warehouses in Vila Nova de Gaia. (image from the book "Douro", by Manuel Monteiro, 1911). |
Sometime during the 19th century, "Van Zellers & Companhia", was acquired by an English company, for reasons that are still unknown and unclear. Despite that, in the mid-19th century, the Van Zeller family continued to be linked to the Port wine business through two other companies: Quinta de Roriz and Quinta do Noval. António José da Silva Júnior, Cristiano van Zeller's great-great-grandfather, had bought Quinta do Noval in 1894-1896 (there is no certainty about the date), just after the property had been decimated by phylloxera, and began replanting it.
The company would later return to the family when, around 1935, it came up for sale and was bought by Luís Vasconcellos Porto in 1937 (who was married to Teresa, daughter of António José da Silva, and had abandoned his diplomatic career to dedicate himself to the Port wine business, with great success), CvZ's great-grandfather, owner of the historic Quinta do Noval, one of the most famous estates in the Douro wine region, where he carried out notable viticultural and oenological work.
Van Zellers & Co., which in those days had no commercial activity or wine stock, was integrated with its brands into "António José da Silva & Companhia" (which would change its name to Quinta do Noval in 1970) and remained a sub-brand of Quinta do Noval until 1987, used in some countries with the Quinta do Noval stock.
In the meantime, between the late 1930s and the early 1940s, the family agreed on a division whereby Cristiano van Zeller's parents would keep Quinta do Noval and his cousins would keep Quinta de Roriz. In 1963, following the death of Luís Vasconcellos Porto, the firm was inherited by his only daughter, Rita Vasconcellos Porto, who was married to Cristiano van Zeller, CvZ's grandfather, therefore linking Quinta do Noval to the family branch that owned Quinta de Roriz.
On that date, Fernando van Zeller became the managing director and, together with his brother Luís, grandsons of Luís Vasconcellos Porto, took over the company administration until 1982, when Fernando stepped down following the death of Luís van Zeller. Quinta do Noval continued to be a family business when, at the end of 1982, Cristiano van Zeller and his sister Teresa took over the management, together with their cousin Rita, who was also involved in the company business.
A subject we'll return to later that marked the company's history was the great fire that took place in the Quinta do Noval warehouses in Vila Nova de Gaia in October 1981, which destroyed the offices, the bottling lines, part of the production and a large part of the documentary archive of interest to its historical reconstruction, not only of Van Zellers & C.ª, but also of Quinta do Noval, which was lost for good.
In 1987, Cristiano van Zeller, with the agreement and in partnership with his cousins who owned Quinta de Roriz, his grand uncles and his father's cousins, in which they were the minority partners and Quinta do Noval the majority partner, decided to recover and reactivate the company independently, and Van Zellers & Co. gained legal autonomy, now with its own vineyards and stocks, which materialised in 1991. Quinta de Roriz became the firm's sole property under the name "Van Zellers - Vinhos & C.ª L.ª". It wasn't, however, a lasting situation, since the decision to sell Quinta do Noval in April 1993 to Axa Millésimes, woul led to the firm being included in the deal, its assets liquidated and the firm deactivated.
The company and all the associated brands would later end up, as we shall see, in the hands of the Van Zeller family branch that owned Quinta do Roriz and then, as a result of a partition procedure, although there were no assets or stock of wines or vineyards, they would remain in the sole ownership of cousin João van Zeller, who in 2006 offered it to Cristiano van Zeller for the commercialisation of Port and Douro wines.
From then on, in 2007, Cristiano van Zeller began a new chapter with the reconstitution of this bicentenary company, starting by remaking and reconstituting the Port and old Port wine stocks, essential to have the necessary diversity (different ages, aromas and flavours) to create the diferente furure blends, but he also added DOC Douro wines to the portfolio. In 2006 he made his first white wine at Quinta Vale D. Maria, based on purchased grapes, as the property had no white grapes. He called it "VZ", one of the Van Zellers & Co. brands, and in the years that followed he gradually rebuilt the company within the Quinta Vale D. Maria structure. In 2009, the first Van Zellers Port wines were relaunched. In 2011 the first CV, Curriculum Vitae red DOC Douro, appeared.
From then until today, when Van Zellers & Co. is relaunched with a new project and a new identity, it has remained a family business, joined by the 15th generation, represented by Francisca van Zeller, Cristiano van Zeller's and Joana eldest daughter, who started working in 2013 in the marketing and sales department. In 2017, following the sale of Quinta Vale D. Maria to Aveleda S.A., Cristiano and Joana began to devote more time to the company, developing the older Port wine stock and consolidating the 15 hectares of vineyards (14 hectares of red wine vineyards, essentially in the Torto and Pinhão river valleys, and 1 hectare of white wine vineyards in the Murça area).
Bibliography:
- (1) Martins Pereira, Gaspar – Roriz, História de uma Quinta no Coração do Douro. Edições Afrontamento, Outubro 2011.
- S. Payo. Luíz de Mello Vaz de - A Pré-História da Família Vanzeller. «Genealogia & Heráldica». Porto: Centro de Estudos de Genealogia, Heráldica e História da Família da Universidade Moderna, n.º 1 (Janeiro/Junho, 1999).
- Teixeira Pereira, Pedro – Os Pedrossem, uma família da Elite no Porto Setecentista. Douro, Estudos & Documentos. Vol. VIII (15). 2003 (1.º), 103-139.
- Valente, Vasco - Van Zeller, Descendência de Arnaldo João van Zeller, Notas genealógicas. Braga: Of. Gráfica da “Pax”, 1932.
- Pintão, Manuel e Cabral, Carlos – Dicionário Ilustrado do Vinho do Porto. Editora de Cultura, 2011.
2. Cristiano Van Zeller, his life’s journey in the Douro.
“I work with something that is fundamental to the human spirit, wine." Cristiano van Zeller
Cristiano van Zeller represents the 14th generation of the family linked to Douro wines. He was born in Porto, which has always been his hometown, and spent most of his childhood in the Douro. With a life dedicated to the region, he has a long oenological curriculum and an experience of 43 harvests. He was one of the pioneers in experimenting with the Douro's still wines that the region successfully produces today, and he's one of the Douro's renowned and unavoidable personalities and one of its ambassadors.
