Portugal is not just a land of wines. It’s a land of exceptional wines. Wines that were served at the tables of kings who celebrated treaties, love stories, epics, which accompanied sadness and victory toasts as in any nation’s destiny. Today, more than ever, Portugal’s wines honour that glorious past, and open up new opportunities around the world, where they are already an unmistakeable benchmark.
Destiny drawn on the land
We don’t know if it was written in the stars, but it was surely preordained in the fertile land that wine would flow through our veins. However distinctive the climate, the relief, the characteristics of the terroirs, the temperature range, the seasons’ rigors, from any part of Portugal, exceptional vineyards and extraordinary wines emerge. Coming from the terraced steps of Douro, the hardships of Dão or the warm and cold Alentejo plains, passing through the windy Estremadura, Portugal’s wines are always the result of passion and knowledge, determination and ingenuity. Proof of all this are the monumental landscapes of the Douro and the resilient Dão region, where vineyards have been carved out from a sum of impossibilities, brought to life to produce wine from the hands of men determined not to give up. An ancestral knowledge that has been valued and reinvented with bravery and boldness by new and committed winemakers. A new generation trained in the importance of a divine legacy and skilled in the modernization of this long Portuguese tradition, built on enormous human capacity and resilience, committed to broad understanding and the mastery of natural resources.
In the beginning it was… Porto
While in the beginning we crossed borders with Port wine as our only passport, today, Portuguese table wines have made a name and space for themselves abroad, having already delighted connoisseurs at home. Variety, authenticity and character. This is how Portuguese wines are presented on the international market, side by side with French and Italian wines that no longer overshadow us on the most demanding five-star menus. On this bridge between past and present, on this balance between today and tomorrow we find Julia Kemper’s prizewinning wines, which take a fresh and innovative look at the family’s past, with its 400 years of history and wine alchemy. A holistic view, which respects the land and people and understands them as parts of an ecosystem that must be kept in balance. From this understanding, organic wines are created, the fruit of biodynamic agriculture, in total harmony with biodiversity, which refuse synthetic chemistry, plastic and oil. A total respect for Nature, which adds the principle of preservation and devotion to the environment to the uniqueness and quality of Julia Kemper wines, in line with the love and intelligence invested in cultivating and maintaining the vineyard and producing the wine. Earth and Man hand in hand, as it has always been, as it should always be. Because the future shouldn’t be seen as a ‘landfill’, where we are postponing problems that must be solved now. Julia Kemper’s efforts help to project Portuguese wines even further.
Portuguese curiosities
- Lusitanian lands have been producing wine for more than two millennia.
- The Douro Demarcated Region, defined in 1756, is the first, and therefore the oldest demarcated and regulated region in the world.
- Portugal has more than 280 native grape varieties, the country with the second largest number of indigenous varieties.
- Alentejo has the largest concentration of native wine grape varieties in the world.
- In the Dão region, vineyards are mostly between 400 and 700 meters above sea level.
- Historical records show that the Portuguese toasted their departure to conquer Ceuta in 1415 with Dão wines, in a luxurious celebration ordered by Henry the Navigator himself, in the city of Viseu.
- About half of the corks used around the world come from Portugal.