Portuguese terroir

Since the dawn of history, wine and the traditions that accompany it, terroir in its broadest sense, have contributed to the construction of Portuguese heritage. If wine and then vine-growing arrived in ancient Lusitania with the first Phoenician and Greek settlers, wine production took off with the Romans. The Roman villa of São Cucufate (Alentejo), built between the 1st and 4th centuries AD and occupied for over 1 000 years, is a spectacular testimony to the age and richness of the Lusitanian wine-growing tradition. It is also an exponent of an economic model (the complementarity of vine, olive, fodder and livestock farming, and the advanced processing of these resources) that is still relevant today.

Port wine came to the fore in the 17th-18th centuries, the 'invention' of which is generally linked to the export of Portuguese wine to England (recorded in the 1703 trade treaty between the two great colonial powers of the time), but which certainly has its roots in