While visiting Portugal last month, our Wine Director, David Allen MW, headed up to the Douro Valley for a day to visit the Alves de Sousa family at Quinta de Gaivosa. He brought back some of their wines with him to taste. This is a top quality, oak fermented and aged Rose named after a former matriarch of the family Celeste.
Alves de Sousa are an award-winning family business with six estates in the Douro region of Portugal. It produces both table wine and Port.
The de Sousa family supplied fruit and wine to other Port companies for several generations. When Domingos Alves de Sousa, who studied winemaking in both Bordeaux and Portugal inherited his family’s quintas in 1987, he looked to produce wine under the family name.
First he acquired additional farms and building a cellar at Quinta da Gaivosa, the principal property in the Baixa Corgo, The Alves de Sousa wines made their debut in 1991.
The wines have attracted much critical acclaim, with Domingos being named Producer of the Year by Revista de Vinhos in 1999 and 2007. He now makes the wines with his son Tiago. A striking hillside winery designed in black brick by Belém Lima was added at Gaivosa in the mid-2010s.
Alongside Alves de Sousa, and Quinta de Gaivosa, there are four further ranges; Vale de Raposa, Estação, Caldas and Cume. The red wines include Abandonado, a luxury red produced from a previously neglected vineyard and aged for 18 months in French and Portuguese oak.
To find out more about this wine, its price and availability follow this link to the Wine-Searcher website:
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