Kopke - Premium Porthaus und Weingut in Portugals Porto Region

The Port Winery with German roots is famous for its vintage port wines, as well as its first-class Collection, with which Kopke has been awarded numerous prizes and distinctions on an international level for years. Their line of excellent Douro wines has also successfully established itself as an integral part of the Kopke wine portfolio. The grapes for Kopkes specialities are mainly from the quintas of São Luiz, Lobata and Mesquita, located on the left bank of the Douro River in the village of Cima-Corgo, close to Pinhão. For the production of its wines, the winery mainly uses the varieties Touriga Nacional, Touriga Francesca, Tinta Roriz and Tinta Barroca.

The winery itself is located in Rua Serpa Pinto in Vila Nova de Gaia, where most of the traditional port wineries are located. Traditionally, as hundreds of years ago, Kopke's winery uses "pipen" (wooden barrels) for the production of the first-class port wines.

The German roots of the winery lead us back to Hamburg in 1636, where the head of the family, merchant Nikolaus Köpke, was the Consul General of the Hanseatic League at that time. With the decision to transfer the life of the family and the business to Lisbon, Köpke's son Christian Köpke founded an export company based in Porto for Portuguese goods, merchandise and specialities, especially wine. The trade name "Port wine" was not yet coined at that time and only became known under this name around 1680 with increasing popularity. Thus Köpke was one of the first leading export companies for port wine (the umlaut "ö" was replaced over the years by the "o", which is easier for Portuguese to pronounce).

For more than two centuries the company was to remain in the hands of the Kopke family, who, apart from the success of their own port wine house, played a major role in the founding of Real Companhia, the royal trading company for port wine. In 1870 the company was first given out of "Kopke's" hands and sold to the British family named Bohane, who ran the business from London. The circumstances of the Second World War and financial difficulties led to the sale to the well-known port wine merchant Manuel Barros in 1953. Today Kopke has been owned by the Sogevinus Group since 2006, which also carries prestigious names such as Gilberts, Cálem and Burmester under its umbrella.