Sabrosa: Territory and Heritage

The rostrum of this retable, framed by archivolts emphasising their scenographic dimension, bears a number of sculptural works of the crowning of the Virgin Mary.

From a river that was tough to navigate, as Almeida Garrett (1700-1854) noted, to a Douro of calm waters which invites contemplation of nature and travel, a territory has been built with a singular landscape.

The Douro wine estates are surrounded by carefully landscaped gardens and kitchen gardens with a scattering of architectural fountains.

Located at the extreme end of the settlement of Celeirós do Douro, the new wine-ageing warehouse of Quinta do Portal, keeps up with the transformation of the business sector, where agro-industrial activity coexists with cultural tourism.

The architecture serves to highlight its insertion in the landscape and the building’s energy efficiency.

Two large wine storage and ageing vaults showcase its laboratorial nature, employing digital technologies to control the environment, the state of the art in wine production and the investment that has been made.

The ‘patamares’ (ledges) and ‘vinha ao alto’ (vertical rows of vines) are among the new landscaping techniques, having become widespread in the 1980s.

There is an obsessive repetition of a single element at the Miguel Torga Centre, the wall. The walls extend unbounded, tying the building to the urban fabric and, at the interstice, a square-market-parking lot appears.

The apparently minimalist interior of the Miguel Torga Centre, dismissing formalist concessions, does not denounce the conceptual work accomplished, demanding and patient, with attention to detail, the harmony in materials and the placement of technical equipment.

The Quinta da Marka, located on privileged ground on the north bank of the Douro, an area that has become more densely populated with new estates, cohabit with old manor houses and anonymous constructions.

Homes, production facilities and, often, a chapel can be found scattered on higher ground. On the steep slopes that extend to the right-hand bank of the Pinhão River and its tributaries, the vineyard dominates.

The ‘cardanhos’ [farm barracks] were modest structures where harvest workers would stay temporarily, in berths.

Although viticulture has ancient roots in this region, the creation of the Demarcated Region and the founding of the Companhia Geral da Agricultura das Vinhas do Alto Douro [General Company of Alto Douro Viticulture] (1756) gave new life to the settlements and brought renewed wealth.

Among the noble houses of Provesende, the Solar dos Beleza stands out for its urban and even palatial character.

The Casa do Santo is located at the western boundary of the town of Provesende, which gives it a more rural nature, although the main façade is facing the street.

In the settlements of Sabrosa, we find a systemic relationship between the noble architecture, derived from winegrowing, and the more vernacular architecture, telling of a diversified social structure sustained by the vineyard.

The vernacular architectures are usually built from schist (the main rock of the region), and usually follow the same functional structure of the manor or noble houses.

Mural paintings, the gilded woodcarvings and the imagery, with their polychrome and profuse forms, elevate the spaces of devotion scattered throughout the region.

The centrality and quality of the Fountain of Provesende (although it was repositioned and heightened when the town was renovated this century) reveals its importance during the early modern period.

The Parish Records of 1758 tell us that “the patron saint [of Provesende] was St. John the Baptist. The church is the most excellent of the entire Archbishopric, in grandeur, idea and architecture” (CAPELA Et. Al., 2006: 429).

The House of Calçada, built in 1715 by Jerónimo da Cunha Pimentel, is imposing in size and breadth.

Described in the 18th century as a united, well-paved settlement with many noble houses, Celeirós, mentioned in documents dating back to the 12th century when it got its charter (1160), it is the most urban of the settlements in the Sabrosa Council, on the area facing the Pinhão River valley.

The Casa do Bucheiro is not bigger than the houses around it. With a horizontal structure, it features a garden at the back, a farming plot and the wine cellars on the ground floor.

Saint Anthony of Lisbon or Padua, a renowned miracle-worker, appears at the centre of the altarpiece, easily identifiable for its most common attributes: he holds a bouquet of lilies on his right hand – a symbol of purity – and the baby Jesus rests on a closed book, on the left, an iconography suggestive of the miracle vision of the saint preaching.

Consecrated to St. Francis of Assisi, this chapel was built by decision of Francisco Furtado de Azevedo Sottomayor (?-?), it is one of the most remarkable examples of private religious architecture in the municipality.

Although dominated by the cultivation of wine, the Alto Douro Wine Region is quite diverse, visible in the various types of landscaping forms adapted to the geomorphological conditions of the land and to historical developments.

It is always fascinating to see a manor house in the Portuguese rural landscape. Isolated or built within the boundaries of small settlements, the manor or noble house of the 17th and 18th centuries has very specific aesthetic features.

The garden of the House of the Viscount of Vilarinho de S. Romão preserves its original characteristics. The carefully built monumental fountain features a sculpture of St. Peter.

In the Alto Douro Wine Region, Man strongly affected the environment, creating special habitats that have also been consecutively altered until the mid-20th century.

The primary school of Vilarinho de São Romão, the model-project of which was designed by the architect Adães Bermudes (1864-1948), located at the far end of the oldest settlement, once hardly inhabited.

The portal of the tabernacle of the Sabrosa parish church contains a small wax plate known as “Agnus Dei” since the late 12th century, a rare feature that makes this tabernacle a unique piece.

The ceilings of the churches, chapels and shrines are, in a way, the architectural representation of heaven, built using the illusion of architectures or gilded woodcarvings.

This is a clear example of the diversity and coexistence of different types of vineyard landscaping forms.

Only the wine produced on these slopes had the features appreciated by the English market.

In 1756, the Marquis of Pombal founded the General Company of Alto Douro Viticulture to control wine trade and ensure the quality of wine and the balance between its production and trade.

John the Baptist is a recurrent figure in the Douro.

The prosperity of this culture was severely affected from the second half of the 19th century by several grape diseases – downy mildew, powdery mildew, and especially phylloxera, which appeared in 1868, reducing the many vineyards to mortórios (vine mortuaries).

Phylloxera led to significant changes in the cultivation of vines and helped it grow through new ways of preparing the land and plantation, consisting of new ways of building the schist terraces

Douro wine owes its unique identity to the schist soils and to the significant human action that has shaped the landscape through the construction of ledges on the steep slopes and has prevented erosion.

This landscape is constantly changing as it adapts to modern technologies, without neglecting its typical features, customs, knowledge and techniques.

Formed by schist terraces, the so-called “Wine Country”, reflects the history of the first demarcated and regulated wine region in the world and offers a monumental anthropic landscape.

In September, the terraces of the Alto Douro Wine Region come alive with the harvest that closes the vine cycle before vinification.

From August on, the grapes develop their particularities, especially their sugar level. This is the ripening stage which precedes the harvest.

Harvesting can take place between August, September and October, depending on the desired characteristics and the intended type of wine.

While grape-stomping in the wine-presses is today a tradition still followed in many places, it has been replaced by technology to crush the fruit.

Whereas many companies still choose the traditional method, others prefer to use systems that allow them to better control product fermentation.

Wine vats used to be made of wood, especially oak. Today, their materials allow the control of temperature and humidity through mechanical and monitoring systems.

The most important culture in the Douro region after the vine was, and still is, the olive tree, a species well adapted to the climate of the region.