Quevedo - Port wines - family business - from the Douro

The Quevedo cultivate 114 hectares of vineyards across six quintas in the Douro Valley, belonging to the Cima-Corgo and Douro Superior sub-regions. The diversity of the vineyards provides grapes with different aromas and flavors that help in the production of the port wines.

The owners, Oscar Quevedo and Beatriz Morais Quevedo, both come from families with a long and rich history of wine growing and port wine making. On Oscar's side of the family, the tradition of winemaking dates back to 1889 when his ancestor, Abel Gouveia Costa, planted the first vines in Valongo dos Azeites, S. João da Pesqueira. He was succeeded by his son Raul Gouveia Costa, who helped the company prosper. Then came João Batista Quevedo, Raul's son-in-law, who expanded the vineyards to new lands.

The roots of the Beatriz family are on the north/right bank of the Douro, in Linhares de Ansiães, in the Carrazeda district. The main property of the Beatriz family is the Quinta da Alegria, with a train station that bears the same name as the winery. At the end of the '70s, Beatriz Morais Fernandes and Óscar Quevedo decided to live and work in S. João Pesqueira: Beatriz was a doctor at the local hospital and Óscar was a lawyer and notary. They remained in close contact with viticulture and winemaking and passed this passion on to their children, Claudia and Oscar Junior, both of whom work in the family business. In the '80s they increased the production area and in the early '90s they built the winery that is now Quevedo's headquarters.

Oscar Senior is the founder of Quevedo. He was born in 1946 in Vidigueira, Alentejo. He studied law in Coimbra, where he met his wife Beatriz. They have lived in São João da Pesqueira since 1982. In the early stages of his career he worked as a lawyer and notary, activities which he combined with his business projects centered on viticulture and the production of port wine. He bought the first vineyard in 1977 and in 1983 they completed their first major project: planting the vineyards of Quinta Vale d'Agodinho. They built a new winery in 1990, where they still make wine today. In 1991 they made the first port in this winery and that started a new era for the family as they started bottling port under their own label, which was only possible after 1986 when Portugal joined the EU.

Since then they have expanded their vineyard area to a current 112 hectares plus 15 hectares of olive groves which they cultivate organically.

Oscar Jr. is responsible for sales at Quevedo. He was born in Viseu in 1983, a town where his parents lived for a few years before I was born. But the place of his life is São João da Pesqueira, in the heart of the Douro Valley, where he lived with his mother and father, Beatriz and Oscar, and his sister Claudia. He spent almost all his youth there, among vines and pipas (wine fuders), where his parents and the previous three generations produced Vinho Generoso, as the locals call port wine.

In 2001 he went to the university in Porto, where he studied economics until 2005. Those five years that he spent in Porto were a great time of his life in which he had really amazing experiences. The years he spent at university were really special because it was during this time that he began to understand his family's business. He found that wine isn't just about romance, it also brings with it a lot of drama and pain.

After university he got a job as a bank clerk and started his career in finance at the Portuguese bank BPI. A year later he went to central Europe to also work in finance in Switzerland and at the end of 2007 he moved to Madrid, Spain. In March 2009 his grandfather João Quevedo died and this was the trigger that brought him back to Portugal in May 2009.

In July 2011 he married an amazing Catalan, Nadia, who now lives with him in Porto. Nadia has been working in the Quevedo family company since February 2020. He tries to go to the Douro every week and spend two or three days there. If he doesn't show up on the Douro, it may be because he's visiting one of his customers in one of the 40 countries where Quevedo wines and ports will be distributed.

Claudia went to school in São João da Pesqueira and later in Coimbra and began studying oenology in Vila Real in 1994. When she graduated in oenology in 1998, she spent six months at Barros & Almeida in Vila Nova de Gaia and moved back to São João da Pesqueira in 1999. That was the year of their first harvest.

Since then she has made the Ports and the Douro wines in Quevedo until Teresa Batista took over the winemaking for the Douro wines in 2013.

She is married to Fernando João Martins and they live 1 km from the winery with their daughter Beatriz and their son João. When she's not blending ports or checking kegs, she might be playing with her kids or her dogs, reading history books or watching movies, but certainly not soccer.