Alto Douro Wine Region

790 Pages·2000·57.71 MB·English

WHC Nomination Documentation

File Name: 1046.pdf UNESCO Region: EUROPE AND THE NORTH AMERICA
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SITE NAME: Alto Douro Wine Region

DATE OF INSCRIPTION: 16th December 2001

STATE PARTY: PORTUGAL

CRITERIA: C (iii)(iv)(v)

DECISION OF THE WORLD HERITAGE COMMITTEE:
Excerpt from the Report of the 25th Session of the World Heritage Committee
The Committee inscribed the Alto Douro Wine Region on the World Heritage List under criteria (iii), (iv), and (v):
Criterion (iii): The Alto Douro Region has been producing wine for nearly two thousand
years and its landscape has been molded by human activities.
Criterion (iv): The components of the Alto Douro landscape are representative of the
full range of activities associated with winemaking - terraces, quintas (wine-producing
farm complexes), villages, chapels, and roads.
Criterion (v): The cultural landscape of the Alto Douro is an outstanding example of a
traditional European wine- producing region, reflecting the evolution of this human
activity over time.
The Committee requested the State Party to provide a report for its meeting in 2003, commenting on the implementation
of the recent management plan and its effectiveness, setting out details of the measures applied in the buffer zone.

BRIEF DESCRIPTIONS
Wine has been produced by traditional landholders in the Alto Douro region for some 2,000 years. Since the 18th century,
its main product, port wine, has been world famous for its quality. This long tradition of viticulture has produced a cultural
landscape of outstanding beauty that reflects its technological, social and economic evolution.

1.b State, Province or Region: Douro Region, Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro

1.d Exact location: 45°68' N, 5°93' W
NOMINATION OF ALTO DOURO WINE REGION

FOR THE WORLD HERITAGE LIST

ALTO DOURO . JUNE . 2000
1. IDENTIFICATION OF THE PROPERTY
a. Country
Portugal

b. State, province or region
Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro

c. Name of property
Alto Douro Wine Region – Demarcated Douro Region

d. Exact location
Latitude: 45º68” N
45º53” N
Longitude: 5º93” W
6º59” W
(Geographical co-ordinates: DATUM EUROPEU – geodesic grid map of Unified Europe)

e. Boundary
The property nominated for inclusion as a World Heritage Property as an evolutive and living
cultural landscape is the Alto Douro Wine Region, hereinafter designated Alto Douro. This
region is considered to be the most illustrative of the three landscape units that represent the
250,000 hectares of the vast Demarcated Douro Region: the Lower Corgo, the Upper Corgo
and the Upper Douro. The Alto Douro embodies the most significant group of the best-
preserved assets. The River Douro and its principal tributaries, the Rivers Varosa, Corgo,
Távora, Torto and Pinhão, form the backbone of the nominated property, itself defined by a
succession of viewsheds.

The boundary was identified on the basis of a Landscape Assessment Study (Vide 2.f) and later
checked and calibrated in the field by a multi-disciplinary team. The boundaries correspond to
identifiable natural features of the landscape - watercourses, mountain ridges, roads and paths
– indicated on the 1/25.000 Military Ordnance Survey Map.

f. Area of nominated property
Alto Douro Wine Region 24,600 hectares
Buffer zone 225,400 hectares
Demarcated Douro Region 250,000 hectares
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2. JUSTIFICATION FOR INSCRIPTION
a. Statement of significance
The Alto Douro is the most representative, best preserved and enduring constituent of the
Douro Demarcated Region, itself the oldest demarcated and controlled winemaking region in
the world and dating back to 1756. The nominated property covers 24,600 ha, approximately
one tenth of the entire Douro Demarcated Region (250,000 ha, of which approximately 48,000
are planted with vines), spreading over the hillsides that rise on either side of the River Douro
and its tributaries.

The unique cultural landscape of the Alto Douro is a combined work of man and nature, the
result of a centuries-old process of adapting specific viticultural and winemaking techniques and
acumen to a poor soil endowed with a singular potential to produce the world-famous,
exceptional quality wines that bear the “Porto” and “Douro” Appellations of Origin. It is a living
cultural landscape in constant evolution, an exceptional example of an ancient tradition of the
working of the land and, simultaneously, of a living civilisation that revolves around the making
of quality wines under extremely difficult environmental conditions.

