Olive Oil Increasingly Popular Among Douro Wineries

Although vines and olive trees share a com­mon ground in Portugal’s Douro region, it was not long ago that winer­ies began to pay more atten­tion to olive oil pro­duc­tion, adding estate-labeled olive oils to their wine port­fo­lios.

This is the case at the Fladgate Partnership, with var­i­ous Port wine brands and lux­ury hotels. Quinta de Vargellas is one of the Douro estates where grapes are grown for its Taylor’s Port wine.

After pro­duc­ing olive oil for its own con­sump­tion, in 2002 the com­pany decided to start sell­ing its Azeite Virgem Extra (EVOO) Quinta de Vargellas.

“Olive groves are cul­ti­vated in a sus­tain­able man­ner, with­out using chem­i­cal fer­til­iz­ers or pes­ti­cides. The trees are care­fully han­dled and pre­served to pro­duce excep­tional qual­ity olive oils and because they help sus­tain the vineyard’s bio­di­ver­sity,” said Ana Margarida Morgado, Fladgate’s pub­lic rela­tions Director.

Three thou­sand olive trees at Vargellas occupy some ten hectares, approx­i­mately 8.5 per­cent of the estate’s land. Most trees are over fifty years old and many are cen­te­nary.

Douro is a fer­tile land where olive trees are an impor­tant crop. The region’s micro­cli­mate, with ele­vated tem­per­a­tures and low rain­fall, is par­tic­u­larly suit­able for olive pro­duc­tion. The mostly schist soils are respon­si­ble for the con­sis­tency, darker col­ors, and more intense oil fla­vors.

Madural, Verdeal, Cordovil and Galega are the main olive vari­eties planted in Douro, prob­a­bly Portugal’s region with the largest num­ber of cen­te­nary olive groves.

The staff who over­sees the vine­yards usu­ally takes care of olive trees, but oil pro­duc­tion is mostly out­sourced. In the case of Vargellas, olives are taken to the mill of Casa Agricola Roboredo Madeira (CARM) in Douro Superior. Other winer­ies send their olives to Mirandela, home of the Casa de Santo Amaro.

Most oils are sold at the winer­ies’ vis­i­tors cen­ters. In the case of Vargellas, they are also avail­able at Fladgate’s lux­ury hotels and other gourmet stores. Some bot­tles even go to export mar­kets, just as those of winer­ies Quinta do Vale Meão and Quinta do Crasto.

An essen­tial ingre­di­ent of regional cui­sine, chang­ing con­sumer habits that pay more atten­tion to healthy foods have con­tributed to mak­ing olive oil increas­ingly impor­tant in Portugal. A major trans­for­ma­tion has been that olive oil has replaced but­ter as a bread com­ple­ment in most Portuguese restau­rants.

The grow­ing demand for olive oil also derives from Portugal’s enhanced gas­tro­nomic rep­u­ta­tion and a tourism boom, par­tic­u­larly in Porto and Douro. Wine tourism offers a unique plat­form to make olive oil a more promi­nent prod­uct and an indis­pens­able ele­ment in restau­rants related to the wine busi­ness or located within vis­i­tors cen­ters, not to men­tion that olive groves are an added fea­ture of vine­yard vis­its.

The syn­ergy between wine and olive oil has also become evi­dent at events as Essência do Vinho Porto, Portugal’s top annual wine event, where many Douro winer­ies show­case olive oils in their stands. There’s a devoted olive oil tast­ing area at Lisbon’s Encontro com Vinhos e Encontro com Sabores and mas­ter classes in sen­sory assess­ment.

Olive oil will remain a com­ple­men­tary prod­uct at Fladgate as no new tree plant­i­ngs are planned. But other wine groups as Symington, which already pro­duces olive oils under the Quinta do Ataíde and Quinta de Malvedos brands, might be pay­ing more atten­tion to olive oil pro­duc­tion con­sid­er­ing that in 2016 they bought a prop­erty in Vilariça Valley with a large exten­sion of organ­i­cally-farmed olive trees.

Other estates bot­tling their olive oils are Quinta das Carvalhas, Quinta do Vallado, Quinta de la Rosa, Quinta da Roêda, Quinta da Boavista, Quinta das Tercedeiras, Quinta do Passadouro, Quinta do Noval, Quinta do Portal, Cadão, Quinta dos Murças, Quinta da Pacheca, Quinta da Nossa Senhora do Carmo, Quinta do Ventozelo, and Quinta de Porrais.

Gerações de Xisto is one of the youngest Douro projects blend­ing wine and olive oil. It depicts the com­mit­ment of younger gen­er­a­tions to their Douro ori­gins and seeks to honor and high­light the region’s land­scape and her­itage. Its Chousas Nostras EVOO is born from cen­te­nary olive trees with very low yields, but high-qual­ity olives.

“We want to cre­ate a future from our respect to the past, tra­di­tion and val­ues, by extract­ing new aro­mas from the very old trees, pre­serv­ing the rural her­itage, and cre­at­ing employ­ment,” affirmed Federico Lobão, one of the project’s part­ners.