Villa Oeiras Carcavelos Superior 15 Years

This historical review starts before 1400.

The first mention of a wine produced in the Carcavelos region was in a record from the 15th century. This story is a long and tribulated journey, but one that has an end full of renewed hope.

In the 16th century, due to the constant wars and disputes between England and France, Portugal became a wine exporter to the British Isles. It was in the 17th century we could find Carcavelos Wine in England for the first time. In The National Archives, near London, there is a document that proves it.

 In the 18th century, Carcavelos Wine reached its apogee with great producers such as "Quinta da Alagoa" and "Quinta do Marquês de Pombal". Heinrich Friedrich Link, a traveller who has been in Portugal in the last years of the 18th century, tells us that only the Port, Carcavelos and Setúbal wines were exporting. Its international prestige and expansion at an elite level are evident with its presence in one of the first auctions of wines at Christie's in September 1769.

We find Carcavelos Wine, or Calcavella, in London as a prestigious wine. We also find Carcavelos, in the second half of the 18th century, in North America in Petersburg, Norfolk, Portsmouth and Tappahannock.

The term fortified has been used to refer to a type of wine since the 18th century - sweet wine with a higher alcoholic degree. To produce it, we found references to the use of two different methods and the current method of interrupting fermentation with the addition of brandy. This informations make us accept that over time several vinification methods were used.

And then, in 1908, the Carcavelos Demarcated Region was formally decreed.

Until now, Carcavelos has had a constant and renowned production but underwent profound changes in the 20th century: the Phylloxera that decimated the country's vineyards and the growing urbanisation of land near the capital. And if the 20th century was almost synonymous with a death foretold, it also represented new dawn. It is in this century that we find an attempt to revitalise the production of Carcavelos Wine. The imposition of a Seal of Guarantee. But, a Seal of Guarantee did not prevent an increasingly reduced production. A decline that the Oeiras local authority is now putting to an end.

In an alliance of efforts, the National Agronomy Station, which replanted 5 hectares of vines in 1983, joined forces with the Oeiras Town Council, signing a collaboration protocol in 1988.

This partnership was the first step of a local authority. For the first time in history, a municipality in Portugal assumed a relevant position in a wine-growing product. Not even ten years had passed when, in 1997, the Oeiras local authority renewed this protocol, obtaining greater participation and foreseeing the restoration of the building of Casal da Manteiga as a winery. And, in 2001, the new installations of the Adega do Casal da Manteiga were inaugurated.

 And the story continues. In 2006 the municipality took on the exclusive exploitation of the vineyards of the National Agronomic Station. A new investment plan endowed the Adega do Casal da Manteiga with a wooden ageing area with 600 barrels.

In 2012, the municipality recovered the Marques de Pombal Palace and its garden. Then the Palace cellar was restored, and the ageing area increased to around 1,200 barrels.

 Carcavelos Villa Oeiras wine is a recognised product with national and international merit due to the effort of recovering the past, respecting it and bringing it to our days.

The dynamism it has given to the whole region has promoted the appearance of other producers who can count on the support equipment of the Adega do Casal da Manteiga.

This history is a secular wine journey in the smallest demarcated region in Portugal - Carcavelos. This honey-coloured fortified wine makes up one of the four magnificent Portuguese fortified wines.