Portugal Wine Tourism Beyond the Douro: 195,000 Alentejo Visits, 15,804 in Melgaço and No Count for the Rest

What Portugal counts about wine, and what it leaves out

The production and export side of Portuguese wine is well documented. ViniPortugal, using INE customs data, puts 2025 wine exports at €953.5 million and 340.6 million litres, a value change of minus 1.09% and an average of €2.80 a litre. Certified DOC and IGP wine was 52% of export value and Port about 31%. AICEP, citing Informa D&B, gives about 171,300 hectares of vineyard in 2024, down 5%. The OIV's preliminary 2025 report put Portuguese production at 6.2 million hectolitres, down 11%, eleventh in the world and fifth in Europe. Its final 2025 deck, read from chart labels, shows 6.0 million hectolitres and tenth place. Turismo de Portugal counts 14 wine regions.

The tourism side has programmes and prizes but no census. The Wine Tourism Action Programme, running since March 2019, reports more than 80 projects, more than €94 million of investment and 3,800 people trained. Turismo de Portugal won the FIBEGA award for best wine-tourism destination in the world in November 2024. No source we found counts visits to Portuguese wine producers nationally. Spain's route network, by comparison, publishes a national total: 2,977,115 visits to wineries and wine museums in 2023, of which 70.5% were to wineries.

The legal gap is the cause. APENO's president told Lusa on 28 January 2025 that the Government has no official concept, no legislation and does not treat enoturismo as an economic activity, and the association asked for an activity code or a register like the one for tourist entertainment operators. Our own planning notes had called Decree-Law 63/2019 the enoturismo decree. A secondary legal digest describes it as the regime for research and development institutions, with no mention of wine, and we have not read the Diário da República text. We treat the claim as wrong and report it below.

The national figure that circulates is APENO's €800 million a year. It first appears in an APENO release of 21 October 2024 for the year 2023, and again in Lusa on 28 January 2025, with 40,000 agents, 100,000 jobs and an estimate based on the billing of its 124 members. In July 2022 the same association gave €410 million and 60,000 agents. The value doubled while the number of agents fell by a third, and no method has been published for the change. APENO also cites about three million wine-tourism visitors a year as a Turismo de Portugal figure. We found no Turismo de Portugal publication that contains it.

The Alentejo: the one region that counts its visits

The Alentejo is the one wine region outside the Douro that publishes a recurring visit count. CVR Alentejana reported 92.2 million litres of certified wine sold in 2024, up 8% or 6.7 million litres, the best result in five years. DOC wine rose 11% and Regional Alentejano 7%. Red was 66.8 million litres. Exports fell 2.4% in volume and about 30% of output is exported, led by Brazil, Switzerland, the United States, the United Kingdom and Poland. The commission quotes about 20 million litres exported and a target of 40 million by 2031. It reports 23,300 hectares of vineyard, which is about 13.6% of the national area (derived from AICEP's 171,300).

Harvests swing more than sales. The commission describes the 2025 harvest as particularly scarce at about 80 million litres, and forecasts 108 million for 2026. It calls that increase 20%. Against 80 million it is 35% (derived), so the base of the 20% is not stated. A Nova SBE study published in May 2026 finds that the Alentejo is 16.4% of national wine production, and that the region's wine sector generated more than €1.45 billion for the Portuguese economy, €673 million of GDP and more than 21,000 direct jobs in 2023. Those are multiplier results for the whole wine sector. They are not tourism figures, and 21,000 direct jobs sits oddly beside the commission's roughly 1,500 associated growers and agents.

The visit count comes from an annual survey of the operators on the Rota dos Vinhos do Alentejo. For 2024, 76 operators were surveyed with a response rate of 86.84%, and the result was 195,000 visits, up 21.6% on 2023, after a 27% rise in 2023. Visits to visitor and support centres rose 44.92%. In 2023 Portuguese residents were half of visitors, followed by Brazilians and Americans, and Canadians rose 75%. The commission has not published the split between paid and free visits, the number of wineries that are open, revenue per visit, or whether visits are counted as people or entries. The 86.84% response rate suggests that 195,000 may be the sum of respondents' answers and not an estimate for all operators, but that is our reading and the commission does not say.

Two later statements are weaker. A commission release of 23 February 2026 says the region has "surpassed 200,000 visitors a year", without a year or a method. The only dated figure remains 195,000. The commission's president told Bloomberg Línea in November 2025 that the target is one million visitors by the end of the decade, and that about 11% of the region's 1.89 million tourists visit a winery, against a goal of 20%. On 195,000 visits and 1.89 million tourists the share is 10.3% (derived), and a visit is not a tourist. If "end of the decade" means 2030, going from 195,000 in 2024 to one million needs about 31% growth every year for six years (derived). The last two years delivered 21.6% and 27%. ECO reported in May 2026 that the average ticket per visit rose by €16, the only spend figure published, with no baseline.

