Located in Canelas in the municipality of Peso da Régua, Quinta de Valbom is on the northern bank of the Douro River, close to the Bagaúste Dam in the Baixo Corgo sub-region. The property belongs to the German family Pohl (Vila Vita Group) whose most visible Portuguese face is the huge and luxurious Vila Vita Resort in the Algarve and which already owns the famous Alentejo wine brands Herdade dos Grous and Quinta das Apegadas in the Douro.
At the base of these estates, is Luís Duarte, winemaker and manager. When the German family Pohl consulted him about expanding their wine heritage, Luís Duarte did not hesitate to choose the Douro. Although he is almost always associated with the Alentejo, Luís Duarte is no stranger to the Douro. It was here that he was born and lived during part of his adolescence, it was in Vila Real that he studied oenology and it was through the vineyards of Duriense that he began to have contact with the world of vines and wine.
Quinta de Valbom was acquired in 2012 and had 27 hectares of old vineyards, between 30 and 100 years old. Despite the semi-abandoned state of the vineyard, Luís Duarte and his right-hand man Ricardo Silva, also an oenologist, were able to harvest that year and vinify in the farm’s cellar. The wines are practically organic because there was no intervention in the abandoned vineyard. Two wines were born from this harvest: a first red Quinta de Valbom (38,000 bottles) and a red Reserve (3,850 bottles). These first two wines were vinified in granite mills and aged in French oak barrels.
The winemakers intend to maintain a traditional Douro profile for these wines, so there are no major concessions to "modernism. Luís Duarte does not hide the fact that the objectives for the wines of Quinta de Valbom are very ambitious, namely to put these wines at the top of the Douro hierarchy, to be among the best. One of the initiatives of this strategy has been precisely to put the wines on the market quickly to make them known and appreciated, a decision that has high costs but is necessary for the development of the brand. As for Quinta de Valbom, it has already undergone several works and transformations that will allow the group to achieve its ambitions.