Region & History

A single estate owner gave this landscape its standing in wine law. João de Sacadura Botte Côrte-Real farmed several estates around 1900, including the Quinta da Aguieira right in the middle of the Dão. He also founded the first União Vinícola do Dão, an association of winegrowers from the province of Beira Alta. In 1908 the region got its due: it was declared a Região Demarcada, Portugal's second delimited wine region after the Douro, and the first for wines without added alcohol.

Then came a rule that held for four decades. In the 1940s, dictator António de Oliveira Salazar decreed that grapes in the Dão could only be sold through cooperatives. Private winemaking was banned; every grower had to deliver, no matter how carefully they had tended their vines. Payment was by weight, not quality, and over decades any incentive to do more than the bare minimum in the vineyard simply vanished.

In 1986 Portugal joined the then-EC, and the mandatory rule fell away. Sogrape bought the Quinta dos Carvalhais in 1988 and bottled the first independent vintage in decades in 1989. In 1990 the Dão then received its modern status as a Denominação de Origem Controlada, with its own rules for yields, grape varieties, and aging periods.

The real proof came from small estates. Álvaro Castro took over the Quinta da Pellada in 1980, whose records go back to 1570, and showed that careful vineyard work was possible even without a cooperative. In 1998, the Quinta dos Roques bottled the first single-varietal Encruzado, bringing into the spotlight a grape that had previously only been fit for blending.

Today around two thousand two hundred growers farm the region, on an average of a fifth of a hectare each. The Adega de Penalva cooperative in Penalva do Castelo, founded in 1960, still unites over a thousand members across more than twelve hundred hectares. It has changed, but it hasn't disappeared. Seven subzones divide the Dão today, from Besteiros to the Serra da Estrela, and anyone driving through them sees the same granite beneath every one.