Wine production is a family tradition for Domingos Alves de Sousa: his father (Edmundo Alves de Sousa) and grandfather (Domingos Alves de Sousa) were both winegrowers in the Douro region. However, Domingos Alves de Sousa initially pursued a different career. Having graduated in Civil Engineering, he couldn't resist the dual pull (of the land and his heritage), and abandoned his profession in 1987 to dedicate himself exclusively to managing the estates he inherited and others he subsequently acquired, where he has been carrying out exemplary work in land consolidation and vineyard restructuring. The evolution of his winemaking activity is full of interesting, almost paradigmatic aspects and deserves a bit of history.

For a long time, he was a supplier to the well-known and prestigious companies Casa Ferreirinha and Sociedade dos Vinhos Borges. But the problems that affected the sector at the end of the 1980s, which resulted in an exaggerated increase in production costs, and especially the catastrophic 1988 harvest, led him to question the profitability of his farms. And it was this questioning that marked the turning point. Like many other Douro winegrowers, affected by the recession in which the Demarcated Region was struggling, he turned to valuing the "leftovers" of Port wine, that is, the table wine of the Douro, until then traditionally considered secondary to fortified wine.

Like many other Douro winegrowers, affected by the recession that the Demarcated Region was struggling with, he turned to valuing the "leftovers" of Port wine, that is, the table wine of the Douro, which until then had traditionally been considered inferior to fortified wine. Of course, this radical change of attitude required more than just goodwill and a desire to succeed: it required technical and professional training. He thus attended viticulture and oenology courses and, armed with this background, set to work restructuring his vineyards and, determined to forge his own path as a producer-bottler, built the winery on his Quinta da Gaivosa estate where he would henceforth vinify the production of the other estates.

After experimenting with various grape varieties, he selected those that proved most suitable for producing the best Douro Designation of Origin wines, and with them he produced and launched on the market, in mid-1992, what would be his first wine: the Quinta do Vale da Raposa white 1991, which quickly captivated connoisseurs and earned the highest praise. It was the beginning of a journey full of successes that has continued to this day, and which we will surely hear more about tomorrow.