His father was a civil engineer who worked at the Douro hydroelectric plant and was never involved in the wine business (he was only a shareholder in the family company, Quinta do Noval). Grandfather Cristiano van Zeller, also a civil engineer (married to Rita Vasconcellos Porto), worked at Quinta do Noval with his great-grandfather, Luís Vasconcellos Porto. Like his father and grandfather, Cristiano van Zeller began his studies in civil engineering.
Quinta do Noval. In 1979 he was studying industrial engineering at the San Sebastian School of Engineering at the University of Navarre in Spain when he returned to Portugal after his father's death, initially to continue his studies, now civil engineering, in Porto. However, circumstances eventually led him into the world of wine and, albeit indirectly, as early as 1980 he began to be involved and take a real interest in wine. In March 1981, he officially started working at Quinta do Noval, the family business, at the invitation of his uncles Fernando and Luís van Zeller (his father's brothers), who at the time were the company's directors, as a representative of his side of the family on the board. It was also in 1981 that he carried out his first harvest in the Douro.
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| (Van Zellers & Co.) |
The very next year, following the unexpected death of his uncle Luís which was followed by his uncle Fernando van Zeller's decision to resign, which in turn forced the rest of the family to sell the company (a decision that, however, was not carried out) and amid complicated family disagreements, at the end of 1982, Cristiano van Zeller, then 23 years old, together with his sister Maria Teresa and his cousin Rita, took over the direction and management of Quinta do Noval. During this difficult phase, he had the support of his father's friends, including Vitor Brandão Cardoso de Menezes, José António Rosas, Fernando Guedes, Robin Reid and Alistair Robertson, who helped the company to continue its life, to recover, to achieve financial equilibrium and to regain confidence.
Shortly after his arrival, on 20 October 1981, a major fire broke out in Quinta do Noval's warehouses, in the Vila Nova de Gaia historic customs area, in one of the two warehouses that divided the rua Cândido dos Reis, destroying a large part of the company's facilities, the offices, an important part of the house's archives and documentation, as well as those of Van Zellers & Companhia, the bottling lines, a considerable part of the wine stock (around 350.000 litres), which ultimately determined the future of Quinta do Noval from then on. In 1982, it was decided to rebuild the company's facilities, not in Gaia, but in the Douro, and it was the first company to move its facilities to the Douro.
It was during this phase, in 1987, that Cristiano van Zeller managed to rebuild Van Zellers & Companhia independently, together with his uncles and cousins from Quinta de Roriz.
Over the years, Quinta do Noval has been the setting in which new generations have explored innovative methods in the vineyard and in oenology and in different styles of Port wine. These methodologies included ungrafted vines, which gave rise to the creation of one of the most famous wines in the world: the mythical Quinta do Noval 1931 National vintage Port, the creation of aged Tawny Ports (10, 20, 30 and 40 years old) and Late Bottled Vintage Port style.
Cristiano van Zeller worked at Quinta do Noval from 1981 until 1993, when the family, after periods of complications and upheaval in the company, decided to sell Quinta do Noval to the French insurance company Axa Millésimes, a deal that materialised in April 1993, and Van Zellers & Cª. would be included in the sale. Circumstances and the lack of capacity to continue the project on his own meant that Cristiano van Zeller followed the family decision and kept a small percentage in the company.
In 1984, Cristiano van Zeller married Joana de Carvalho Lemos.
Quinta do Crasto. After the sale of Quinta do Noval, Cristiano van Zeller remained with the new French owners for five months, but soon after his decision to leave, at the end of 1993 and in conversation with Jorge Roquette, the opportunity arose to join the initial Quinta do Crasto project, which would officially begin on 2 January 1994. It represented a boost in confidence and the opportunity to continue his involvement in the Port wine sector and the Douro, as he had firmly intended. Cristiano van Zeller was involved in the development of the project, the new D.O.C. Douro wines and its commercial aspects. In the beginning, for about a year, he created the project and a market to present and sell wines that at the time didn't yet exist, since the first harvest would be in September 1994 and sales would only start a year later. All technical matters were the responsability of by David Baverstock, an autralian winemaker (now with dual Australian and Portuguese nationality, he was the winemaker at Esporão, owned by José Roquette (Jorge's brother). Wine production on this quinta began immediately with David Baverstock, and the necessary attention was also paid to the Port wine stocks, to the bottling of Vintage Port and the creation of wines for LBV Ports began.
Quinta do Crasto soon became a success story. A well-structured and organised project, initially conceived mainly for export, as it was in the early years (it was only later, in 2001, that Quinta do Crasto's D.O.C. Douro wines were launched on the domestic market), because the main objective, which was considered fundamental, was to reach the international market. CvZ remained involved with the Quinta do Crasto project until 2000.
Quinta Vale D. Maria. In September 1996, a new adventure arose, when Cristiano van Zeller and his wife Joana de Carvalho Lemos acquired Quinta Vale D. Maria from the latter's family. A property with origins in the 18th century and known existence since 1868, located in Sarzedinho, in the Torto river valley, Ervedosa do Douro, in the Cima Corgo sub-region, which had been leased to the Symington group since 1973. The opportunity then arose to start their own, family-run and totally independent project, on a property that then comprised 10 hectares of vineyards with a wide range of grape varieties, a terroir of excellence and great potential for producing high-quality wines. And so this estate would become the cradle of the family's own projects. It was at this point that, in informal conversations with the cousins from Quinta da Aveleda, the possibility of doing a joint project in the Douro was discussed, but it never went ahead.
The first wine from Quinta Vale D. Maria was vinified in 1996 (it was the daughter Francisca van Zeller who first entered the lagar to tread the first grapes from the quinta), at the time still at Quinta de Nápoles, with the support of his friend Dirk Niepoort at the start of the business and with a very small production of 2000 bottles in this first year. In the following years, the winemaking would take place at Quinta do Crasto, since it wasn't until 2001 that the winery itself was completed and the first harvest was carried out entirely in the Quinta Vale D. Maria "lagares". Well-known winegrowers and important winemakers such as Álvaro van Zeller, Sandra Tavares da Silva, Joana Pinhão and Ricardo Pinto Nunes passed through here on their journeys in the region.
