The Côa Valley that gives the wine its name

The Côa river is a tributary of the Douro that runs through Vila Nova de Foz Côa and Muxagata, in the heart of the Douro Superior. It is from this river, and the valley it draws, that Palato do Côa takes its name.

An open-air gallery

On the banks of the Côa lies one of the largest open-air Palaeolithic rock-art galleries in Europe: thousands of engravings cut into the rock tens of thousands of years ago, listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is a valley of deep time, where humankind has left marks for millennia.

The same schist

Schist is the predominant soil of the valley — the same substrate as the old Palato vines and of the very rocks where the Côa figures are engraved. A poor, free-draining soil that forces the vine to root deep and gives the wine concentration and minerality.

It is the altitude and coolness of this valley that give tension and acidity to the house whites, of Rabigato and Viosinho — and the wine carries, in its very name, the river that draws the place. In these warm schists of the Douro Superior there is also a red grape that finds here its best voice.