Wine lovers – do you know Região dos Vinhos de Lisboa?

Douro and Alantejo are the most popular wine regions among wine travelers. Both regions are easy to reach from Lisbon.

But to really enjoy both the wines and the beautiful nature you need at least a couple of days.

If you don’t have the time and still want to add a wine adventure to you Lisbon travel don’t panic. Lisbon has its own wine region which can easily be combined with other attractions – like a Sintra & Vineyard day 🙂

Get an introduction to the region, its wines and lists of places in Lisbon that serves our local wines on Culinary Backstreet.

Capital Grapes: Lisbon’s home grown wine scene

The main characteristics of Lisbon wines are freshness and minerality, due to the temperate climate and calcareous soil. In general, varieties produced closer to the ocean tend to be lighter, while those from more protected zones are more structured and full-bodied. Different from those of the Douro or Alentejo regions, Lisbon production is distributed among smaller farmers, who are building new cellars or renewing old ancestral ones. Reconnecting to the wine culture and implementing new technologies, they are trying to enhance the few native wine varieties that survived the phylloxera outbreak that blighted Europe’s vineyards in the late 19th century, as well as to improve the foreign varieties (mainly French, such as Chardonnay or Cabernet), which were used to repopulate those vineyards afterwards. Read the story by Syma Tariq & Francesca Savoldi in Culinary Backstreets