Political intervention by winegrowers in the nineteenth century

Abstract

The deep changes that the Portuguese wine producing sector experienced in the nineteenth century had various causes: increasing areas of vineyards, and expansion and intensification of winegrowing outside the Douro basin; the diseases that devastated vineyards; the behaviour of markets; and alterations in the economics of the markets. Thus the winegrowing map of Portugal was reorganised, but it was practically defined at the end of the nineteenth century. The expansion, particularly in the production of ordinary wines, brought new problems - concerning the overproduction, marketing, and selling of wine. These issues partly governed the adoption of measures that successively protected and liberalised the sector, but contributed to the diversification of export markets for Portuguese wines. Simultaneously wine production expanded, and suffered crises that varied in their seriousness and length. With its great economic importance, inevitably the sector was «on the agenda». In this context, from the nineteenth century political debate about wine production, the author attempts to pick out the aspects that were recurrent, and considers the interconnected interests, the power relationships, and the main participants.