Is the Douro sustainable?
Paul Symington calls on the Portuguese government to act before it is too late …
Douro vineyard - photo courtesy of Symington Family Estates
It’s grape harvest season in many of Europe’s wine regions. For the Douro Valley, in Portugal, it’s also peak time for the perennial discussion of this great wine region’s sustainability.
Paul Symington, an industry heavyweight as internationally respected former Chairman of Symington Family Estates, has once again joined the Douro debate with a vigorous article published on August 29 in Público.
The Symingtons are the largest vineyard owners in the Douro, where they have farmed since the 19th century, producing Ports and, since around 2000, Douro DOC still red and white wines.
The world’s oldest demarcated wine region, the Douro is today one of the world’s most heavily regulated. The Instituto dos Vinhos do Douro e Porto (IVDP), a department of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, holds absolute administrative power over all licensing, planting and production. Most other Portuguese wine regions are managed by basically self-regulating Comissões Vitivinícolas Regionais (CVR), with minimal state intervention
Paul Symington (at the Cockburn’s cooperage) – Photo: Ricardo Garrido
An “outdated” regulatory system
Symington draws attention to a danger of economic and social asphyxiation for the Douro Demarcated Region (RDD), through over-regulation by the IVDP, and what he considers successive governments’ failure to modernise and adapt a complex regulatory system to current local and international realities.
The authorities ignored warnings from a major University of Vila Real (UTAD) study, in 2018, which highlighted the region’s unsustainability. Symington describes this regulatory system as “out-dated and ill-adapted” and compares it unfavourably with “the best managed French wine regions, and in particular Champagne”.
This alarming situation in the Douro first needs to be framed in the context of a global fall in wine consumption (with a trend to drink ‘less but better’), which includes a reduction in consumption of fortified wines. Specifically, sales of Port have declined by 34% in volume since 2000, although sales of premium Ports remain robust. This is in addition to agricultural challenges, such as smaller yields, posed by climate change.
The Douro contains 50% of the world’s mountain vineyard, but productivity per hectare is the lowest of all the world’s main wine regions, with extremely high costs for farming grapes on steep slopes.
Over the past 40 years, the Douro’s population has declined by nearly 30%, as younger people move to coastal cities in search of better paid jobs, often less physically arduous than those in agriculture.
Douro vineyard – Photo courtesy of Symington Family Estates
“Two great wines produced under different rules” – Paul Symington
In an email, Symington expanded: “Port was always the ‘economic engine’ that sustained the economy of the Douro and its people.”
A quirky ‘Benefício’ system limits annual Port production, while with systemic excessive grape production in the region, the price paid for Douro DOC grapes is between 50% and 70% less than the price paid for Port grapes, and between 30% and 60% below the cost of producing these Douro DOC grapes.
Symington adds: “In recent years, many commentators have remarked upon the danger of two great wines being produced in the same region under completely different rules: free market conditions for Douro DOC, with Port subject to an annual production limit.”
With grapes for Douro DOC often sold at €0.50/kg (about half their production cost), it becomes possible for large volumes of wine to be sold at low prices, perpetuating a damaging international reputation for the Douro as a region of ‘cheap’ wines, rather than promoting a region of wines of outstanding quality.
The high production costs, often unknown to the consumer, frequently simply get left out of the debate. “It’s urgent to adapt the region to smaller volumes and greater value, to protect the Denomination of Origin and increase the income of farmers and the entire sector,” Symington remarks.
“The Douro cannot be the only wine region in the world where nothing changes” – Paul Symington
Vineyard abandonment
It’s essential to understand what’s happening in French, Italian and Spanish wine regions, and more widely in the New World, and learn from the measures being applied to guarantee the continuity of these regions.
“The Douro cannot be the only wine region in the world where nothing changes.” He remarks that, with 43,000 hectares, the Douro currently has too much vineyard. Over-planting and an excess supply of grapes are reflected in an increasing number of farmers finding it uneconomically viable to harvest their grapes or even tend their vineyards.
“Vineyard abandonment is already happening in the Douro due to lack of profitability, and sadly, this will accelerate until a balance is found between supply and demand.” He believes a French-style compensation scheme is needed for farmers who decide to abandon their vineyards.
Symington emphasises the need to modernise the IVDP or perhaps replace it entirely by a more professional and flexible Comissão Vitivinícola Regional, to take account of the contemporary reality of the Douro and international markets.
“A new strategy is needed which adds value to the region’s grapes and wines and avoids the huge excess in grape production so damaging to the regional economy.” He hopes “the Minister of Agriculture can use the vast experience of both farmers and wine companies to create a plan to invert the crises in the Douro and put the region on a sustainable basis”, adding “the region’s fast-growing tourism depends on the lovely vineyards cared for by the Douro’s 18,000 farmers”.
I contacted the IVDP by email for comment but have not received a reply.
First published in The Portugal Resident, September 2025
