Alves de Sousa

Wine production is a family tradition for Domingos Alves de Sousa: his father (Edmundo Alves de Sousa) and grandfather (Domingos Alves de Sousa) had already been Douro winemakers. But Domingos Alves de Sousa initially embraced another career. 

Having graduated in Civil Engineering, he could not resist the double appeal (of land and blood), and abandoned his activity in 1987 to dedicate himself exclusively to the exploration of the farms that he inherited and others that he later acquired, in which he has been carrying out model land consolidation and restructuring work on the vineyards. The evolution of its winemaking activity has interesting, almost paradigmatic aspects and deserves a little history.


For a long time he was a supplier to the well-known and prestigious companies Casa Ferreirinha and Sociedade dos Vinhos Borges.

But the problems that affected the sector in the late 1980s, which resulted in an exaggerated increase in production costs, and in particular the catastrophic harvest of 1988, led him to question the profitability of his farms. the turning point.

Like many other Douro winegrowers, affected by the recession in which the Demarcated Region was struggling, he turned to valuing the "leftovers" of Port Wine, that is, the Douro pasture wine, until then traditionally subordinated in relation to fortified wine.