The demarcated region of the Douro encompasses approximately 35,000 quintas distributed over 43,000 hectares, with the average holding being less than one hectare in size. Such archaic land-distribution arrangements stem from Portuguese inheritance law, which requires estates to be divided equally between the children of a deceased. The myriad small parcels, coupled with the stunning topography of the Douro valley, serves to render the region one of the most rustic swathes of productive land to be found in Europe. Understandably, the area appeals greatly to monied, urban sophisticates with a taste for fine port and still wine. Likewise, the inhabitants of the Douro display a fierce loyalty to their native land which is coupled more often than not with a contradictory approach to material prosperity and change. In keeping with the human condition, the durienses aspire to a greater degree of affluence. However, there might be said to be a stubborn unwillingness embodied by the majority of Douro growers – and here is the paradox – to countenance the social implications of any marked change to the age-old archipelago of smallholdings.
Like all Portuguese, the durienses have a love-hate relationship with the State or, rather, with statism. Portuguese farmers tend, by their own admission, to struggle when it comes to observing rules which they do not regard as being in their immediate interest. At the same time, where they perceive certain State-imposed regulations to be to their benefit, the farmers can be quick to embrace statist solutions designed to shield them from free-market realities. The Portuguese, including the Douro growers, have long been encouraged in this sort of thinking by the corporatism of the Salazar era and, more recently, the matching economic illiteracy of the Portuguese political left. It is this ambiguous relationship with market forces which has, over the last century or more, served to pit the large shippers against the small growers – the latter, as a group, producing most of the region’s grapes. The establishment of the Casa do Douro in 1932 was designed, at least in part, to serve the interests of both camps.
The Casa do Douro performed initially many of the functions later assumed by the Instituto do Vinho do Porto (IVP, later reorganised as the Instituto dos Vinhos do Douro e Porto/IVDP); most significantly, the Casa do Douro imposed, with varying degrees of success, a form of supply management on the region. When the Casa do Douro’s powers were transferred to the IVP in the 1990s – after the Casa do Douro nearly went bankrupt securing a forty percent stake in Real Companhia Velha, then the biggest port shipper, in what was characterised correctly at the time as an egregious conflict of interest - the Casa do Douro found itself purchasing immense volumes of fortified wine which had not been absorbed by shippers owing to insufficient consumer-market demand for bottled port wines. In so doing, the objective of the Casa do Douro was to sustain year-on-year prices in the interests of the smallholders. In reality, the Casa do Douro was insulating the small producers as well as the shippers from the full impact of market forces upon the price of the raw material of wine making (i.e., the grapes) – at immense cost to the Portuguese State. In the process, the Casa do Douro served to perpetuate the highly-inefficient growing arrangements in the Douro, these being a function of severe under-capitalisation. Indeed, had the smaller growers been left to the mercy of market forces, a great many would not have survived. What is more, the Casa do Douro performed concomitantly a second function, that is, the maintenance of societal structures which were tied closely to the inefficient (if measured only in purely free-market terms) system of smallholdings. In this respect, the Salazarian vision long outlived the old man.
When a centre-right Government of Portugal acted, in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, to permit market forces greater sway in many of the theretofore highly-statist sectors of the Portuguese economy, the Casa do Douro was put out of its misery in 2014 with EUR 167m in debt and an extraordinary nine-million litres of stock. Alas, the political left has since returned to power in Portugal; and, pursuant to legislation passed by Parliament during 2019, the Casa do Douro is now in the process of being re-established. The Douro smallholders, who have long been adept at exercising their collective muscle in left-political circles, pushed for the revival of the Casa do Douro against the vociferous protests as well as a constitutional challenge of the large shippers, whose main concern is presumably a rise in their production costs occasioned by an increase in the prices of grapes. The shippers have lost this battle and, if their ultimate objective is to see their profits increase, this cause would be better served by advocating for the withdrawal of Portugal from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. The latter saddles the shippers with an artificially high exchange rate relative to the States to which the overwhelming bulk of port wine is exported. Put another way, the high cost of quality port wine is explained, in part, by the membership of Portugal in the Eurozone.
The immediately relevant question – this being a tasting note rather than an economic treatise – is whether the wine bottled by the Casa do Douro is any good. The answer? It depends.