A 2016 presentation by the commission to Banco de Portugal reported more than 140,000 enotourism visitors, about 16% of the 875,138 hotel guests that INE counted in the region that year. Working back from the published growth rates, 2022 would have been about 126,000 visits (derived). That is below the 2016 figure, although the 2016 count came from a different set of about 70 operators and a different survey. Over eight years the count has grown by roughly 40% (derived), most of it in 2023 and 2024.

The wine towns themselves are small. INE's municipal profiles give Reguengos de Monsaraz 79,850 hotel-sector nights in 2024, up 27.6% on 2019 (derived), Vidigueira 19,778 and Redondo 16,379, all excluding local accommodation. Évora, the region's city, had 709,328 nights, 8.9 times Reguengos (derived). Wine visitors are therefore mostly day visitors from Évora, from the Lisbon road and from the coast, plus guests in rural lodging that INE's hotel survey does not capture. The region's overall nights, 4,604,816 in 2025 including campsites, and its heavy domestic mix are in our Alentejo tourism statistics. On the commission's 195,000 visits, that is about 4.2 winery visits for every 100 nights in the region (derived, mixed units).

Rioja is the useful comparator because it counts something similar. Its monitor recorded 912,438 winery visits in 2024 and 930,364 in 2025, with 226 of 600 wineries open to visitors in 2025 and 214 in 2024. That is about 4,264 visits for each open winery in 2024. The Alentejo equivalent is about 2,566 for each Rota operator (derived). The comparison is loose, because Rioja counts visits to all open wineries and the Alentejo counts members of one route, but it shows that the Alentejo's per-site traffic is the same order of magnitude as Rioja's.

Vinho Verde: a large region with one modelled number

The Comissão de Viticultura da Região dos Vinhos Verdes describes about 16,000 hectares of vineyard, nine sub-regions and a demarcation dating to 1908. It estimates production in 2025 at nearly 100 million litres and forecasts 106 million litres for the 2026 harvest, up 6%. Those are production figures, not certified or sold volumes, and the commission's own statistics page would not render for us, so the 2019 to 2025 series of certified, bottled and exported volume could not be built. About 390 bottlers were surveyed in 2024, many of them also growers.

Exports are the best-documented part. In January to November 2024 the region exported 42.3 million litres worth €106 million, up 31% in volume and 25% in value on the same period of 2023, according to the commission as quoted by Público. That is €2.51 a litre (derived), below the national average of €2.80 for 2025 and well below Madeira's roughly €6.74. White wine was 56% of regional sales at the end of November 2024. The €106 million is roughly 11% of Portugal's €964 million of 2024 wine exports (derived; the regional figure covers eleven months, so the full-year share is higher).

Alvarinho is the region's prestige product and the one with the clearest tourism story. In the Monção e Melgaço sub-region the commission reports 2,000 planted hectares, of which more than 1,514 are Alvarinho, at least 75.7% (derived), and 1,900 viticulturists and bottlers. That is about one hectare each (derived, definitions differ). A councillor in Monção put the Alvarinho grape price at about €1.20 a kilogram. ECO's account gives 12 million litres produced in the sub-region in 2025 without naming a source, which would be about 12% of regional production if the two figures were comparable (derived, mixed sources). Soalheiro reports 1.2 million bottles and €7.5 million of turnover, and Anselmo Mendes €5.5 million with about 70% sold abroad. Both are company figures.

Visits are where the data thin out. The commission has no visitor total, no property count and no enoturismo programme data that we could find. Quinta da Aveleda, Casa de Sezim and Palácio da Brejoeira publish no visitor counts. The single quantified visitor figure belongs to one municipality. The Observatório Turístico de Melgaço estimated 15,804 visitors in 2024, down from 18,128 in 2023, a fall of 12.8% (derived). The estimate is modelled. An online questionnaire went to 806 contacts, 227 finished it, and the number is the sum of reported site visits divided by the average number of sites visited per respondent. About 60.2% of respondents visited the Solar do Alvarinho, 80.2% tasted local products and 71.8% bought them. The largest group was Portuguese, followed by Spaniards, mostly Galician day excursionists. The count covers all of Melgaço's visitor sites, and wine is only part of it.

