The old iron gate to the Quinta do Crasto has recently been restored. It carries two important dates from the estate’s long history: 1615 and 1918.

The first marks the year when neighbouring properties were joined together to establish the estate at the Crasto.

The second pays tribute to the year when the Porto wine merchant Constantino de Almeida acquired the Quinta do Crasto. His descendants still own the estate today.

In order to preserve the cultural heritage marked by these two important milestones we at Quinta do Crasto have launched HONORE in commemoration.

THE HONORE ET LABORE MOTTO

HONORE salutes the men and women who, over the centuries, have invested in cultivating vineyards and crafting sublime and genuine wines which have long been recognized among the best in the world. The current owners of the estate are proud to display the Honore et Labore motto (“with honour and work”) adopted by their ancestor Constantino de Almeida.

On the date of this double celebration, Quinta do Crasto is launching two exceptional wines,
a DOC Douro table wine and a port wine.

HONORE PORTO

HONORE is a very old tawny Port, more than 100 years old, in fact. It comes from a selected few harvests older than 1918 that were part of the stock of Constantino de Almeida and which have been preserved at the Quinta for three generations. For this special edition HONORE, a limited series of 400 bottles has been prepared to commemorate the age of the Quinta. This peerless wine is a just symbol of such an important historical landmark.

This highly luxurious edition has been crafted by a team of the most experienced Portuguese artisans, who have worked individually on each piece, giving their full attention to every little feature and detail in order to devise a thing that is unparalleled, exclusive.

HONORE is produced with distinctive materials such as hand-wrought silver, the finest crystal chosen by glassmakers to ensure sparkle and transparency, as well as exquisite solid walnut, and a hand-stitched bag.

Each of the 400 numbered decanters, was crafted to the highest state of purity by master glassblowers from the world-renowned Portuguese company Atlantis. There are 400 unique pieces, designed and crafted exclusively for this edition.

Each piece has been finished off with a hand-crafted, sterling silver plaque produced by the acclaimed Portuguese silversmith Topazio, who has been working with this noble material for over a century.

HONORE DOURO DOC

In order to commemorate the centenary of the purchase of Quinta do Crasto by Constantino de Almeida, for the first time, a singular lot was prepared. The year the Quinta completed its fourth centenary (1615-2015), the excellent 2015 harvest prompted the birth of HONORE Douro, an exceptional cuvée of the two most prestigious Quinta do Crasto wines – Vinha Maria Teresa and Vinha da Ponte.

In order to celebrate this long tradition and to simultaneously commemorate the first 100 years that the family has safeguarded the Quinta do Crasto, this rare wine was bottled under the name HONORE, in proud reference to the motto Honore et Labore (Honour and Work) that has guided the previous four generations.

After twenty months aging in oak barriques, a mere 1,615 Magnum bottles were produced to make their contribution to the celebration of the centenary of the purchase and re-establishment of Quinta do Crasto by Constantino de Almeida.

Honore 2015 is a unique wine that brings the two most emblematic Quinta do Crasto vineyards together. 71.2% of the 2015 blend comes from the Vinha Maria Teresa, while 28.8% originates from the Vinha da Ponte. A select 1,615 Magnums were numbered in honour of the four centuries of Quinta do Crasto (1615-2015).

The establishment of Quinta do Crasto some four hundred years ago

The establishment of the current Quinta do Crasto, with residence quarters, wineries and cellars, took place in the seventeenth century. An inscription on the gate “Quinta do Crasto 1615-1918” immortalizes this legendary date. As is the case with most of the venerable Douro estates, much of the origins of Quinta do Crasto are shrouded in mystery, yet there is no doubt that it was set up at that time and that it was owned by noble families of Vila Real and Ansiães, who were joined upon the marriage of D. Maria de Sampaio to the Carrazeda heir, André Fernandes de Magalhães. This couple built the estate and, in 1666, they added the Chapel of Our Lady of Amparo at one of the highest points on the property.

