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HOW A WOMAN SAVED PORTUGAL'S WINE INDUSTRY

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HOW A WOMAN SAVED PORTUGAL'S WINE INDUSTRY

By Pedro C. Garcia

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Dona Antónia didn't mess around when it came to port.


WHY YOU SHOULD CARE

Dona Antónia didn't mess around when it came to port.

By Pedro C. Garcia

February 20, 2020

People have been making wine in the rolling hills of the Douro Valley since a
few thousand years B.C.E., if wine pips found in archaeological sites are any
indication. Centuries later, it became the world’s first regulated wine region,
which in 1756 was demarcated for the creation of port. As of 2018, Portugal was
the 11th-largest wine-producing country in the world, though it still produced
only about 161 million gallons of wine a year (compared to over a billion each
from Spain, France and Italy).

But that long history hasn’t been without its valleys. Less than 200 years ago,
the country’s entire wine industry was on the brink of extinction. But in a
business historically hostile to women, one female entrepreneur not only made it
through — she also sustained the entire industry.

Antónia Ferreira, or Dona (Lady) Antónia, as she was known, was born in 1811
into a country wracked by political crisis. The Napoleonic Wars hadn’t been kind
to Portugal, and the royal family had fled French aggressions for Brazil,
temporarily relocating Portugal’s capital to Rio de Janeiro. Antónia’s family
was wealthy — a fortune made in wine shipping — and she was known as
Ferreirinha, aka “the little Ferreira.” While her wealth and position gave her
an advantage, her rise to the top of the wine world was hardly assured.

“She had to summon all her strength to compete in a man-led world,” says
historian Natália Fauvrelle, a coordinator at the Douro Museum in Peso da Régua.
“We can’t say she was born with an inclination to do all that. Her life made her
be that way.”

> She sold off her husband’s most extravagant assets (like horses and
> chandeliers), settled their debts and took to the wine fields, learning about
> the process from the soil up.

Ferreira was married off at the age of 23 to her own cousin, in what was widely
seen as little more than an economic match. They were both only children, and
the marriage consolidated the family fortune. But her husband had his flaws: He
spent money lavishly and drank to excess. Just 10 years later, he died, having
contracted first syphilis and then typhus. Antónia was alone against the world,
but she was well-equipped.

“She had an unusual sense of management for her time,” says biographer Gaspar
Martins Pereira — who penned Dona Antónia along with wine producer (and Ferreira
descendant) Maria Olazábal. “Her condition as a widow forced her to take care of
the family’s estate.” Just 33, Antónia set about defending her fortune from her
largest competitors: English wine exporters who had set up shop in Porto.



She sold off her husband’s most extravagant assets (like horses and
chandeliers), settled their debts and took to the wine fields, learning about
the process from the soil up. “She wanted to know how things were going, she
oversaw the works [and] she was present at a time landowners were mostly
absent,” says Fauvrelle. In 1856, she married again — this time to a wealthy man
who understood and supported her attachment to the Douro region. Aside from her
business, she attempted to support the people of Douro with generous financial
donations — which, given that Portugal was then one of Europe’s poorest
countries, earned her a saintly reputation.

 


Female workers step barefoot through fermenting wine at the Quinta do Noval
winery in the Douro Valley.

Source David Silverman/Getty

In the 1850s, wine researchers collected specimens of American grape vines and
brought them back to Europe. With them, they brought phylloxera, a
vine-destroying insect that was behind the great European wine blight that
devastated viticulture across the continent. Portugal didn’t escape unscathed:
In the 1870s, the Douro region saw myriad plantations destroyed and their owners
financially ruined.

Antónia wasn’t one of them. Instead, she drew on international know-how — such
as ordering sulfur from Britain to apply to the decaying plants — so she, by
trial and error, could learn exactly how they’d dealt with the blight. Despite a
naturally cautious nature, she decided to implement new forms to protect Douro’s
plantations through new grafting techniques imported from other countries. After
her, small farmers in the region were inspired to try the same techniques — a
wave of regeneration that salvaged the entire region’s economy. Wine remained
Portugal’s primary export until 1930, and Antónia died the richest woman in
Portugal.

After Antónia’s death in her mid-80s, her children’s profligate spending saw her
estate partitioned and sold off. But while some was sold to larger companies,
other pieces have stayed in the family: The owners of at least two local
vineyards, Quinta do Vallado and Quinta do Vale Meão, are descended from the
Dona herself.

 * Pedro C. Garcia, OZY Author Contact Pedro C. Garcia


February 20, 2020

TOPICS

 * Badass Women of History
 * Food & Drink
 * Portugal



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