Kopke

The history of Kopke begins in 1636 when Nicolau Kopkë, the Consul General of the Hanseatic League of merchants and commerce, travelled from his native Hamburg to Portugal. Establishing a shipping company a mere two years later, Nicolau began exporting wine from the Douro Valley to Northern Europe, thereby marking Kopke as the oldest Port wine house in existence. For just over a century, Kopke existed as a wine buying company until the 1781 purchase of a Douro farm precipitated the transition to becoming a major producer, with the making fortified Port the new focus. While the world has changed dramatically during the intervening years, Kopke has not. The purchase of Quinta de São Luiz in 1992 established a site at which Kopke’s still Douro wines could be produced from the high-quality vineyards that surround the estate, with a variety of red and whites made there. However, it is the tawny ports for which Kopke are known, with incredible cellars filled with ancient liquids that continue to mark them out as unique in the landscape of Port production.