ABSTRACT
Douro wines had been traded since the Middle Ages, but the first treatise on the area (that of Rui Fernandes), dates from 1532. However, it was not until the Methuen Treaty of December 1703 that the wines grown in the north of Portugal became Portugal’s most valuable export. During the mid-seventeenth century when the 1654 treaty was made, there were only a handful of English merchants in Oporto, dealing chiefly in cod fish, cloth, staves, corn, iron, and lead in exchange for sumach, fruits and olive oil. The bulk of the wine trade at Oporto was in the hands of Englishmen, chiefly because Portuguese merchants did not have sufficient capital. The various British wine firms continued to operate from Oporto, but as the Wine Company’s charter was regularly renewed well into the nineteenth century the British companies continued to experience difficulties.
