1. Between Ceira and Douro: a Long Wi- Ne-Making Vocation

1. Between Ceira and Douro: a long wine-making vocation In the heart of the Douro Demarcated Region, on the steep and stony schist slopes of the Douro and Ceira rivers, in the parish of Gouvinhas, the vineyards of the Costa de Baixo and Foz Ceira farms, today gathered in a continuous property of the Bulas Cruz family, produce Douro and Port wines of excellence, continuing the ancient wine tradition inherited from their ancestors and other previous owners, who, over the centuries, transformed these wild and inhospitable places into “hanging gardens”. It is this history that, in a brief record, we will try to understand in this book, crossing information about the evolution of the lands and the families that owned them, invest- ments in wine production, times of crisis and decay, as well as renewal and growth, the relationship with the markets and the recognition of their wines. Anyone who observes the succession of vineyards from the right bank of the Cei- ra, the Douro river or from the top of Quinta da Costa de Baixo can only imagine the titanic work that it was necessary to employ, in successive generations, to transform these slopes of poor soil. in verdant vines of vine, when all tasks, from the surriba to the plantation, to the various farms and the vintage, were manual labor. And the har- dness of what was the cultivation of the vine in these lands until the second half of the 20th century gains even more expression if one takes into account other natural conditions of the place, from the excesses of the climate, with dry and hot summers, and the violence of the mountain river, which flowed in the rainy winters, dragging everything in the torrent, and almost dried in the dry season, forming silt in the bed, raising mosquitoes and palustrial fevers. Death records from past eras are filled with farm workers who died stricken by sezões. But, if the environmental conditions were 1. Panorâmica das quintas da Foz Ceira e da Costa de Baixo. Fotografia de Pedro Sarmento Costa. Col. Bulas. 7 adverse to human work and the harvests were scarce, given the poverty of the soils, the excellence of the fruits compensated the tiredness. It is that, on the slopes of the Douro, the same repulsive factors of human life combined to make sublime wines. The poor and stony schist soils, if they did not produce abundant harvests, offered high quality wines. The hot and dry summers, conducive to good ripening, provided sweet grapes like honey, with unmistakable aromas and flavors. For centuries, human labor has been able to take advantage of these gifts of nature, creating a unique wine culture here, accumulating and transmitting knowledge and practices of vine size and the art of making sublime wines. From terraced planting techniques, to support the vineyards and avoid erosion, to the selection and combination of noble grape varieties and to the meticulous culture of the vineyards, to the winemaking practices and the aging care of wines, it is all an ancestral heritage that is present in each Douro farm. It can be said that, in the last decades, radical transformations have marked the region’s vitiviniculture, but they have not erased this heritage, rather they have been combined with it, valuing traditional knowledge with the most advanced techno- logical and scientific innovations. The mechanization of surribas, the planting of vines on terraces or at the top, regardless of the old shale walls, the careful selection of vines, often with pre-grafting, the use of machines in many vineyard works, from pruning to pits and the application of phytosanitary products, or the robotization of the treading of grapes in the mills and the use of self-wine vats transformed, in a few years, the viticulture of the Douro. This third great wine revolution, which few decades ago believed was possible, softened the work of man, without affecting, on the contrary, the essence of wine-growing traditions and the goodness of wines. As we tour the estates of Costa de Baixo and Foz Ceira, with a careful eye, we realize that this revolution, still underway, does not hide many signs of the ancient history of these properties. Here and there, some terraces with schist walls are still preserved, among the patches of more recent vineyards on terraces or at the top. Next to the River Ceira, you can see the sidewalk on a ramp that went down to the pier, now submerged, from where the wine barrels were loaded in the rabelos to continue downstream to Porto. Since the sixties, with the construction of dams, not only the river regime has changed, but also the image of Quinta da Foz Ceira. The rise of the 2. Trabalho mecanizado nas vinhas atualmente. Fotografia de Pedro Sarmento Costa. Col. Bulas. 