DALVA PORT WINE

Dalva is an old, traditional port wine house founded in 1862. Until the 1920s, when Brazilian C. Da. Silva bought the house through his wife's family, the house had gone under a different name and had primarily sold their port wines in Portugal.

But with Da Silva at the helm, the house began exporting to both Brazil and North America, and later also to Asia and Europe. The production of port wines at Dalva took a U-turn in the early 1970s. Up until then, they had purchased unaged wine from other producers, which they aged and bottled. But over the next decade, Dalva began growing its own grapes, built a winery directly on the Quinta, and generally focused hard on raising the quality.

This particularly paid off in 1978, when the house produced its first “homegrown” vintage port. Dalva is now a highly respected port wine house, specializing in tawnies and white ports from the last century.