8 Generations of Winemakers

Vincent Bouchard

Vincent grew up walking the Grand and Premier Cru vineyards of Bouchard Père et Fils in Burgundy beside his father Joseph, and spent school holidays judging oak trees in the family forests of Burgundy, Nevers, Allier and the Vosges. In 1978 his uncle introduced him to Robert Mondavi, who persuaded him to study wine marketing in California; ten years later, at a Pinot Noir celebration in Oregon, he met Kay Steffey, a Californian specialist in Italian wines.

After falling for each other, Kay and Vincent fell for the Douro Valley on their first visit in 1989. In 1992 they bought Quinta do Tedo — 14 hectares of vines, 4 hectares of olive and fruit trees, a winery with traditional 18th-century vinification lagares and ageing cellars, two houses and one donkey — and set about restoring it.

Today, Vincent and his elder son Paolo distribute premium French, Austrian and Hungarian oak barrels, as well as earthenware and glass vessels for winemaking and ageing, across North America, Australia, New Zealand and Italy — and Vincent guides his children, alongside Jorge Alves, in Quinta do Tedo's continuous improvement, according to his grandfather Antonin's teaching: "wine is made first in the vineyard, second in the cellar."

Vincent always said his goal was never to force this land into a Burgundian vision of what it could be, but to preserve the uniqueness of what was already here: the 18th-century estate's foundations, the polyculture of native grape and olive varieties on dry-stone-walled terraces, the Mediterranean shrub forests, and the Tedo river and valley ecosystem.