The company that owned Quinta Vale D. Maria was called "Lemos & van Zeller, Lda." and later "Quinta Vale D. Maria, S.A.". Van Zellers & Co., which was more orientated towards Port wines, carried out its business integrating and complementing Quinta Vale D. Maria, which in turn was more orientated towards Douro wines, "it was a Douro wine company with Port wine", until 2017. A group of four friends (António Lobo Xavier, Carlos Moreira da Silva, Paulo Azevedo and Ângelo Paupério) played a fundamental role in the development and consolidation of Quinta Vale D. Maria and building a brand with value, from 2011 until 2017. They financed and were shareholders in a more difficult phase of the company’s life.
Quinta do Vallado. Then, in 1996, when he was still working at Quinta do Crasto, at the invitation of friends and relatives Guilherme Álvares Ribeiro and Francisco Ferreira along with Francisco Olazábal, he contributed to the birth and development of the Quinta do Vallado project, with great success in the commercial area, where he remained until 2007.
(As a curiosity, however, in addition to all these episodes related to the world of wine, CvZ, in 1993, together with his brother, sister and other partners, who are now the owners, started the establishment and distribution of Haagen Dazs in Portugal).
In 2008, an agreement was reached between João van Zeller, owner of Quinta de Roriz, and Cristiano van Zeller and Sandra Tavares da Silva, to ensure the wine production at this property.
In 2015, talks began with the cousins from Quinta da Aveleda (António and Martim Guedes, the fifth generation of the Guedes family), curiously with regard to Van Zellers & Co, which is the link between the two families. The end result was the opposite of what had initially determined the conversations and which would later materialise in 2017 in an agreement to integrate Quinta Vale D. Maria into Quinta da Aveleda and CvZ becoming a minority shareholder and responsible for the higher range wines in this company. This connection represented the coming together of two branches of the family, Guedes and Van Zeller. There is a family kinship with the Guedes family from Aveleda and Sogrape, through the common descent of great-great-grandfather Cristiano van Zeller (who had 3 children, two of whom had descendants, great-grandfather Fernando and great-aunt Fernanda van Zeller who married Mr. Fernando Guedes da Silva da Fonseca who was the owner of Quinta da Aveleda and from here the two branches of the family are born, Cristiano van Zeller's branch and also his cousins Álvaro and Fernando van Zeller from Barão de Vilar and various members of the Guedes family), more than kinship, the family has always been linked by bonds of friendship.
There were two underlying objectives: on the one hand, the desire to integrate a structure that would provide stability and conditions for a more sustained growth of Quinta Vale D. Maria and for Quinta da Aveleda, to be able to associate a prestigious Douro property with a niche brand and make true the old dream of producing quality wines in the Douro and, at the same time, a wider coverage of Quinta da Aveleda's portfolio, with an image and positioning among the top quality wines in this region, in addition to the Vinho Verde region and other wine regions.
Van Zellers & Co. remained the property of Cristiano van Zeller, and it was also agreed that as long as CvZ remained connected to Quinta da Aveleda, which was until the end of 2020, the company "Van Zellers & Co." would operate within the Quinta da Aveleda structure, sharing production, winemaking and storage.
Cristiano van Zeller stepped down as CEO of Quinta da Aveleda at the end of 2020, as originally agreed, and since 1st January 2021 he has been fully dedicated to Van Zellers & Co. Since 2020, with the participation of his daughter Francisca van Zeller (who also collaborated in Quinta da Aveleda's communications and marketing department), who had been working with her father since 2013, together they had begun to plan and idealise the renovation of Van Zeller & Co..
In 1997, together with Javier Hidalgo of “La Gitana sherry Co.” he created the first single-vineyard sherry, Pastrana Manzanilla Pasada, in Spain.
Since 2007, he has also a project in the Spanish wine region of Toro, a region crossed and moulded by the Douro River, called "Hacienda Terra d`Uro", together with Óscar Garrote and Pipa Ortega, where they have more than 50 hectares of vineyards, mainly of the Tinta de Toro grape variety, characteristic of this region, planted in a historic terroir known as Pago Bardales, and an emblematic 6 hectares pre-phylloxera 160 years old vineyard, one of the oldest vineyards in Spain and Europe.
Before the “New Douro”.
The adventure of the region's still wines. The birth and development of D.O.C. Douro wines.
Over the centuries, Port wine has always been dominant in the Douro wine region, but in the the 1980’s, a series of circumstances that would change this situation came together: a generation of people in the Port wine companies with a deep knowledge of the Douro and the first generation of oenologists from the University of Vila Real and Trás os Montes who started working in the region, new ideas and also changes in the historic Port wine companies that were sold (Quinta do Noval, Ramos Pinto, Ferreira), which led to a group of people no longer having their previous responsibilities and being given some freedom of action, which allowed them to develop new ideas and follow new paths.
Until then, there were a few worthy exceptions to the predominance of Port wine, such as the great pioneers of the Douro who produced wines of quality but without denomination of origin (which would only be recognised in 1982), among others, the Ferreirinha house with “Barca Velha”, Quinta do Côtto, Real Companhia Velha, João Nicolau de Almeida from Ramos Pinto, Domingos Alves de Sousa, Luís Duarte and João Roseira. However, the image of the Douro wines, the market and the designation of origin simply didn't exist yet.
Some winemakers, and Quinta do Noval in particular, began experimenting with still Douro wines from 1981 onwards, and over the years there were several micro vinifications, small productions to assess quality, evolution and to try to make the most of the waste that was widespread throughout the region, which was not to use the grapes that were not destined for Port wine because they exceeded the limit of the benefit stipulated each year, a surplus that was distilled or sold in bulk and with a quality not to be recommended.