The Douro landscape, with its Mediterranean-like environment and poor and rugged soil offering
major constraints to human settlement and development is, above all, an outstanding example
of man’s unique relationship with the natural environment. Throughout the centuries, man has
created and perfected specific techniques of land-use that have made it possible for him to
cultivate vines on the steepest slopes and buil row upon row of socalcos - terraces buttressed
by walls of schistous stone. By adapting the natural environment to the demands of an ancestral
productive system, man fashioned a winemaking landscape whose unmistakable appearance,
dramatic and dynamic configuration and universal uniqueness are recognised worldwide. Only
the creation of a unique, lucrative natural product of exceptional quality such as Port Wine could
ever justify the superhuman effort illustrated by this collective Work of Art.

The Alto Douro is also an outstanding example of a landscape that illustrates several significant
stages in the history of mankind. From time immemorial, the valley of the River Douro has
played a major role as a corridor of peoples and cultures that, at least since the time of the
Romans, dedicated themselves to cultivating the vine. The majestic and humanised landscape
of the vine-covered hillsides in the valleys of the River Douro and its tributaries is a continuing
witness to methods of planting vineyards from different historical eras that developed with the
appearance of new technologies yet retained their identity whilst mustering the expertise,
techniques, customs, rituals and beliefs of the local populations.
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Here, economy-culture-landscape form an indisputable unit, particularly as regards the terraced
vineyards that appear to have anticipated more recent concepts of sustainable land-use, in
addition to the fact that they illustrate an optimal environmental solution from the viewpoint of
conservation and use of rare resources – water and soil. The people of the Douro have
embraced the natural environment they fashioned over the centuries by adapting their houses
and villages to the constraints and demands of the environment and the productive process, not
just of the grape but also of other Mediterranean cultivates such as the olive and the almond, as
well as fruit and vegetables on more fertile alluvial soil and amongst the woodlands on high
land.

The intra-regional differences that one sees in the Alto Douro are a result both of the natural
conditions and of the vicissitudes of history and activities of man. Nevertheless, these
differences that distinguish between the Lower Corgo, the Upper Corgo and the Upper Douro
sub-regions consolidate, rather than attenuate, the marked cultural identity of the Demarcated
Douro Region, shaped as it has been by a willingness to espouse interchanging human values
and by the renewed centralism of a winemaking culture profoundly rooted in history. In itself,
the winemaking culture represents a profound cultural mix, created not only by the peoples of
the Douro but also by itinerant labourers from poor settlements on the other side of the
mountains to the North and to the South and by Portuguese and British merchants and their
agents.

b. Comparative analysis
The nomination of the Alto Douro for the World Heritage List under the terms of the Convention
was prepared in the light of the concept of a continuing, organically evolved cultural landscape
that illustrates the outstanding universal value of the results of a progressive interaction
between man, a particular form of social organisation and the natural environment, on the one
hand, and the changes wrought upon the active social role of a culture closely associated with
the traditional way of life and an outstanding landscape in contemporary society.

The Demarcated Douro Region is not only one of the oldest of all the historic winemaking
regions in the world as it is a vast wine region of some 250,000 hectares, of which almost
48,000 are cultivated with vineyards. Of all the mountain winemaking regions worldwide,
namely those who are members of the Centre de Recherches pour la Viticulture de Montagne
et/ou en Forte Pente (CERVIM) and with whom it is best compared, the Demarcated Douro
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Region is the most extensive, the most historical, the one with the greatest continuity and the
greatest biological variety in terms of the vines that have been perfected there.

Of all the historic mountain vineyards in Europe, the Alto Douro with its 36,000 hectares of
steeply sloping vineyards is the most significant example of this type of viticulture as it
represents about 18% of all European mountain vineyards registered with the above Centre.
(Table 1)
Table I: Area of European Mountain and/or Steep Slope Vineyards registered with the CERVIM
Country Regions Area (ha)
Italy Trento, Alto Adige, Lombardia, 95.138
Valle d’Aosta, Piemonte, Liguria,
Toscana, Émila Romana,
Campania, Calabria, Sicile
France Savoie, Banyuls, Collioure 12.000
Spain Riberia Sacra (Galiza) 1.990
Switzerland Valais, Lausanne, Tessin 12.800
Germany Mosel, Rhein, Rheinland-Pfalz 12.270
Austria Burgenland, Stiria, Wachau, 6.706
Kremstal, Kamptal, South Austria
Portugal Douro, Madeira, Vinho Verde and 46.450
Dão
Greece 10.000
Total 197.354
Source: CERVIM, 2000
In addition to the manifest expression of man’s unique relationship with Nature, the Alto Douro
shares, with other winemaking regions that have already been inscribed – Portovenere, Cinque
Terre and islands (Palmaria, Tino and Tinetto), in Italy and Le Vignoble Bordelais de Saint
Émillion et son Village, in France – or nominated for inscription – Wachau in Austria, the Pico
Wine Region in the Azores, Portugal, and Le Vignoble Champenois in France – the no less
important chronicle of economic, social and human evolution in this outstanding landscape.

