Symington Family Estates is one of the world's leading producers of premium port, the leading vineyard owner in the Douro Valley and one of the top Portuguese wine producers.
We are a family of British and Portuguese origin that has lived and worked in Portugal since the 19th century. Our family business - run by the 4th and 5th generation - is founded on a deep commitment to Portugal's people, its lands and its wines. Today there are 10 family members working across the business, committed to producing the finest ports and wines and building on the achievements of the previous generations.
We own and run four of the leading port houses, Graham's, Dow's, Warre's, and Cockburn's, as well as a portfolio of Douro wines consisting of Quinta do Vesuvio, Quinta do Ataíde, Altano, and Prats & Symington (a widely acclaimed joint venture that produces Chryseia and Post Scriptum). We have recently launched a new project, Quinta da Fonte Souto, in the Alto Alentejo sub-region of Portalegre.
We are the leading vineyard owners in the Douro Valley with 26 Quintas covering a total of 2,255 ha of which 1,024 ha are under vine. The remainder is mostly natural mediterranean scrub with some olive and citrus groves. Our largest vineyard is Quinta do Vesuvio in the Douro Superior with 133 ha, and our smallest is the 7 ha Quinta da Madalena in the Rio Torto valley. All our vineyards are managed under a strict minimum intervention policy and 112 ha are organic, which make them the largest area of certified organic vineyard in northern Portugal.
The Douro is the world’s largest area of mountain vineyard and a Unesco World Heritage site. Our vines are planted on steeply terraced hillsides and much vineyard work continues to be done by hand - an increasing rarity in the world’s great wine regions. Our indigenous vines provide low yields of very high quality grapes, due to their natural adaptation to our climate and our well-draining schistous soils.
Many of the region's historic vineyards are owned by our family, including Vesuvio, Malvedos, Bomfim, Cavadinha, Senhora da Ribeira, Tua, Canais, Retiro, Ataíde and Roriz (the latter with the Prats of Bordeaux). We are unique amongst the historic port companies in that all our working family members farm their own vineyards, along with those under the family’s joint company ownership.
Our ports and wines consistently win major international wine awards. We produced the only port made this century to score 100 points in the Wine Spectator: Dow’s 2007 Vintage Port. Dow’s 2011 Vintage Port scored an exceptional 99 points in the Wine Spectator in 2014 and was placed at No.1 in the prestigious Top 100 Wines. Chryseia 2011 was placed at No.3 in the same year, the highest ever ranking for a Portuguese red wine, and Chryseia has now appeared in the list three times.
We are leading innovators in viticulture and winemaking with a dedicated R&D team. We run experimental vineyards at Quinta da Cavadinha in the Pinhão valley, at Quinta do Ataíde in the Vilariça valley and at Quinta do Bomfim. Our grape variety libraries at Ataíde (53 grape varieties) and at Bomfim (31 grape varieties) are the largest collection of indigenous varieties in Portugal. Through these projects we are aiming to preserve our country's viticultural heritage whilst conducting important analysis on the ability of our vines to adapt to climate change.
We developed the first modern treading lagar in 1998, which represented a significant advance in the making of premium quality ports. These now operate in four of our specialist estate wineries producing outstanding ports in the classic way.
We run three award-winning visitor centres with highly professional, passionate and knowledgeable teams of guides: the Graham's 1890 Lodge, the Cockburn's Port Cellars (both in Vila Nova de Gaia across the river from Porto), and Quinta do Bomfim in Pinhão in the Douro. The Graham's Lodge is home to Vinum, a restaurant that combines fine wine with Portuguese gastronomy.
We own and run three distribution companies dedicated to the sales and marketing of family-owned fine wines and ports: Portfolio in Portugal, Fells in the UK, and Premium Port Wines in the USA. We are proud to work with an excellent network of distributors who sell our ports and wines in over 100 countries around the world.
In 2017 we acquired a beautiful estate called Quinta da Fonte Souto in the Serra de São Mamede, part of the Portalegre sub-region in the Alto Alentejo region of southern Portugal. We believe that this relatively high altitude region has fantastic potential for producing fine wines.
We support several projects that contribute to the wellbeing of our region. Every year for the last eleven years we have donated an ambulance to different Volunteer Fire Brigades in the Douro region which are used to serve the local community. We support Bagos d’Ouro, an organisation that helps underprivileged children in the Douro. Each year we provide scholarships to two new students for the viticulture and oenology degree at UTAD (Vila Real), Portugal’s leading university in this field. We have been a long-term sponsor of the UTAD birds of prey programme that releases rehabilitated birds into the Douro region.
We are long-term sponsors of the Institute of Master of Wine and the Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET).