This quiet revolution in the Douro region has awakened a growing awareness that the Douro has much more to offer than Port wine, in what would be "a new region within an old region, the Douro within the Port wine region." It should also be noted that the Douro is the only region in the world capable of producing two world-class wines from the same grapes, but it was necessary to change and renew our thinking in order to make two great wines.
Cristiano van Zeller played his part among the pioneers of the Douro's still wines. In 1985, when he was working at Quinta do Noval, he began the first experiments in the production of this style of wine and in the following years, ‘86, '87, '89 and especially in the '90’s, even before the "new Douro" generation, when the Douro as a region of still wines still didn't exist and didn't have a large number of quality brands, together with his cousins from José Maria da Fonseca and Domingos Soares Franco, made a series of D.O.C. Douro wines. Experiences and learning that would be interrupted with the sale of Quinta do Noval in 1993 and then continued at Quinta do Crasto, where they developed a range of Douro wines, among the best in the region and internationally renowned. Cristiano van Zeller was among the first to realise and exploit the potential of the Murça area, where he carried out his first harvest and learned the history of white wines and the knowledge of this special vineyards terroir, at higher altitude and transitional soils (schist and granite), which is now widely recognised in the Douro for the production of great white wines. When he was running Quinta do Noval, he was already sourcing white grapes in Murça for his White Port wines, and later with the “Martim” vineyard, one of the parishes of Murça and the origin of the Vale D. Maria Vinha de Martim D.O.C. Douro white wine.
In all his projects and and in the
development of his work, CvZ has always been an active voice in communicating
the great potential of the Douro for the production of D.O.C. wines, without ever forgetting Port wine.
At the end of the
1990’s and 2000, the real revolution took place and we can pinpoint the birth
of the new Douro to 2001, with the first generation of winemakers just out of
the University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro (such as Francisco Ferreira,
Francisco Olazabal, Jorge Serôdio Borges, among many others), the best prepared
generation ever to come and live and work in the Douro region. This was the turning
point, the year in which the Douro took off on an international level. After
projects such as Niepoort, Quinta Vale D. Maria, Quinta do Crasto and Quinta do
Vallado, in which this potential was only just beginning to be known, other new
projects were created from scratch, such as Wine & Soul, Quinta do Vale
Meão and Quinta de la Rosa. Then, in 2003 and 2004, wines began to appear with
regularity, consistency and great quality.
The "New Douro" was characterised by a very specific
spirit, a selfless solidarity that greatly favoured this embryonic phase. There
was a great desire to share knowledge and experiences, to do, develop and show.
There was an awareness of working for a common purpose, where everyone stood to
gain precisely because the region needed everyone.
Since those early years, just 30 years ago, when the Douro of D.O.C. wines as we know it today didn't exist, it's been a long road and much has changed. We remember that the first news item about the Douro's still wines appeared in 2005 in the international reference magazine Wine Spectator, with a reference to Portuguese wines from the 2003 harvest. In a region that has historically been famous for producing Port wine, and over the last 30 years D.O.C. Douro production is no longer much different from Port wine production, there has been enormous growth over this period. From a time when production represented nothing to today, when D.O.C. Douro wines account approximatelly for 40% of the region's total anual production, the growth has been enormous and fundamental to keeping the region alive. If we think about white wines, production is even more recent and has only been regular for the last fifteen years.
There has been a reinvention of one of the oldest wine regions in the world. In any case, the Douro wines are still taking their first steps in trying to realise the immense possibilities that the region has to offer, which is a very different perspective from that of Port wine, because the best vineyards for Port are not necessarily the best for Douro wines.
The Douro Boys…
The Douro Boys are still going strong after "20 years of putting the Douro on the map", an anniversary that they recently celebrated. Cristiano van Zeller is one of the founders and one of the five members of the Douro Boys, which also includes Dirk Niepoort (Niepoort), Francisco Ferreira (Quinta do Vallado) Francisco Olazabal (Quinta do Vale Meão) and Tomás Roquette (Quinta do Crasto). The group was the result of informal conversations between these five Douro wine producers, roughly of the same dimension, linked by family relationships in some cases and friendship in others, initially in 2001 between Cristiano Van Zeller and Dirk Niepoort, and the need to create a more organised and professional structure, a joint project with well-defined objectives for a cooperation that already existed in practice and informally.
The project was officially born in 2002 out of an awareness of the need to increase the number of high-quality producers and brands with the aim of achieving international recognition for the region, the Douro's potential for producing D.O.C. wines (later extended to include Port wines) and achieving a high level of positioning and visibility on the market. This positioning was fundamental, in order to have references and create differentiation, to distance itself from the production of volume and low price wines, for which the region has no vocation.
Pursuing this objective for more than 20 years, the Douro Boys have made known the D.O.C. Douro wines to a wider audience and the Douro wines they produce have accumulated good scores among critics from specialised international wine magazines, undoubtedly also a major contribution to the recognition of Portuguese wine. They continue to promote the Douro's fine wines, organising various events such as presentations, seminars, tasting sessions in various countries, which place the Douro region on the map of the world's leading wine regions. In order to do this, it was essential to promote, disseminate and publicise the region and what was being done then, to international journalists, especially in opinion-generating markets such as England first and then in the United States.
The project developed and promoted not only each of the producers that were part of it, but also the region as a whole. With the wine brands that made up the group, they tried to create a solid base that would be a reference, that would be valued and that would reflect what the Douro and Portugal would be able to do.
3. The present. The new life of Van Zellers & Co. The new generation. The new generation. Future projects.
A family, a life and a history of the Douro, the Van Zellers & Co. represents, first and foremost, the continuity of the Van Zeller family's historical heritage, which continues to inspire today, now with a new dynamism.
A special Christmas present. In this new phase, there are two important dates to consider: the first, in 2006, more correctly at Christmas 2006 when, as we mentioned above, João van Zeller, Cristiano van Zeller's cousin (on that date owner of Quinta de Roriz, which would later be acquired by the Symington family and then associated with Prats & Symington), gave him as a Christmas present the company name and the brands associated with "Van Zeller & Co." ("Van Zellers" and "VZ") dating back to the 19th century, which he had never used and had no use for, certainly recognising Cristiano van Zeller's ability to continue the family business and the marketing of Port and Douro wines.