The world’s first demarcated and regulated region

In 1696, the fortified wine trade between the Douro and England was booming and Quinta do Crasto was sold to Captain João Vieira, of Porto. In the following generation, around 1730, it passed to the noble Pacheco Pereira family, owners of vast landholdings, both in the city of Porto and the Douro Valley. A mid-century commercial crisis led to the intervention of the State, with the establishment of the General Company of Agriculture of the Vineyards of Alto Douro in 1756, and the creation of the first demarcated and regulated wine region in the world. Quinta do Crasto was included in the most prized production area. For a hundred and fifty years, it would remain in the possession of the Pacheco Pereiras, who had, meanwhile, married into the noble Sottomayor family of Viana de Castelo.

The reestablishment of Quinta do Crasto by Constantino de Almeida

Constantino de Almeida was already well known in the Porto wine trade when, in 1918, he bought the estates of Crasto and Sobreira from Maria Cândida and Maria Adelaide da Cunha Sottomayor de Abreu Gouveia, the wife of Portuguese poet António Correia de Oliveira. In the same year he brought his wife and five children into his business, which came to be known as the Corporação dos Vinhos do Porto Constantino d’Almeida. With an eye to the future, he spent his later years restoring Quinta do Crasto, replanting vines that had been devastated by the phylloxera blight and either building or renovating wine cellars and housing.

Fernando Moreira de Almeida and the preservation of the family legacy

Constantino de Almeida passed away in 1922, but his widow and children carried on with the company and the cultivation of his estates. In 1923, they created the Sociedade Agrícola da Quinta do Crasto which was entrusted to the direction of Fernando de Almeida. The close links between the commercial business, which took the name Sociedade dos Vinhos do Porto Constantino in 1927, and the estate lasted almost four decades. Throughout the challenging years between the 1920s and the end of WWII, Constantino was one of the largest exporters of Port wine, including that carrying the Crasto label. They also sold other wines, as well as the emblematic Brandy Constantino, with its iconic slogan: The fame that comes from afar! However, financial difficulties, combined with the division of the estate amongst the founder’s many descendants, led to the transfer of shareholder control to the Ferreirinha House in 1958.

The new generation: tradition and modernity

Quinta do Crasto still belongs today to Constantino de Almeida’s descendants. In the 1980s, Fernando de Almeida’s daughter Leonor Guedes de Almeida and her husband Jorge Roquette initiated a new era for the estate when they bought out the other family members and began modernizing grape growing, with an eye to directly selling high quality wines as producers and bottlers of Port and Douro wines. Meanwhile, Crasto’s wine cellar has safeguarded a precious stock of the best vintage Port wines. In the 1990s, Quinta do Crasto wines began to attract great popularity that far outpaced expectations. This led to generous investment in expanding the vineyards with new plantings, and the acquisition of other estates and vineyards. The wineries and cellars were modernized, and Quinta do Crasto currently encompasses 220 hectares of vineyards, making it one of the ten largest producers in the Douro Valley. It has a fabulous portfolio of DOC Douro and Port wines that are sold in more than 40 countries throughout the four corners of the world. Celebrated by the world’s most demanding wine aficionados, over the last twenty years, Quinta do Crasto wines have accumulated an enviable collection of prizes and awards recognizing them as some of the best wines of the world. Since 2012, the estate has also opened up its vineyards and wineries to wine tourism.

The vineyards of Quinta do Crasto stretch up steep, rocky slopes of schist, forming a complex mosaic of variable geometries, that mix earth banks, terraces and vineyards. This unique physical landscape is the stage for the cultural one that expresses the unmatched character of the Alto Douro Wine Region which is so ever-living and ever-adapting that it has been classified by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. Despite the bleakness of the land, the poverty of the soils, the hilly terrain and the excessively hot, dry climate, the excellence of the fruit compensates for the relentless work of generating a long wine tradition dating all the way back to Roman times. The name of the estate is evocative of pre-Roman hill forts or “castros”. Moreover, archaeological remains have been discovered such as a building housing a wine-press, wine pot shards and other materials dating back to the III-IV centuries A.D.