Colares DOC

Colares is a Portuguese wine region centered on the Colares parish within the Sintra municipality. It carries Portugal's top wine classification, Denominação de Origem Controlada (DOC). Situated on the southwestern Atlantic coast, the vineyards rely on sandy dunes for shelter from powerful ocean winds. Vineyard acreage plummeted from roughly 2,500 acres in the 1940s to just 50 acres today due to suburban expansion.

From 1934 until 1994, only the local cooperative was permitted to use the Colares appellation. Because the vines are planted directly in sand, which phylloxera aphids cannot infest, these are among the few European vineyards that remain ungrafted onto American rootstocks. The region's ungrafted Ramisco vines rank among Portugal's oldest. Colares is famous for its deeply colored, full-bodied red wines, notable for their high astringent tannins.

Red wines, accounting for 75% of production, come from the Ramisco grape and are aged for over a decade before sale. White wines, made from a local Malvasia variant, undergo shorter aging.