3. Trabalho manual nas vinhas antigamente. Fotografia da Casa Alvão. Col. Centro Português de Foto- grafia. 8 9 waters of the Douro River in the wide Bagaúste reservoir submerged the land almost to the railway line, at the same time that it transformed the inconstant river of yore into a serene lake. Long before that, in 1880, the construction of the railroad had already subtracted part of the farmland. The houses, with the old wine presses and the cellar, are modest, having undergone successive restoration works, suitable for the small vineyard exploitation, managed by the Companhia das Agricultura das Vinhas do Alto Douro for more than a century, nothing reminding us of the noble origins of the fifth. Along the railroad and the river bank you can still see old buildings that have been destroyed, the ruins of houses and warehouses at Quinta do Cais, now integrated in Quinta da Costa de Baixo. When this house was built, probably in the second decade of the twentieth century, part of a 1761 landmark was reused on the main door jamb, brought here from another farm located further north, above the Seixo stream. In 2006, after the collapse of the aforementioned portal, this landmark was removed to the patio of the Quinta da Costa de Baixo1 home. Going up the slope towards the main farmhouse, we find another old warehouse, probably from the 18th century. And another, even older, is next to the road that gives access to the farm. In a nearby vineyard, stands a granite landmark of Pombaline demarcation from 1758. A few dozen meters to the west, the old entrance gate of Quin- ta da Costa de Baixo displays the date of 1836. South of the entrance courtyard, is located the large warehouse of the farm, dated 1840, evoking the golden age of the vineyard expansion of the farm. To the north, the two-storey house extends, already largely rehabilitated to correspond to the new wine tourism projects, namely with a visiting room for wine tasting. To the west, we come across an extensive threshing floor with large slate slabs and granite guards, testifying to the times of wine crisis of the late 19th century, when a large part of the property would have been voted for cereal production. The estates of Costa de Baixo and Foz Ceira, which today are part of a single farm, held by the company Bulas Family Estates, are the result of a long historical process of investment in viticulture. Integrated in the “living and evolving cultural landscape” of Alto Douro Wine Region, which Unesco classified in 2001 as World He- ritage, these farms have been gradually recovered and modernized, to guarantee the 4. Ruínas na Quinta do Cais. Fotografia de José Afonso Bulas Cruz. Col. Bulas. 5. Marco pombalino encontrado na Quinta do Cais. Fotografia de José Afonso Bulas Cruz. Col. Bulas. 10 11 economic sustainability of their exploitation and, at the same time, at the same time, safeguarding the heritage values and environmental balance of the place. Studying the history of these farms poses some insurmountable difficulties. The fact that it is a viticultural exploitation resulting from the consolidation of several neighboring farms and lands, which passed through different owners, translated into the dispersion, disappearance or destruction of several family documentary col- lections. Despite this, it was possible to gather significant documentation in public archives, in particular in the Archive of the General Company of Agriculture of the Vineyards of Alto Douro, currently deposited in the Douro Museum, which keeps nu- merous documents related to Quinta da Foz Ceira, since the beginning of the 19th century to mid-20th century, period in which this farm, owned by the nobleman Gonçalo Cristóvão and his descendants, was managed by that Company. Also in this archive, it was possible to collect information about the wine productions of the Costa de Baixo and Foz Ceira farms, in the Company’s Wine List Books, from the 1770s to the mid-19th century. And the Archive of the Port Wine Institute, also deposited in the Douro Mu- seum, provided some documentation for the last decades of the 20th century. I must express here my public thanks for the facilities granted by those responsible for that Museum for consulting and digitizing many of these documents. Other archives, in particular the Vila Real District Archive, with important digitalized funds available on- line, but also the Archive of the Douro Wine Studies Center and the Archive of the Vila Real Land Registry, helped to gather information, which, together with the one provided by the Bulas Cruz family, allowed us to understand some of the main moments in the history of the estates of Foz Ceira and Costa de Baixo.

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