Quinta, in Portugal, what is it?

Quinta, in Portugal, is a term often used when dealing with wine-related subjects in Portugal, usually referring to the wine farm.

However, Quinta, depending on where in Portugal is used it can have slightly different meanings. It can be just a farming estate, not necessarily producing wine.

Anyway, on this website, I will use the term mostly referring to the Douro Valley wine estates.

If you want to learn more about the term, I suggest reading an exciting book about Portwine and the Douro Valley in general, “Port and the Douro” by Richard Mayson.

In this book, Richard Mayson (RM) calls the Quintas as building blocks of the Douro Valley, and I couldn’t agree more, and, in most sites, you will find the term related to the big, nice and fancy wine farms. Still, RM clearly says “from a modest farm to a large country estate, this is a word that almost defies translation and is probably best thought of merely as an area of agricultural land”.

You can learn more about the book here.

Naturally, the well-know Quintas are the ones who stand out from this universe. Still, to learn about the Douro Valley one can’t forget the thousands of other small farms that are small wine production communities, all contributing to the valley’s history and heritage.

Again referring to RM’s book “It is impossible to quantify the number of quintas in the Douro, but suffice to say that there are over 20,000 growers in the Douro, farming over 110,000 registered holdings”.

In this article, I added a few photos from several Quintas at the Douro Valley and is my intention to write about all of them … I can’t promise when.

In the meantime,

Carpe diem

David Monteiro