CVery often we receive very different information about Portuguese wine, production, what is sold and what is bought, who is who and where the good guys and the bad guys are. In regions like the Douro there is only talk about more grapes and especially this year, when (if the weather helps) a brutal production is expected. There are companies announcing that they will not go to the farm to buy grapes and this, one imagines, will be a true social tragedy because the small farmers – in the absence of anyone to defend them – are totally dependent on the purchase of the grapes they produce. If there are no buyers, what will happen? Will there be distillation of surpluses? Are the small farms going to close? Alongside this, by all accounts dramatic situation, we know that Portugal is also a large importer of bulk wine from Spain, which arrives here at ridiculous prices. It is this wine that fuels much of what is sold in bag-in-box in large supermarkets and which is, let’s be realistic, the wine whose sales prices are compatible with the low income of the majority of consumers. If the excess Douro was sold at the bulk price, it would not even pay for the harvest.