Indeed, in most of the properties in question, this is a case of winemaking productions where
the landscape and the products have contrived a covenant for excellence, qualification of the
cultural memory and the worldwide affirmation of tradition. This means that, on the part of the
market and the agents who operate in it, there is a margin of manoeuvre and a receptivity that
would enable the commercial merit of the product to reflect and add value to those forms of
production that better conform to the preservation-worth of the outstanding landscape that is
nominated.

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When compared to those winemaking regions that have already been inscribed or have simply
been nominated for inscription, the Alto Douro shares, particularly as regards the socalcos - its
original formula for terracing the vineyards, the manifest expression of a long and arduous
subjugation of an area that is vital to the production of wine, associated with a unique process
for optimising the ecological conditions under which water resources are employed. Viticulture
in the Demarcated Douro Region, heir to ancestral, traditionally empirical and quality
winemaking practices, simultaneously accommodates modern technology and contemporary
tools, always in respect of the principles on which it has developed.

In effect, in 1756 the first demarcation under the Marquis of Pombal (1699 – 1782) and later, the
system for classifying the vineyards developed by Álvaro Moreira da Fonseca (1932-1980)
confirm, today, the value of the ancient Roman practice of planting vineyards on the hillsides to
take advantage of the better maturing conditions offered there and reserving the better land in
the valleys for the production of food.

Proof of this is found in the small containers for wine that were used in ancient times and which
enable us to establish a correlation between the finest wines produced – the more alcoholic that
best withstood the rigors of transporting them to far distant points of sale – and the vineyards
where they were produced (terroir), the true winemaking region, rooted in Roman viticulture and
well expressed as “Bacchus loves rugged hillsides”, the guideline for quality winemaking.

This constant and age-old endeavour to produce quality wines has been regulated for more
than 300 years in the Douro Demarcated Region. It involves the authenticity of the wine,
strongly sustained by an extremely rich genetic heritage that has survived to this day in the
register of more than 100 types of native white and red grape vines that represents a guarantee
for the consumer, the ultimate judge of quality. It is therefore not surprising that the Douro
valley is universally acclaimed as the source of one of the finest fortified wines on Earth – Port
Wine. For those who know the region, there can be no doubts as to the monumental efforts
represented by this truly heroic work of man and the extraordinary weight that it has had on the
regional and national economy throughout history. Paradoxically, however, the region only
benefits from one-fourth of the added value generated by this product. This, as compared to
the majority of other winemaking regions, explains the marked dissimilarity between the
opulence of the landscape and the humble buildings in the settlements. Likewise, this modest
heritage also contrasts between the diversity and wealth of the architectural heritage found on
the wine estates, or quintas, and the manor houses in the region.

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As did Portovenere Cinque Terre, the Alto Douro can also invoke the centuries-old toil of
transforming an inhospitable land, populated solely by rock and shrubs, into a lush and fertile
winemaking region, albeit with a major difference: the 18th century demarcation and respective
supporting legislation that made, of the Alto Douro, the very first institutional model for
organising and controlling a winemaking region.

c. Authenticity/Integrity
The authenticity and integrity of the Alto Douro are presented here from the standpoint of the
features that mark its unique nature, followed by a more detailed presentation of the most
distinctive of these.

i) Unique nature
The cultural landscape of the Alto Douro is an outstanding example of man’s unique relationship
with the natural environment. Its nature is determined by his wise management of limited land
and water resources on extremely steep slopes. It is the outcome of permanent and intense
observation, of local testing, of the profound knowledge of how to adapt the culture of the vine
to such extremely unfavourable conditions. It is an expression of his courage and
determination, of his acumen and creative genius in understanding the cycle of the water and
the materials, of his intense, and almost passionate, attachment to the vine.

It expresses itself as a monumental sculpture of wired terraces, where vineyards prevail next to
olive and almond groves, amongst a mosaic of plots of Mediterranean shrubs and coppices.
The setting, in the landscape, of several forms of training the vines is an outstanding example of
man’s ability to master physical constraints that enabled him to produce the soil and build an
immense, artful continuum of buttressed socalcos. It is this acumen that enabled a multitude of
anonymous artists to create a collective work of land art

This landscape, however, is a whole and it is in constant evolution. It is a diverse mosaic of
crops, groves, watercourses, settlements and agricultural buildings, arranged as quintas (large
estates) or casais (small landholdings). Today, the new techniques for building terraces
landscape have developed concurrently with the more traditional practices, thus reflecting the
continuous and evolutionary nature of the landscape and contributing to the property’s
maintaining its active social role in perpetuating a prosperous and sustainable economy.

