The van Zeller family is the oldest family in port
wine industry. How is knowledge and wisdom passed between generations?
In a natural way, simply because our whole lives have
always been about the Douro and its wines. Always doing better and never giving
up is a worn-out slogan, but if you take it seriously it’s enough to give
meaning to an entire life. I think this is what I passed on to the next
generation.
Van Zellers & Co. is back with a new brand
identity. What direction do you want to take?
Van Zellers & Co is welcoming a new lease of life
new light with the 14th and 15th generation. In 2020, the
year in which we celebrated 400 years of our family in the port industry, we
relaunched Van Zellers & Co with a new image, a new philosophy and a new
range of wines. The respect for the Douro, for its heritage, diversity,
expression, tradition and people is what keeps us in the wine business. For us,
port can be expressed in three different categories – wines that are
fundamentally shaped by the hand of man, by time or by nature. These three
factors are responsible for creating great diversity in the different styles,
from the flavours and textures to the complexity of port wine. It is our
knowledge and expertise, time and the magic of nature that transform port wine
into something unique with each bottling and each year. We focus on the quality
of each of our bottlings and have very limited quantities of each wine. In the
case of the wines produced by nature, which are CV Curriculum Vitae Douro
White and Red, and the Van Zellers & Co Vintage Port and LBV,
these are small quantities, as they come from very special vineyards and small
plots, and it is nature that defines the quantity and profile each year.
The man-made wines, i.e., blends, have limited
quantities so that we can guarantee the quality over time and have the wines
distributed with the right partners for these wines, as is the case with the Van
Zellers & Co 10, 20, 30, 40 and, more recently, 50 years. We
bottle up to 6,000 bottles a year of our 10 Year Port, for example. Of
our 50 Year Port, we’ll only bottle up to 150 bottles a year for the
whole world. Then there are our Colheita Ports, of which, depending on
the vintage, we bottle a maximum of 18 bottles a year, and each and every
bottle only to order.
Each Van Zellers & Co wine tells a story, which is
why we have collaborative projects with other brands, with which we intend to
tell a story, such as Van Zellers & Co Vintage Port 2020 Ocean Aged,
the first Vintage Port to age underwater.
We currently export
to 21 countries and our biggest clients are in the United States and Portugal.
We intend to be more distinctive every year and each new wine we launch, or
project we are involved in, will be approached with the same enthusiasm as if
it were the first and only one.
How do you reinvent yourself each time another wine is
created?
With every wine we produce, we do it because history
has marked us, because we believe we have a positive message to pass on, or
because we are going to innovate and reinvent wine in some way. Creativity
combined with tradition is what fuels us, and what drives us are the people
involved in each project.
We have a team of suppliers with whom we work
consistently and who guarantee us an excellent delivery of quality products.
That’s why creativity can take off when the founding quality is guaranteed. It
all starts, of course, with the vineyards and the work done in our own
vineyards, but also with the winegrowers with whom we have worked for many
generations. Then there’s the choice of casks, which involves an excellent
relationship with the suppliers, who come to taste the progress of the wine in
each cask. We improve our selection every year. The bottles, stoppers, labels,
all the essential materials for the wine’s good development and the
preservation of its image, are also carefully chosen. This image is developed
from the outset by the Rivotti Design team. Professional product photographers
and film crews are our partners and allies in building our brand and they
become friends over time.
We have a collection
of very rare and special wines coming out soon, which have taken a lifetime to
collect. I’m talking about Van Zellers & Co The Rare Port Collection XIX,
which will have three very old Tawny Ports from three different vintages. The
year of each vintage is a mystery to the consumer, and it is through stories
that we are able to give an indication of its age. Here, we involve suppliers
of the highest quality in the development of unique pieces. All the bottles are
blown in Caldas da Rainha, in the same way they were produced in the 19th
century; each set comes with a decanter specially designed by Atlantis, as well
as three pieces of silver created by the Leitão & Irmão goldsmiths. Only 75
cases will be created and we already have requests from the United Kingdom,
Finland, France and the United States for these unique pieces.
You regard your wines to be unique and original. What
is so unique about them?
Our wines tell the story of a family, a region and
even of each particular vineyard. The old Douro vineyards have a multitude of
grape varieties and so many different locations and ways of planting that they
are unique from one another. I have always chosen to work with old vines, they
are historical portraits of the region, and the diversity of grape varieties
brings a complexity to the wines that is hard to find in other regions of the
world. My over 40 years of experience in making wines in the Douro has also
given me the ability to choose and identify the most suitable old vines for
producing our wines. This is how the CV Curriculum Vitae Douro red wine
was created. A vineyard, which is now around 90 years old, that I bought in
2003. It has around 35 grape varieties and is located in a very difficult to
access, almost wild place, along the River Torto. This is where one of the best
rated red wines in the world was produced. It was awarded the highest score, 98
points, by the Robert Parker magazine. And now, at the end of 2023, we
have received news that the leading German language magazine, Vinum, has
chosen the CV Curriculum Vitae Douro red 2019 as one of the best 100
wines of the year, and one of the 10 best in Spain and Portugal.
Its complexity comes from the old vines and its
elegance and great capacity for evolution comes from the very thorough and
detailed oenological work we do. As well as harvesting the grapes by hand and
sorting them on the selection mat at the entrance to the winery, our red grapes
are all trodden by foot in granite presses.
This way of fermenting the wines gives them a silky
elegance, achieved by the harmony between the tannins, which give structure;
the acidity, which gives freshness and longevity; and the purity of the fruit
and aromas present in each variety. It is a demanding process, but it makes all
the difference in each red wine and port.
Our white wines come from old vines, which are
increasingly rare in the region for white grapes, and which produce naturally
complex and fresh wines. The choice of casks for the fermentation and ageing
process has been refined over the almost 20 years that we have been making
white wines.
Our port wines are distinguished by the attention paid
to each batch. We keep bottling at a minimum, which means that we are
constantly making batches and dedicating ourselves to our casks in which the port
wine ages. This gives our Tawny Ports a lot of character and distinction.
Returning to the subject of old vines, Van Zellers
& Co operates around 15 hectares of old vines in the Douro region, some of
which are more than 80 years old. In 2023, we are the first Portuguese company
to have become a member of the Old Vine Conference, which encourages the
preservation of old vines by sharing studies and knowledge. Aware of our
responsibility towards the environment and believing that only this path will
lead to the production of increasingly differentiated high-quality wines, we
have been studying and applying a series of environmentally friendly practices,
thus guaranteeing their sustainability.
Our main and
fundamental goals are to improve the physical, chemical and biological aspects
of the soil; to combat erosion and to increase the soil’s water retention and
storage capacity; and to increase biodiversity in the ecosystem. In an attempt
to understand the rationale behind ancient practices in the light of current
knowledge, we are trying to reproduce some of these techniques while
maintaining the principles and updating the ways in which they are practised.
For example, in the Van Zellers & Co vineyards we use horses for tilling
the earth around the vines (cava and descava), we make organic
corrections or corrections to the acidity of the soil as a way of combating
weeds, and we have reintroduced ditches to prevent the loss of water from the
soil through direct evaporation, thus enhancing its utilisation by the vines.
«Our wines tell the story of a family, a region and
even of each particular vineyard»
