History
Viticulture in Bucelas, located just north of Lisbon, has likely existed since Roman times. Historically a white wine, during the Elizabethan age it was popular among the English as a fortified wine with wine historians believing that the wine was likely the same "Charneco" wine mentioned by William Shakespeare in the play Henry VI, Part 2 with Charneco being a local village in the Bucelas region. Eventually Bucelas was made as a non-fortified white wines, with British interests in the wine being revived during the Victorian age following the Peninsular War. During his time in Portugal, Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington discovered the wine and imported large quantities back to his estate in the United Kingdom. With Wellington's favor, soon Bucelas was a fashionable wine on the London wine market where it was known as "Portuguese Hock".
During the 20th century, urban sprawl and development contributed to the decline of viticulture and winemaking in the region. By the early 1980s, all the vineyard lands in Bucelas was owned by a single wine estate with a poor reputation for quality. Towards the turn of the century, following a wave of enthusiasm and revival for Portuguese's indigenous grape varieties, new winemakers started to set up operation in the area to produce wines from the local grapes.
Read more about this topic: Bucelas DOC
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“America is, therefore the land of the future, where, in the ages that lie before us, the burden of the World’s history shall reveal itself. It is a land of desire for all those who are weary of the historical lumber-room of Old Europe.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“The reverence for the Scriptures is an element of civilization, for thus has the history of the world been preserved, and is preserved.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“It gives me the greatest pleasure to say, as I do from the bottom of my heart, that never in the history of the country, in any crisis and under any conditions, have our Jewish fellow citizens failed to live up to the highest standards of citizenship and patriotism.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)