What do Europe’s three most famous fortified wine regions – Sherry, Port, and Madeira – have in common? All three developed to serve the export trade in the 17th and 18th Centuries. Which meant barrels of their wines had to be rolled onto sailing ships and then survive the impact of oxygen getting into the barrels as they flexed during movement and survive any bursts of heat in un-air conditioned holds. Adding a jolt of distilled wine – brandy – to the wines helped keep them fresh, free of bacteria, and drinkable on arrival.
During much of the 18th Century, the Marquis de Pombal dominated Portuguese politics, spearheaded the rebuilding of Lisbon after the 1755 earthquake, and laid down the rules for production of Port. He also grew grapes and made wine at his personal estate just to the west of Lisbon on the Atlantic Ocean coast. His summer home, the Villa Oeiras, remains a major tourist attraction, a 20 minute train ride from downtown Lisbon on the way to the beach.
Like Port and Madeira – but Different!
Pombal’s wines were fortified, like Port and Madeira, but made entirely differently. The grapes were a mixture of nine different white and red indigenous varietals, with Arinto, Gallego Dourado and Ratinho most important. This close to the ocean, humidity was always a problem as ripening proceeded, so the grapes were often picked on the lower side of ripeness, meaning they remained very high in acidity.
So winemakers adopted a trick. Most grapes were pressed off and fermented bone dry before enough grape spirit was added to ensure stability. Then a few buckets of unfermented grape juice were added to give enough sugar to balance the searing acidity. And then the wines rested in barrel for years and years, further softening the acid, integrating the spirit, and developing nutty, caramel, complexity.
Global Fame…And Decline
The wines of Carcavelos, as the region was known, quickly became a global hit. Thomas Jefferson enjoyed them, once placing this wine order with a broker: “I would prefer good Lisbon; next to that, Sherry, next to that Carcavallo [sic]; but still a good quality of the latter would be preferable to an indifferent quality of the former.” It was featured in Christie’s first ever London Wine Auction in the 1700s alongside Hock, Burgundy and Malaga. And when Napoleon cut off England’s supply of Port in the late 1800s, Carcavelos became the darling of London (although the Brits, unable to pronounce Carcavelos, simply called it “Lisbon wine.”
So what happened? Changing global fashion in favor of dry, unfortified, wines certainly didn’t help. But late 19th Century phylloxera wiped out much of the Carcavelos vineyard. And then the relentless expansion of Lisbon’s suburbs took care of what little remained. By the 1980s, only 25 hectares of vines remained and only two wineries – both of which were helmed by aged vintners who had no one in their family to replace them.
A Region Reborn
Enter Villa Oeiras, a new winery created in 1982 by Portugal’s Ministry of Agriculture and the municipal government of Oeiras and, today, the only commercial producer in the region. Using the Marquis de Pombal’s summer estate as a base, the winery made two barrels of Carcavelos in 1982 from vines remaining on the estate. Today they’ve expanded their vineyards to 12.5 hectares using cuttings from the old heritage vines that survived at Pombal. And the cellars of the Villa are now filled with hundreds of barrels of Carcavelos slowly aging their way to perfection.
Over time, we can hope to see more Carcavelos. The team at Villa Oeiras is working to plant more vineyards and providing technical support and advice to several new wineries getting off the ground. But it takes a while, since the minimum aging for Carcavelos is five years in wood before bottling and release. Other than a tiny bit of wine coming from the cellars of Quinta Dos Pesos (defunct since 2005), Villa Oeiras is the only Carcavelos you’ll find in the USA. Fortunately, it’s really, really, good!
Chain Bridge Cellars 