A new chapter began in 2007, a fresh start inspired by the company's long history and respect for the Douro's heritage, diversity and traditions. Cristiano van Zeller began the recovery of the company, in parallel with the work he was doing at Quinta Vale D. Maria and within that structure. Since 2007, an effort has been made to invest in the purchase of bulk Port wine in order to restore the firm's Port wine stocks, based on Cristiano van Zeller's experience and knowledge of the region and its traditional producers, who over the years and generations have always produced the "fine wine" that they sold to export houses. This investment has been reinforced since 2017, emphasising the importance of great quality very old Tawny Ports, always dependent on financial capacity and the opportunities that arise in this very specific market among the region's small traditional producers.
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| Receiving grapes from the "Silvas vineyard", at Van Zellers & Co. winemeking centre. |
In 2018, reached a
stock of more than 175,000 litres of Port wine (at the time, Portuguese law
required new producers to have a permanent minimum stock of 150,000 litres in
order to become Port wine merchants), mainly tawny Port of various ages and old
and very old tawnies that are currently ageing in the company's wine cellar and which
constitute a diversity of wines of different ages and characteristics of aromas
and flavours, a necessary complexity that will allow the creation of diferent Port
wine blends.
Van
Zellers & Co. established a cooperation with CvZ’s cousins Fernando and
Álvaro van Zeller from the company "Barão de Vilar" to develop Port
wines of various categories. Meanwhile, the "CV Curriculum Vitae" D.O.C. Douro red wine had
already existed since 2011 and "VZ" started again, at the same time
as a number of Port wines were launched over the years. In 2011-2012,
the team of winegrowers and winemakers consisted of Joana Pinhão, Sandra
Tavares da Silva, Álvaro van Zeller and Cristiano van Zeller.
A renewed spirit. The second date to be noted is January 1st, 2021, the day on which Cristiano van Zeller, having left his executive position at Quinta da Aveleda, dedicates himself exclusively to “Van Zellers & Co.”, which happens for the first time since the company had been sold in the XIX century and takes over the responsibility of a family business and its continuity in the Port and Douro wine business. The 14th and 15th generation of the family, parents and children work together, and the new generation assimilates experience, knowledge and example. The father, Cristiano van Zeller, has fundamental responsibility for the production area and Joana van Zeller takes on the company's public relations. Francisca van Zeller, the eldest daughter, was born in 1986 and has dedicated herself to communication, marketing and foreign markets since 2013. João van Zeller is the ambassador of the national market, dedicated to new customers or new wine references to existing customers.
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| The house's recent traditional granite "lagares". |
New
blood and a dynamic spirit are essential to continue the wine business and this
responsibility brings new ideas and perspectives to the house. There
is now a time to share knowledge, to pass on as many responsibilities as
possible and the teachings that are still missing, especially through acquiring
practical experience and monitoring, a knowledge that is transmitted by seeing
how it is done and that can only be acquired with time. Currently, the
challenge is to organize time to allow these moments of sharing that are
essential, especially when it comes to Port wine, because there is wisdom and
knowledge and the need to create and develop an olfactory and historical memory which is fundamental to manage these wines.
There
was also an operational change, Van Zellers & Co. started to focus on a
solid, small family structure, with an ancient tradition, and on the superior
quality and consistency of the wines it produces, bottling only what is defined
as a reference of quality. Wines that are an expression
of the Douro's traditions and diversity, with a high positioning and references
in the world of wines, eliminating the most common entry-level standard wines,
dedicating themselves only to medium-high and high-range wines, in very limited
quantities, thus differentiating itself from the sector's direct competition –
bottlings are limited annually in the different wine categories – and always with a
matrix of Port wine + D.O.C wine Douro. The objective
is to achieve the stabilization of the company and increase the value of the
wines over the years, in terms of brand and quality value and to
be able to enter and maintain a position in a more demanding and high-end
market niche, which is a market that always maintains its dimension.
This renovation also includes work on the company image and brand, to which Francisca van Zeller and her cousin Matilde Barroso have dedicated themselves.
The update also involves other future projects, such as the “Experiencies” project designed to welcome those interested in visiting and tasting wines or the “dinners at home” project, for restricted groups that dine with those in charge of the house, which includes the presentation of menus designed for the various wine categories. Planned for the short term there is also a project for an open house to receive guests, friends and clients, for lunches and wine tastings, in São João da Pesqueira, Douro, the house of Adorigo. The project has already been aproved and a visitable vineyard with various grape varieties is planned. What will be special is that the entire building will be sustainable, with solar panels and a system for capturing and reusing rainwater collected in special tanks to be used in the gardens and vineyards, as well as a grey water treatment system that allows it to be used again in the bathrooms. A self-sustaining project that will be complemented by an aromatic garden under study and designed by a landscape architect with the aim of creating the right environment to experience the aromas of wine in plants, fruit trees, shrubs and flowers.
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| In the Port wine cellar, adjacent to the wine making area. |
4. New concepts and a new language.
Planning this changes in Van Zellers & Co. began between
2019 and 2020, with a new philosophy that translated into a complete
image makeover, a new design and the development of new concepts with a new
language to explain the different wine categories. An
original and easy-to-understand perspective was conceived to define and explain
the wine families and their differences, distinct from the classifications of
the official Port wine categories, which aims to show the modernity of this
style of wine and the innovation of D.O.C. Douro wines and convey a different
way of being in the world of wine and in the Douro.
Francisca
van Zeller was in charge of communication and creativity, together with her
cousin Matilde Barroso, a specialist in branding and communication, and Rita
Rivotti an award-winning specialist in wine design and branding.
A new way of explaining the differences between wines, initially conceived to explain Port wines and then
also extended to D.O.C. Douro wines, “with less technical language and more
poetry”. The wines are explained according to the three elements that
give rise to their diversity, the different styles, aromas and flavors,
textures and complexity. Thus:
Wines
crafted by nature, are those in which the main element is pure nature that determines
and defines the final result of wines. It is the original charactersitics of a
place or a specific terroir and vineyard that determine the wines, nature plays
its crucial part and the intervention of the winemaker is very limited. These are wines from a single vineyard that then live and evolve in the bottle. In the house’s portfolio these are Vintage Port, LBV and Crusted Port wines, and
the D.O.C. Douro include CV-Curriculum Vitae red and white wines.
