ANCIENT WINE CELLAR Tour | Boutique FAMILY PORT HOUSE | Martha's Wines & Spirits
Rita Marta, a member of the Martha’s Wines and Spirits family, gives a tour of their old cellars in the Douro Valley.
The walls of the main house date back to 1727, although they have been reconstructed over time. The family has been in the grape-growing business since then, but only started making wine in the early 20th century. They initially sold their grapes and later began selling their own bottled wine in 1970.
The family primarily focuses on producing Tawny ports, which are traditionally more popular among Portuguese families. They also have French casks from Bordeaux that they use to age their ports and spirits.
The estate is located in a narrow part of the Douro Valley and has olive trees strategically placed on the mountains to help with water absorption.
The Martha family is currently in the fifth generation of running the business, which produces port wines, Douro wines, and spirits.
I hope you enjoy this beautiful 6 minute video.
THIS IS EPISODE 95 OF UNDERSTANDING WINE WITH AUSTIN BEEMAN
SPECIAL THANKS:
Rita Marta for taking me behind the scenes at Martha's Wines & Spirits.
Filmed on location in Regua, Portugal. November 2023.
TRANSCRIPT:
Note: Transcript was created by a third party service and I’ve endeavored to clean up the spelling of ‘wine words’ and non-english words. Any persistent errors are mine alone.
Or, watch the video. It is awesome.
Rita Marta:
These are some of the oldest cellars that you will find in the Douro here. We're not open to the public, so they're not available for everybody to see, but hopefully, one day, we could show this to the world. But I'm happy to show it to you already.
Austin Beeman:
How old are they?
Rita Marta:
Well, these walls... The walls in the main house, it goes back to 1727. Obviously, I mean, they've been reconstructed, otherwise they weren't here. And even though it doesn't look like, we do a little bit of maintenance. Though we want to keep always the original walls, we do an effort. And everything that you see around, all this humidity, it's really good for the wines. But the family has been here since 1727. And we were grape-growers, initially, so we not always made wine. Only in the beginning of the 19th century is when with our grapes, we stopped selling them and we start making wine, putting it in these barrels, and selling them to big shipping companies in Gaia, in Porto, where you've been. And then at some point, the family decided that that was the way to go, and the business went that way, producing wine.
But it was only 1970 that my grandfather bottled the first bottle of Martha's Port with our own name. But we had stocks at that time. We were selling 1931, 1956, all single-harvest. So my family never did a vintage. The first year we did a vintage, that we convinced my dad to do, it was 2016. You'll taste it. But because traditionally my family was always all about Tawny ports.
So here we have also some Colheitas. So Tawny, single harvest Tawnys. Tawn y ports traditionally are what Portuguese families would produce most. And the vintages, or the ruby styles, are traditionally more from foreign owned companies like there are now in the Douro. They've been here for many generations. But the baseline, it's a foreigner company. And so everything that is Tawny means oak and wood, right? So we need it in different formats.
Here are some in these bottles. We opened a few years ago, there was a 19th century port wine tasting. And we convinced my father to open some of these bottles from 1890. And they were spectacular. They were amazing. Outstanding. So these are French casks from Bordeaux, usually four to six years. And then we use them for the ports. Before they come in, they're not new, they're old, but before they come in, we scratch outside here at the front to put our logo. And on the side we change this arch, but the inside we don't scratch because we want it with the red wine. And then we put port, it ages the port. And after the port, we age our spirits inside.
And this is the real Douro, very narrow. This is not too bad. You can still fit one person after-
You see this beautiful color that is already this red, beautiful autumn color. So one of the things here in the Douro is that because of the schist, the soil, we don't have so much organic, what do you call, organic soils, with a lot of organic material. So it's good for us also to leave some vegetation in the middle. So it helps bring worms and organic things to the soil to keep our soils healthy.
It is an old estate. It was built in 1727. It used to be a whole property with the vineyards around and so on. But then with all the family heritage and so on, it was separated with the sons. Each gets a little bit. So right now our winery and the main estate, it's separated a little bit from the vineyards and we have everything separated in this mountain, San Pedro. And on the other one, it's near the Grasso.
We have here and there a few olive trees on top of the vineyards, on top of the mountains. These were our ancestors who put them here, is just, they help. This soil is a schist, right? So it drains a lot. And here in this region is not the driest sub-region of the Douro Valley, but it is fairly dry. So the roots of the olive trees, they go deeper than the vines. So they help suck the water up. So we put them strategically on top of some mountains to help suck the water up to the vines.
Hi. Hello everyone. My name is Rita. Rita Marta. I belong to Martha's family. Together with my brother we are the fifth generation in charge of the business. Right now we are located in Baixa Corgo (lower Corgo), a sub-region of the Douro Valley. Our winery is a very exquisite winery. I mean, we are right in the middle of a small village, 10 minutes away from the Regua train station, in the heart of the Douro Valley. We are producers of port wines, Douro wines, and spirits.
FOLLOW THE WINE ADVENTURE
EQUIPMENT:
Main Camera: Canon R8
2nd Camera: DJi Pocket 2
Travel Bag: Peak Design Travel Line Backpack 45L.
Camera Bag: Peak Design Everyday Messenger Bag.
Music Licensed from Epidemic Sound.
FTC Compliance:I have no professional relationship with Martha’s Wines & Spirits, but I am friends with Rita Marta, who attended the Kedge Business School Global MBA program with me. This is not sponsored. See more.