As been observed above, the Casa do Douro was not established to market wine to consumers. It did so from time to time, most especially through its premises in Peso da Regua. Over the last four or five years, I have consumed Casa do Douro bottlings from 1934, 1940, 1963 and 1964; I have on rare occasion seen other years offered for sale on the secondary market. In the main, however, the oceanic quantities of Casa do Douro stocks were meant to be sold in bulk to shippers. Quite obviously, the plan failed - or so the volume of Casa do Douro stock unsold at 2014 would suggest. When, that year, the Casa do Douro was dissolved by the Portuguese State and its assets assumed by the private sector, the remaining stocks were picked over by various shippers. It is a reasonable bet that now, and indeed over the last thirty years or more, consumers of all manner of tawnies with an indication of age as well as the occasional older colheita marketed at stratospheric prices under a reputable label, have been imbibing, to varying degrees unbeknownst to them, Casa do Douro stock.
Some of this wine released in the past with a Casa do Douro label can be very, very good. A 1940 colheita, consumed during a 2017 port harvest tour led by Mr. Roy Hersh, in the dining room of Caves da Murganheira, a producer of sparkling wine, was superb. Whilst hardly stellar, the 1963 and 1964 colheitas, bottled in 2003, can be perfectly agreeable. There is a great deal of bottle variation in the 1963s as well as the 1964s; this fact has nothing to do with storage arrangements and the usual considerations which give rise to differences between bottles of the same year from a single shipper. Rather, in 2003 the Casa do Douro filled a mind-boggling total of 1,000,000, individually-numbered bottles from these two years, which explains why one 1963 or 1964 may show quite differently from another. This is most especially the case where there is any sort of metaphorical distance between the serial numbers on the back of the bottles being compared.
The 1934 Casa do Douro colheita is ubiquitous within the Portuguese resale market; over the last five years, I have acquired several such examples at prices in the area of EUR 80 per bottle. As I have never consumed two at the same sitting, with an eye to immediate comparison, I have no idea whether these wines have come from the same farm or were otherwise blended in a single location from grapes of the same year. I am likewise in the dark with respect to how much 1934 colheita was marketed by the Casa do Douro and the year(s) during which the wine was taken from the casks. The varying designs of the minimalist labels which I have seen on Casa do Douro 1934 colheitas would suggest unique sources of the wine as well as different bottling years. What can be stated with assurance is that the quality of the 1934 Casa do Douro colheitas, not least relevant to their prices, has invariably been agreeable. 1934 is, of course, a fine year for wood-aged port. The favourable prices and the quality of the vintage together explain why I continue to buy these non-descript bottles, when they become available.
The contents of the bottle tasted on this occasion were manifestly aged upriver from Porto: the wine was entirely opaque, showing the classic colours of Douro bake; there was additionally no hint of off-putting cloud in the glass and the rim was unmistakably green. At the nose, one sensed certain of the classical notes of a wood-aged port, not least walnut and molasses, along with touches of fig paste and chestnut flower. The effect on the olfactory nerve was admittedly not to the standard of, say, a top-drawer Niepoort colheita, although it was nonetheless very pleasant. On entry, the wine was a touch spicy, coming close to being hot; however, this initial slap to the palate, such as it was, gave way at the middle and back to pleasing sensations of cherry syrup and brown sugar. The wine might have been better on the mouth had the wine not been left in a decanter for three hours prior to the initial pour; the other Casa do Douro bottles which I have tried to date, from God-only-knows-which quintas, have washed over the palate with more complexity and finesse. My purely unscientific experience of older colheitas which have spent a great deal of time in the bottle is that they are best consumed at pace. That aside, the medium sweetness of the wine was offset nicely by an appropriate level of acidity; whether this balance was arrived at by design or by virtue of the lengthy bottling time eroding what had been excessive acidity, is impossible to know. What can be stated with certainty is that the time in bottle – which a rough guess would put at around thirty years – had not done the port any great harm. Finally, it will be noted that the long finish, whilst not complex, was pleasantly warming.
Readers who can get their hands on a bottle of 1934 Casa do Douro colheita are encouraged to give it a try. At the point of consumption, they may wish to consider the manner in which the “bottler” – to whit, the Casa do Douro – stands as something of a symbol for the ongoing economic and indeed the social cleavages which beset, for better or for worse, the Douro valley.
-92 points
1934 Casa do Douro Colheita
Moderators: Glenn E., Andy Velebil
Re: 1934 Casa do Douro Colheita
Prior to my 1940 in 2017, I actually had the 1934 by Casa do Douro with Marta, after dinner .. while dining at The Vintage House together with a smaller group than you met. Thanks for the detailed report above.
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