Valpaços Counts 304 Hectares of Burnt Vineyard as It Picks the Grapes the Fire Left Behind

The vines that survived are being picked, and they are heavy. The vines that did not are still standing in Sonim with the grapes on them, because there is no point cutting fruit off a burnt plant. Valpaços has counted 304 hectares of vineyard hit by the fire that ran from 28 July to 2 August, and the 2026 harvest in Trás-os-Montes is happening on both sides of that line at once.

The regional picture is genuinely good. The Instituto da Vinha e do Vinho (Institute of Vine and Wine) puts Trás-os-Montes up about 15 percent this campaign, one of the four strongest regional gains alongside the Douro, the Alentejo and the Península de Setúbal. That means roughly 94,000 hectolitres against 84,000 last year, off 11,010 hectares stretching from Montalegre to the Mirandês plateau. The institute credits a good crop load and good qualitative potential, with the phytosanitary picture holding despite isolated powdery mildew and some sunburn from the heat and the water deficit. Nationally the same forecast puts Portugal at 6.7 million hectolitres, up 12 percent.

What the fire took

The blaze started in Valpaços, in the district of Vila Real, and spread into Mirandela, Vinhais and Macedo de Cavaleiros in Bragança, touching 20 parishes. We reported the fire itself in August; the 304-hectare figure is the accounting that follows, inside a much larger loss running through olive and almond groves in a municipality that lives essentially off agriculture.

Hélder Martins farms 20 hectares of vines at Sonim and lost about 17 of them, along with six hectares of olives, including centenarian vines he describes as living sculptures in the open air and which cannot be replaced. His company, Encostas de Sonim, ages its wines at least three years before release, so there is stock in the cellar for the top ranges; for the entry-level wines he will buy around 30,000 kilos of grapes from neighbours. He is also president of the Sonim e Barreiros parish council, which saw 90 percent of its farmland burn. This is smallholding country, he points out, where a thousand square metres is not a rounding error.

Fernando Faria, in the same village, lost about six hectares of vines and two of century-old olives and will not make wine at all this year. He is harvesting to sell the grapes instead, leaning on stock at his family firm, Quinta do Gago. "It is a year to forget," he told the news agency Lusa.

Neither man was insured. Both are looking at the state support that opened after the government recognised the fire as a natural catastrophe, a scheme whose application window closes at 17:00 on 27 October.

Twenty days early, and increasingly mechanised

Picking began about 20 days earlier than last year. At Casa José Pedro, on its fifth vintage at Rio Torto in Valpaços, the reds are already coming in and the whites are up 15 to 20 percent. António Fernandes, who runs the agricultural side, calls it a year of excellent quality and satisfactory quantity, crediting winter rain, healthy water reserves and weather that suited flowering and fruit set. Labour is the constraint: the estate hand-picks its premium blocks and mechanises everything else, which he says is the only way its entry-level wines stay competitive. It farms 75 hectares, having started at Rio Torto in 2022.

What this means if you live in or buy from the north

• Volume is up, but not everywhere. A 15 percent regional gain says nothing about Sonim. Small Valpaços producers may have no 2026 wine at all, or a wine made from bought-in fruit.
• 27 October is the date that matters. Uninsured growers in the 32 recognised parishes have until 17:00 that day to apply for catastrophe support.
• Old vines are the permanent loss. Yields recover in a few seasons. Centenarian plantings do not come back, and neither does what they contributed to a wine.

The contrast will not resolve quickly. Trás-os-Montes will report one of the better vintages of recent years, and Valpaços will spend the next decade replanting the part of it that burned.