ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates state regulation in the port wine trade in the decades following the Napoleonic wars and the response of port wine traders. The period and place seem apt for the topic of regulation and the response of regulated firms because they embrace the decline of the ancien regime and the rise of liberalism in Portugal. A joint-stock enterprise, the Companhia was given the power to regulate production, sales and price, transportation, storage, domestic retail trade, and export of wines from the Douro region, which in the following years was carefully demarcated and mapped in an annual cadastre. While a weaker Companhia did not noticeably increase competition among the exporters, it does seem to have produced an efficient market among the farmers, despite fixing the price at which wine could be sold. In the absence of profits and capital, debt became the primary option for finance. The exporters, however, turned to this with reluctance.