Wines
crafted by time, the
defining element of which is time that makes and transforms them, it is the value
of time that moulds the wines and their evolution in barrels rather than the
nature of the vintage. The wines show how time has defined their profile and
what time has added to them. These wines are the “Colheita” or Single Harvest
Tawny Ports, made from a single harvest, vintage or year, in which time has
given them depth and adds layers of complexity, nuances of colour and
surprising aromas and flavours.
Wines crafted by hand, in which man plays the predominant role in its conception and production, through his knowledge and experience, developing a work that will enable to emphasize the importance of different elements, such as the location and age of the vineyards, the variety of grapes that make up each vineyard, and in the preparation of the blends. In Port wines, the art of the master blender is of fundamental importance and its experience, sensitivity and knowledge are essential to select the different notes and carefully combine them in the harmonious composition of the final blends, according to the desired profile. These wines are the tawny reserve and tawny Port with an indication of age, 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 years old, and the D.O.C. Douro "VZ" white and red, which are produced from a blend of various vineyard parcels.
5. Getting to know the vineyards, where the wines are born. The old vine factor, its importance, a living heritage. Characterising the vineyards.
“I am more and more intrigued by the existence of Old Vines and insistent on their preservation. I am just starting down this path.” “I’am a fan of the traditional Douro vineyards with all the grape varieties mixed together, … I like the surprise, in wine and in the Douro, in what I do, I like to be surprised every year by what the vineyards give… I find this constant challenge amusing.” Cristiano van Zeller
Van Zellers & Co. does not have a single property, but rather a number of small plots of mostly old vineards scattered around the Douro region, with areas varying between 1 to 3 hectares. Currently, among their own and rented vineyards, there is a total of 15 hectares of red and white vines, which are the source of the house's wines. The company's own vineyards comprise 8 hectares and with the remaining leased vineyards make up the total of 15 hectares, of which 14 hectares of red vines and 1 hectare of white vines. With the exception of the “Silvas vineyard” (or the "CV vineyard"), which already existed, all the vineyards have been acquired in this new phase of the company. White and red grapes are also bought from different winegrowers with small vineyards, 6 in total – and the largest vineyard has an area of 1,5 hectares - which are also located in different areas of the region, and with whom Cristiano van Zeller maintains good relations for some time, one of them since the days of Quinta Vale D. Maria.
The vineyards are diverse and spread across different areas of the Douro as mentioned, from the Torto river valley to the Pinhão river valley and Murça, and in some cases you have to go far to harvest. They are located in different terroirs, with diverse locations and exposures, at low altitude and at high altitude. A diverse mosaic of vineyards means that you don't have to stick to one location and have access to a wide range of choices to determine each year's production, while at the same time being a protection or guarantee against any problems or climatic incidences that may arise during the wine-growing year, such as drought, excessive rainfall, storms, cold or heat waves, etc.
The Old Vine factor, the importance of old vines.
Van Zellers & Co. is committed to protecting and preserving the Douro's traditional old vines, which are a valuable ampelographic heritage and constitute the region's great originality and advantage. They are unique and unrepeatable vineyards that reveal a complex blend of various traditional or native grape varieties.
The great aim is to preserve, enhance and maintain these old vines for many more years, not only as an aesthetic and landscape element, but above all for their biodiversity and the richness that this grape varieties represent as well as an important genetic repository. These are vineyards that tell a story, of how they were planted in a particular place, of an old style of planting with a high density and a random mix of indigenous grape varieties, a combination of diversity and balance that give rise to something unique, which is also their character and personality.
They are vineyards that can not be mechanised and most of the agricultural practices carried out are manual, done according to the hand of man and ancient traditions and techniques, using animal traction to work the soil, which is an operation that requires a lot of effort, but which makes these vines even more special. It's all this work and all the care that has been devoted over the years that has allowed them to be preserved for so long and to reach the present still productive. These vineyards are also naturally prepared to withstand climate change becaude they're better adapted to the region's climate and the different grape varieties mixed together are a differentiating factor, so if all the elements are balanced they need fewer treatments.
Despite the low productivity of each vine, this plot of land is fundamental because the blending takes place in the vineyard where the grapes ripen more evenly, allowing the harvest to take place at the same time and the balance and complementarity of the diferent grape varieties to give the wine an added complexity and concentration that gives rise to great Port and D.O.C. Douro wines with great ageing capacity.
Vineyard conservation. In order to preserve the essential diversity of grape varieties that originally existed in the old vineyards, the density of the planting, its enormous biodiversity and the balance of this genetic heritage, enabling it to live a healthy and long life, extra care must be taken when the need arises to replant and replace the gaps caused by the decline of very old vines, in order to maintain its authenticity. This has been an ongoing and permanent practice and the standard for restoring vines is the original planting process and the selection of rootstocks that have been carefully chosen in each case to withstand an environment surrounded by old vines that is very demanding in terms of competition between plants. Until now, replanting of faults has not been carried out according to the specific grape varieties that existed on the sites, but by using, at the time of grafting, quality grape varieties that have been confirmed to exist in the vineyard.
Identifying the genetic heritage of the old vines. A full ampelographic survey of the "Silvas vineyard" is planned to begin next year, in order to identify the existing specific grape varieties and fully understand the vineyard, and thus replicate exactly the original grape variety with the genetic material and varieties found in each vineyard parcel, maintaining the original diversity and authenticity. Of course, it will always be a difficult, time-consuming, expensive process and above all a specialised one, since there are few people in the region with this kind of knowledge.
Old Vine Conference. Since November 2023, Van Zellers & Co. has been a member of the Old Vine Conference, the organisation that evolved from the Old Vine Registry (created by Sarah Abbott, MW) and whose aim is to disseminate information and enhance the value of old vines around the world, through a membership programme, conferences and visits to different wine regions.
