All of the wineries that I visited on my September trip to the Douro Valley were family owned concerns except for one, Caves Santa Marta, a cooperative. Today’s post is about Quinta Do Beijo located in Celeiró do Douro. The winery owns 15 hectares of vineyards and olive trees. They make a range of port wines and still wines.

The two pictures above are of the father and son team who we met. The father, Professor Miguel Videira Monteiro, is responsible for the growth and development of the farm and the son just recently joined the business. In these pictures they are showing old presses that were used in the winery.

As in all of the wineries we saw a number of older barrels. In this particular winery we also saw one that had recently been restored, quite a laborious process.

I love these old barrels and wish I had space for one in my home but of course my apartment isn’t big enough.

One of the parts of the visit to this particular winery that I enjoyed most was that each child in the family gets a pipe of port when they are born. That Port is the colheita (vintage) from their birth year. We tasted a number of the different ones that the children had.

You can see the names on the pipes in this picture. I would love to be able to buy one of these pipes for my son.

In addition to wanting to have my own pipe resting in their winery, I really liked this wine called Porta Celeiró D’Oiro Douro Riserva from 2011. A blend of the traditional Port varieties, Touriga Nacional, Touriga Franca and Tinta Roriz. It was a big and plushy wine with juicy tannins, ripe black and red fruits and a hint of spice. At 13.5% alcohol it paired well with their local meat and pork dishes.

We also tried the 2009 of the same wine. It was even more elegant and enjoyable. Touriga needs a bit of time in the bottle in my opinion.

I took so many photos on this trip I thought I would just share a few more. The man in the picture below is a wine journalist from Poland. He had an amazing eye and took a series of pictures of everything red one day and then anything with a faucet the next, if memory serves. He was lovey. I need to find the name of his blog and link to it. Marius Kapczyński is one of the most famous wine bloggers in Poland apparently. Lovely guy. I wish I could read Polish. And did you know that Polish people under some Portuguese and vice versa because the accents are similar….