Barca Velha 2011

Max 3 bottles per client. You can order now. Delivery medio november.

Casa Ferreirinha is a leading producer in Portugal, with the exclusive Barca Velha as a highlight, but also other excellent wines alongside its top cuvée, which remain accessible to all. The direction that the winemaker Fernando Nicolau d'Almeida set for Barca Velha in 1952 was constantly followed here for the entire range.

It was Dona Antónia Adelaide Ferreira who, in the 19th century, created and commercialised the first non-mutated Douro wine: Barca Velha. She was at the head of a large company that revolutionised the world of wine in the Douro at that time. 

Barca Velha was born in 1952 from the imagination of Fernando Nicolau de Almeida. Following in the footsteps of the great Bordeaux châteaux he had visited, he wanted to create a unique and superior quality wine with grapes from the Douro. 
From the very beginning, Barca Velha became a reference. In order to maintain the high standard, the wine would only be released on the market in the best years. 
The current vintage is therefore only the 18th since 1952. The most recent vintages are: 1995, 1999, 2000, 2004 and 2008. In 1997, 2001, 2003, 2007 and 2009, among others, the wine was commercialised under the name Reserva Especial. It is in fact the same wine, with the difference that after the obligatory years of ageing in casks and bottles, it was decided that the result is very good, but that it just needed that little bit more to reach the market as Barca Velha.

Barca Velha is becoming more and more one of those wines that many dream of but which every year seems to become less and less available. Assuming that a harvest is judged good enough to carry the label, only a maximum of 25,000 bottles will be bottled. And that is far too few to satisfy all the amateurs. 

The current winemaker is Luis Sottomayor. In 1989 he became the right-hand man of the founder Fernando Nicolau de Almeida and finally took over the reins in 2003.