The vineyards where the wines are born. It's important to know the vineyards and their natural and geographical context in order to fully understand the wines.
Characterising the vineyards.
The Silvas vineyard or the CV vineyard (registration date: 1943) is a traditional Douro old vineyard, over 80 years old, with an area of 3 hectares, located deep in the valley of the Torto river, one of the tributaries of the Douro, on the left or south bank, in a difficult to access area, at an altitude of 250 metres and with a northern, north-west and east exposure, very different from what was traditional in the region and in this valley. It's surrounded by a century-old olive grove and is made up of more than 20 indigenous grape varieties mixed together, but, from what has been possible to identify so far, with a lot of Touriga Francesa variety.
It's a vineyard for which there was great enthusiasm and expectation from the start. The first harvest took place in 2003 and Cristiano van Zeller, together with Sandra Tavares da Silva (who at that time was responsible for oenology at Quinta Vale D. Maria), decided to ferment the grapes from this plot separately and, after ageing, the result was the confirmation of a different and distinctive vineyard and a wine with a special profile and a lot of structure. There was also the history of the vineyard's past when it was in the hands of the previous owner, which helped to realise and confirm what this vine represented. This is how the first CV-Curriculum Vitae wine was created. The vineyard was acquired by Cristiano van Zeller that same year.
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| "Silvas" vineyard, in the Torto river valley. (Van Zellers & Co.) |
Valença do Douro vineyard. This vineyard covers an area of 3,7 hectares at an altitude of between 450 and 490 metres. It is approximately 25 years old and is made up of a field blend of more than 20 traditional Douro grape varieties. This vineyard is bounded by a small stone path that leads to the top of the hill of Valença do Douro, above Quinta do Seixo, and is planted on a gentle slope facing Pinhão. The winds blow through the vineyards all year round, giving the grapes a very healthy development. The predominant sun exposure to the north and east allows for longer and balanced maturations. Around half of this vineyard's production is used in the blending of the house's Port wines.
Alampassa vineyard (registration date: 1988). This 1,85 hectare vinetards faces the Silvas vineyard, in the valley of the River Torto, with sun exposure to the east, at an altitude of approximately 200 metres. It is made up of a mixed plantation of four of the region's traditional red grape varieties: Touriga Nacional, Tinta Roriz, Touriga Francesa and Tinta Barroca. In the best years, it forms the basis of the house's vintage Port wines.
Casal de Loivos vineyard. It consists of 6 small vineyard parcels, with a total area of 3,9 hectares, near the village of Casal de Loivos, above Pinhão (Cima Corgo sub-region), managed by Van Zellers & Co. and owned by Mr. Bartolomeu, a former Quinta do Noval employee who worked with Cristiano van Zeller for thirteen years. Approximately 40 years old, they are located at an altitude of between 270 to 420 metres, with a predominantly southerly exposure and are composed of around 10 red grape varieties with a predominance of Tinta Francesa.
Fonte da Gafa vineyard. It's a small old vineyard plot, around 80 years old, with an area of 0,97 hectares, located to the north of the Douro region, in the territory of Murça, near the village of Martim, known in the region for its old white vines, at an average altitude of around 480 metres and with a northern exposure, in an area of soil transition from schist to granite. It's a special vineyard in a privileged location, where the grapes ripen slowly while maintaining freshness and balance even in hot and difficult years. Over the last ten years in particular, viticultural work has been carried out on this parcel, which has enabled the vineyard to be rejuvenated and the quality of production to be improved. The potential of this vine was already known to Cristiano van Zeller from the days of Quinta do Noval, who had been buying grapes from this vineyard since 1947 and over time he got to know this particular vineyard, the area and its quality better and better. This parcel is the origin of the D.O.C. Douro CV Curriculum Vitae white wine and the first harvest made by Van Zellers & Co. was in 2013.
In addition to the vineyards described above, as already mentioned, grapes are also bought every year from small Douro winegrowers who have long been known to the house.
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| Valença do Douro vineyard. (Van Zellers & Co.) |
6. Viticulture, preservation and sustainability. Traditional
techniques. The “curettage”.
A clear commitment to terroir, nature and sustainability. The main guiding principle of the viticulture model practised at Van Zellers & Co., rather than sustainability, is regenerative, long-term viticulture, ensuring the longevity of the vineyards and thus also the future. Currently, the main objective of the work is to regenerate the soils which - that in the Douro region in general, have suffered greatly from the practices adopted in the 1970s and 1980s, with the use of herbicides and pesticides that were harmful to the environment - avoiding aggressive methods, the use of chemical products and biological disturbances, reversing this degradation by taking care of the balance of the soils and vineyards that give rise to the raw material for wine and at the same time protecting the natural environment with a more global perspective.
Working with nature and the vineyards. The aim is to reduce the environmental impact, restore and conserve biodiversity and soil health and enhance the wine heritage, while respecting the balance of the environment. In order to guarantee the success of this regenerative agriculture model, it is necessary, first and foremost, to create and ensure the necessary conditions for a functional system so that the indigenous flora can develop and thrive, recovering botanical diversity and enriching the biodiversity of the ecosystem, keeping the soils alive, healthy and resistant, which are essential conditions for preserving the landscape and the surrounding nature, while maintaining the specific characteristics of the various terroirs.
The soil is the basis. Investment in progressively reducing the impact of viticulture and emphasising the ecosystem and its biological balance, regeneration and diversity - diversity is the motto here - of the flora and fauna of the place where the vines are planted. Flora suitable for vineyard management, favouring native species of spontaneous plant cover, which is complemented by lawns cultivated directly on the ground (sowing, for example, clover, oats, radishes, mustards), whose flowering cycle coincides with the flowering cycle of the vine, in order to attract auxiliary insects, which in turn help to combat pests and diseases in the vines. The vineyards end up benefiting from the services that the ecosystem itself creates.