The trade is pointing visitors at a premium product. On the weekend of 9 June 2026, 16 producers opened their cellars in Monção e Melgaço for the first Open Cellars event, with Turismo do Porto e Norte, aimed at tour operators, journalists and specialised visitors. No attendance figure was published. In a 2024 commission survey of its bottlers, 130 responded and 124 were valid, and 70.1% named wine tourism a priority. That is a statement of intent from a trade survey, not a count of visitors.

The tourism backdrop is growing steadily. The four sub-regions that make up most of the Vinho Verde territory, Alto Minho, Cávado, Ave and Tâmega e Sousa, had 3,827,772 nights in 2025, or 24.2% of the Norte region's 15,814,912 (derived), and grew 2.4% in the year. Foreign guests were 42.2% of Alto Minho's nights and 40.4% of Ave's in 2025 (derived), and Ave's foreign nights fell 3.3%. Eurostat's NUTS III series starts in 2020 in the API we used, so there is no 2019 baseline. The Norte picture, with Metro Porto taking most of the growth, is in our Northern Portugal tourism statistics.

Two claims about the region do not survive the numbers. The commission's own site gives about 16,000 hectares, against the Alentejo commission's 23,300 and the 39,486 hectares of Port growers recorded by the IVDP, so "the largest demarcated region" is not supported on area. A 2020 trade-press piece placed Vinho Verde second in domestic sales volume behind the Alentejo and second in exports behind the Douro. "Portugal's most exported wine" has no current source. Port was about 31% of export value in 2025, and Vinho Verde roughly 11% in 2024 (derived).

Madeira and Pico: wine as a small trade in a large destination

Madeira wine sold about 3.1 million litres for roughly €20.6 million in 2025, down 2.6% in volume and 1.2% in value, according to the Madeira wine institute IVBAM and DREM as reported by DNoticias in January 2026. Exports took about 81.6% of volume and 72.8% of value (derived from rounded inputs). France was the largest market with 29.6% of volume, then Portugal 18.4%, Germany 8.4%, Japan 7.8%, the United Kingdom 7.3% and the United States 6.8%. Bottled wine was 77.3% of volume at €7.88 a litre, below the €8.47 of 2023. Only five companies export: Justino's, Madeira Wine Company, Henriques & Henriques, Pereira d'Oliveira and Barbeito.

The vineyard is tiny. A 2025 Cadernos do Território booklet from the UNESCO Chair at Évora gives about 400 hectares and about 1,200 growers, an authors' estimate that calls the exact number unknown. Jancis Robinson gave about 1,500 growers in 2010 and Wikipedia about 2,100. The 2025 harvest was about 2,874 tonnes, with 89.95% going to Madeira DOP. The 2026 harvest began on 24 August, a week early, and a regional announcement forecast more than 3,000 tonnes and an increase of about 10%. Against 2,874 tonnes that is 4.4% (derived). Regional support per tonne of Tinta Negra, the main variety, rose from €55 in 2022 to €200 in 2024/25 and €255 in 2026, which is a support rate described in the press as POSEI funding, not a market price, because no market grape price is published.

Wine is a rounding error beside the island's tourism. The Madeira region recorded 12.9 million nights in 2025 and €887.1 million of accommodation revenue (DREM), which our Madeira tourism statistics cover in full. Wine sales of €20.6 million are 2.3% of that revenue (derived, scopes unconfirmed). Sales within the Madeira region were 468,200 litres worth €4.6 million, out of 561,200 litres sold in Portugal, so the island's own market is about 15% of volume.

There is no count of visitors to the wine lodges. Blandy's, Pereira d'Oliveira, Henriques & Henriques and the Adegas de São Francisco publish nothing, and neither IVBAM nor the regional tourism body has a wine-tourism statistic. The nearest evidence is a University of Madeira survey of the 2019 Festa do Vinho, with 318 respondents and a margin of 4.89%. Only 3% of tourists named the festival as the main reason for the trip. They spent €128.68 a day and stayed 7.6 nights, mostly British (30%), German (18%) and French (13%). Justino's announced a €4 million to €5 million Funchal visitor centre in 2023, and we could not confirm that it opened.

The trade is also falling. In the first half of 2026 Madeira wine sold about 1.2 million litres for €8.9 million, down 10.5% in volume and 4.7% in value, with second-quarter volume down 21.2%. EU exports fell 25.1% by volume, with France down 29.5% and Belgium down 72%, while China rose 53% and domestic sales rose 22.3%.

Four familiar claims about Madeira wine deserve a verdict. That it "never spoils" is overstated: expert opinion calls it virtually indestructible and puts its ageing potential at a century or two, and that is not a tested shelf life. That the American Founding Fathers toasted the Declaration of Independence with it is undocumented, since the Rare Wine Co. says it has seen no record of what the signers drank, although Madeira's popularity in colonial America is well attested. That it is the oldest fortified wine has no source. The oldest dated bottle is a 1715 Terrantez that Christie's sold in 2015 as "believed to be the oldest dated Madeira in existence".