The outstanding characteristics of the Alto Douro as a continuing, organically evolved cultural
landscape offer a strong potential for sustained productivity. Both in terms of the production of
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Port Wine as in terms of cultural and leisure tourism, the cultural landscape of the terraced
vineyards is not irrevocably condemned to perish under the threat of technological or
entrepreneurial changes. There is entrepreneurial evidence, likely to be reinforced in the future
with new examples, that the production of wine on terraced vineyards is a method for ensuring
excellence that is rewarded by a market willing to pay higher unit prices for the product.
Likewise, the Port Wine quintas constitute an offer of excellence for leisure and cultural tourism
as they represent relevant spaces of entrepreneurial sustainability given the selectivity of the
markets and of the range in prices. Furthermore, Port Wine and leisure and cultural tourism,
due to their excellence and image as products of the highest quality, contribute to a greater
identification of the productive structure and its products with the excellence of the cultural
landscape. The conditions exist for, in an innovative manner, classifying a cultural landscape’s
contribution to the sustainability of production itself, thereby favouring the manifestation of its
reputation for quality and excellence at more attractive prices and before more interesting
markets.

ii) Distinctive features
The Alto Douro, in addition to its unique nature, boasts three particularly distinctive features that
contribute to its authenticity and integrity:
- The antiquity of the Demarcated Region;
- The terraces
- Cultural crossroads.

- The antiquity of the Demarcated Region
The Alto Douro is of outstanding value as an example of a continuing, organically evolved
cultural landscape that maintains a strong functional identity around the production of quality
wines. The monumental landscape is witness to the huge efforts of many generations of
farmers and winemakers to master the physical constraints of a natural environment favourable
to the production of wines (and other crops) whose quality and distinctive characteristics have
enjoyed worldwide acclaim since the 17th century.

The Demarcated Douro Region was the very first winemaking region in the world to have been
demarcated and controlled. The first demarcations were implemented between 1757 and 1761
following the first regulatory legislation of 1756. (These first demarcations are known as the
Pombaline Demarcations, after the Marquis of Pombal who was Prime Minister at that time.)
Several granite boundary markers from that period are still in existence. Contrary to that which
occurred following earlier demarcations of other winemaking regions (Chianti, 1716; Tokay,
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1737), demarcation of the Alto Douro was accompanied by mechanisms for controlling the
quality of the product supported by a vast legislative framework and by a system for classifying
and qualifying the wines based on an inventory of all the land under vine. In many ways, the
winemaking legislation of this region led the way for the modern legislation adopted by many
wine-producing countries. No less important is the temporal continuity of the demarcated land
that, since the 18th century and regardless of changes to regional boundaries, has impressed
the local populations with its symbolism as a key factor of their regional identity.

- The Terraces
In order for it to be possible for man to cultivate vines on the steep, rocky banks of the River
Douro and its tributaries, he first had to create the soil and build row upon row of terraces with
retaining walls – the socalcos that today combine with new methods for planting vineyards.

Thus, the architecture of the winemaking landscape of the Douro, with its mix of different
methods for organising the land, is indeed complex. Side by side with vineyards on patamares
and vertically planted vines dating from the end of the 20th century, one finds several hundreds
of kilometres of ancient socalcos whose shape varies according to the slope of the land and to
the terracing techniques employed at different periods.

The oldest socalcos have low walls and narrow and irregularly-shaped surfaces – or geios –
that sometimes only accommodate a single row of vines and which wind, willy-nilly around the
curves of the land and rocky outcrops. These are the pre-phylloxera socalcos, built before the
devastation of the Douro vineyards during the last third of the 19th century. Many of these were
abandoned then and today form mortórios – or morgues of dead vines – that have become
overrun with wild shrubs. Many pre-phylloxera socalcos have, however, been recuperated and
replanted and still keep their old schist retaining walls. Some also bear traces of even more
primitive forms of planting such as that of creating pilheiros - holes in the walls where vines
were planted, thus leaving the surface free for other crops.

Other socalcos have tall, straight solid walls that support wide surfaces planted with four, five or
more rows of vines. These are the post-phylloxera socalcos, most of whom were built between
the end of the 19th century and the mid-1930’s, when most of the vineyards in the region
underwent reconstruction.

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