The soil's vegetation cover is managed and maintained for as long as possible during the year, so that it is a habitat rich in micro-organisms favouring the appearance of other microsystems and supporting all the microbial activity that helps keep the soil alive and protected. The different soil mobilisations carried out throughout the wine year, the "cava" immediately after pruning, which turns the soil in depth, pulling out the weeds, allowing it to receive more nutrients and retaining more rainwater. Then the "redra", between May and July, with the aim of oxygenating, breaking down the capillarity of the soil and preventing moisture from evaporating, eliminating weeds and exposing new soil that was covered. These ploughing and soil mobilisation operations revived an old method, using the vineyard plough and animal traction.
These operations not only oxygenate, but also enrich the composition of the soil by incorporating plant cover, which becomes organic matter and makes important nutrients available. They also guarantee weed control without the use of aggressive methods. This system has the great benefit of regenerating and benefiting the soil, improving its physical, chemical and biological elements, improving and reinforcing its structure, creating a greater capacity to retain moisture, an increase in water availability during the hottest periods of the year, a greater capacity to resist erosion processes and the promotion of the entire environment around the vineyard and consequently a contribution to the biodiversity of the whole region.
The viticulture model
is different from the conventional model and the cultural operations carried
out over the years transform the vineyards and represent an enhancement of this
heritage, especially the older ones, with visible results on the plots where
these agro-ecological practices are being followed.
Traditional viticulture techniques and how it was done in the past.
The soil intervention methodologies used are a fairly complex endeavour that has been carried out for years, but with records dating back to 2021. The regenerative model followed largely involves going back to the roots of viticulture using traditional and sustainable cultural practices (from before the 1970s and 1980s) - it's "going to the past to build the future" - and the merit lies in adapting the knowledge of modern viticulture to this type of traditional empirical undocumented knowledge, ancestral viticultural practices that are often passed down from generation to generation, where they prove to be important and with the aim of achieving a viticulture model that is much better adapted to the vineyards and the region - these are the intangible elements that make up the Douro's wine-growing landscape. This type of traditional viticulture, which requires a great deal of dedication and where the work is essentially manual, is often valuable practical knowledge, it goes back to what was done well in restructuring the soils, preserving minerals and enriching the vineyards. Tradition and innovation side by side to preserve the nature of old vines.
On this subject, as a curiosity, Luís Cardoso de Menezes, the viticulture and sustainability specialist at Van Zellers & Co. says that whenever he sees a horse in the region's vineyards, he stops to talk to the owner, because he's sure to learn from him about caring for the soil and it's this kind of knowledge, not necessarily tested, learned from those who have lived and worked on the land for generations, which was practised for many years, that they've been returning to for some time now.
These old traditional techniques come alive when, as we've mentioned, in the Douro's old vineyards, draft horses are used to work the soil (for the cultural operations that accompany the vine cycle, the “cava”, “descava” and “redra”), because it's a sustainable practice that best suits old vines, it's more delicate and it doesn't compact the soil as much, the impact of the hooves is softer, and it also contributes to soil balance.
At the Silvas vineyard, the first mobile hives were recently installed, providing safe conditions for the bees' pollination work, which has a huge impact on the surrounding nature and allows the ecosystem to develop, flourish and prosper. They also produce honey, another ancient tradition of the Douro quintas and also a family tradition (it was another Cristiano van Zeller, a pioneer of modern mobile beekeeping in the north of the country and owner of Quinta do Roriz in the 90s of the 19th century, who installed the first apiary with mobile frame hives).
The “Curettage”. The use of this technique to preserve the nature of old vines is an additional, very detailed work that takes advantage of the pruning season and which, for the time being, has only been put into practice at the Silvas vineyard or CV vineyard, which is now almost complete. The intention is to extend it to other vineyards in the future. It consists of a process, more common in France, designed to preserve the health of the vine, to remove pathologies from the wood of the trunk and thicker branches, affected by diseases of the wood complex, but also to avoid the means favourable to the spread of fungi and insects harmful to the plant, in order to preserve its health to keep it alive for longer. Basically, it's a question of removing the affected part pf the plant does not develop and the vine can continue its normal life. In old vines, this kind of curettage is carried out, which is to clean, file away all the dead parts of the plant to remove all the agents that can contribute to the appearance of necrosis and sources of infections, so when you manage to stop the rot or the rotting factors, you get a stimulus that improves the vascularisation of the plant. It's an operation that changes the physiognomy of the vines. The results are being tested and could have consequences in terms of a slight increase in production and certainly an increase in the longevity of the vine, which seems to take on a new life. In short, it is an intervention that improves vigour and resistance, contributes to the health of the plant and gives it the means to survive in the environment. (to put this technique into practice, it was necessary to find the right work tool and it was discovered that the hook used to clean horses' hooves had a curved shape that best adapted to the curves of the vine’s trunks and branches).
Another preventative method is the use of organic products in vineyard treatments to protect the vine leaves and grape bunches from excess heat. At the Silvas vineyard, a completely natural product is used in summer to protect the vines from the heat and excess sun exposure, which is also an alternative and complementary method for dealing with the consequences of climate change.
Sustainability also involves the efficient management of water availability and the conservation of water, which is a fundamental resource. The strategy followed to conserve and optimise the use of water and to deal with the scarcity of this resource and the increasingly frequent heatwaves in the region, in addition to the techniques that contribute to fixing water in the soil, conserving and ensuring the water reserves and humidity necessary for a balanced vegetative cycle of the vines, Van Zellers & Co. has a system in place that collects rainwater in tanks located in small huts at the top of the vineyard and then used in viticulture works and treatments, for example, only rainwater is used to treat mildew with sulphur dioxide. At the same time, the water pumps that draw water from the tanks and wells that store rainwater are powered by photovoltaic panels.
(to be continued later...)
Parte II.
- Winemaking, the success of traditional methods.
- Wines that tell stories. Port wine and D.O.C. Douro wines.
- The markets. Business volume and exports.
- Reflections on the future.
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| The D.O.C. wine cellar, in São João da Pesqueira. |
Text and photos © Hugo Sousa Machado
May also be of interest, on the same subject:
Cristiano van Zeller dixit... (on single varietal vs. blended wines)