In the Azores the wine story is Pico. The Landscape of the Pico Island Vineyard Culture was inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 2004 (reference 1117, criteria iii and v), with a core zone of 987 hectares and a buffer of 1,924. The Azores harvested 1,048 tonnes of grapes in 2025, of which Pico supplied 956 tonnes, or 91.2% (derived; the press release said 92%), and Terceira 36 tonnes. The regional wine institute registered 35 producers, a record. The Pico cooperative, founded in 1949, has about 250 members and sells about 10% of its wine abroad in 16 countries. No source gives hectares beyond the UNESCO zone, volumes by island or any visitor count. One trade article claims that 75% of Azores wine is drunk by tourists. It gives no source, and we do not repeat it. The islands' 3,132,684 nights are in our Azores tourism statistics.

Putting the regions on one page

The table sorts the regions by what they can show. The Alentejo has a survey, a target and a rate of growth. The Douro has one dated lodge count and a large body of other data in our Port article. Every other region has production and export figures and no visits.

The foreign comparators come in other units, which is a warning against ranking. Atout France reported 12 million wine tourists in 2023 without defining the term. Mendoza's wineries reported 1,264,004 visits in 2022 in their own surveys. La Cité du Vin in Bordeaux received 390,000 visitors in 2025, down 6%. Napa's 3.7 million in 2023 are visitors to the valley for any purpose. Portugal's international wine-tourism standing rests on awards, and the data to test it do not yet exist.

Where the wine trade is under pressure

Yield, not demand, drives much of the volatility. The Alentejo's 2025 harvest of about 80 million litres followed 2024 certified sales of 92.2 million. The national harvest was 6.2 million hectolitres in 2025, down 10.5% according to IVV provisional data. The Vinho Verde forecast for 2026 is up 6% and the Alentejo's up sharply. Port sales fell 10.0% in cases in January to August 2026, and Madeira lost 10.5% in the first half.

The United States is the market to watch. A 15% US tariff on EU wine applied from August 2025, and the IVDP recorded a 23.2% fall in US Port volume in January to August 2026. In 2024 the United States took 6.7% of Madeira wine volume and 12.5% of its value, at €2.5 million, down from a peak of €3.4 million in 2022. The Alentejo lists the United States among its top five export markets. Any wine-tourism growth case that relies on American visitors should note that the same market is buying less Port and Madeira at home.

What this means for travelers, businesses and analysts

Travelers. Wine visits outside the Douro depend on small operators and on booking. In the Alentejo, base yourself in Évora, which holds almost nine times the nights of Reguengos, and plan day visits to the Rota operators. The wine towns have few beds, with a capacity listed as 763 in Reguengos in the DGEconomia series. In Madeira, the harvest started on 24 August in 2026 and the 2019 Festa do Vinho survey ran from 29 August to 11 September, so check current dates for the festival. In the north, the Open Cellars weekend in Monção and Melgaço is a trade event, so ordinary visitors should book cellar visits directly. Our guides to the Alentejo, Évora and Madeira cover where to stay.

Tourism businesses and investors. Wine tourism in Portugal is an add-on product, not a destination economy. In Madeira wine earns 2.3% of accommodation revenue. In the Alentejo the commission's headline is 195,000 visits against 4.6 million nights, and the only spend figure is a €16 rise in the average ticket. An underwriter has no register of operators, no activity code and no count of paying visits. The thresholds that would change this assessment are a national register or activity code, a paid-versus-free split in the Alentejo survey, a published Vinho Verde visitor count, and a Madeira lodge count. The Alentejo's one million target needs about 31% growth a year, and the commission should be asked for the base.

Journalists and analysts. The safe figures are the Alentejo's 195,000 visits in 2024 (76 operators, 86.84% response), Madeira wine's 3.1 million litres and €20.6 million in 2025, Vinho Verde's €106 million and 42.3 million litres in January to November 2024, Portugal's €953.5 million of wine exports in 2025, and the Pico World Heritage reference 1117. Do not repeat "€800 million a year" as a measured value, "the Alentejo has 40% of the market" without saying it is a share of certified-wine retail value, "Vinho Verde is the largest region", "Madeira never spoils", or the Founding Fathers toast. Do not call Decree-Law 63/2019 an enoturismo law. The series finding is that Portugal's wine regions count their bottles carefully and their visitors hardly at all, which adds wine to the list of tourism segments, with golf, surf and pilgrimage, where the public number is a survey or a press release.