Adega de Pegões Red

It all started when the big landlord and beer magnate José Rovisco Pais donated his Pegões properties to the Lisbon State Hospitals. On these properties the Government implemented a large “colonization” project, donating land to thousands of agricultural workers and directing the plantation of 830 hectares of vineyard. The Cooperative was established on March the 7 th 1958 in order to give technical and logistic support to the “colons”. Part of the support consisted in the reception and processing of their grapes. The first Pegões wines where than born.

At the beginning the Cooperative received financial and technical support from the State.

As a consequence of the Portuguese revolution of 1974, the Cooperative was taken over and a period of instability followed. This process was later reversed and over the last fifteen years the Cooperative followed a systematic strategy of modernization and financial consolidation with the key objective of continuously improving the quality and value of its wines.

During this period the Cooperative spent about 15.000.000€ to buy new vinification and cold stabilization equipment and several batteries of vats for fermentation under controlled temperature. Other equipment purchased included pneumatic and vacuum presses, a modern bottle filling, labelling and packaging line, effluent treatment facilities, cellars for wine aging with more than 3.000 casks, improvements to the buildings and access roads, etc.

Advanced computing systems were installed for administrative and process control purposes.
The Pegões Terroir is located between two Nature Reserves – the Tagus estuary to the Northwest and the Sado on the Southwest, on the east side of the Arrabida hills and on the west side of the Alentejo´s province clays. The Pegões region is unique in climate and soil conditions.

The climate is Mediterraneam type and the soil, named “Pliocenico de Pegões”, is a sandy soil formed over millions of years by sand transported by the rivers Tagus and Sado. It is climate / soil combination that gives birth to the unique Pegões wines.