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Winery
Quinta Vale D. Maria
Region: Douro
From their beautifully rich Bordeaux style wines, to their famous fortified wines, the wineries of Douro in Portugal have long been recognized as being amongst the finest of the Old World. For over two thousand years, Douro has been an important center of fine wine production, and it isn't difficult to see why the earliest attempts at viticulture led to an ever expanding wine industry in the region. The beautiful Douro river provides the vineyards with all the moisture and nutrients they need in order to grow fruit of real character and flavor, and the long, baking hot summers help ripen the grapes and intensify their juices. Today, Douro wines are popular all over the world, and wineries are producing more bottles than ever before to keep up with demand. Although the region is still most famous for the fortified wines of Porto, the still wines have centuries of tradition, and a whole set of distinctive flavors and characteristics that simply cannot be ignored.
Country: Portugal
Portugal has been an important center for wine production ever since the Phoenicians and Carthaginians discovered that the many native grape varietals that grow in the country could be cultivated for making excellent wines. After all, Portugal has something of an ideal wine producing climate and terrain; lush green valleys, dry, rocky mountainsides and extremely fertile soil helped by long, hot summers and Atlantic winds. Today, such a climate and range of terroir produces an impressive variety of wines, with the best wines said to be coming out of the Douro region, the Alentejo and the Colares region near Lisbon. Portugal has an appellation system two hundred years older than France's, and much effort is made by regulating bodies to ensure that the quality of the country's produce remains high, and the wines remain representative of the regions they are grown in.