Douro: €12m to leave unsold grapes on the vine — not to distill them
Portugal’s government earmarks €12m one-off aid at about €0.50/kg via IVDP for growers who cannot sell the 2026 crop — skipping distillation. A €100m credit line helps co-ops and firms pay growers; a permanent Douro solidarity fund is promised later.
Crisis aid usually means remove fruit, truck it, burn it into spirit. This package pays growers to leave grapes hanging.
ECO reports a one-off €12 million measure for Douro demarcated-region growers who cannot move the 2026 crop. Payments should land near €0.50 per kilogram, calculated per hectare on last year’s model, executed by IVDP. Presidency minister António Leitão Amaro stressed the difference from prior distillation aid: no remove-transport-still chain this time.
Alongside it sits a €100 million cash-flow credit line for co-ops and firms so they can pay growers for grapes. A permanent Douro solidarity fund is promised as a later structural tool. Terraces make crop-switching hard — UNESCO landscape logic that Leitão Amaro cited as a reason Douro needs special help.
Casa do Douro’s Rui Paredes called the measure “not ideal” but “possible.” Growers had dumped grapes at IVDP in protest days earlier. Leaving ripe fruit on the vine jars Douro culture; the state chose that over distillation this year.
Mini-concept: policy can buy silence in the market two ways — pull fruit into spirit, or pay for fruit that never leaves the wire. Same euro headline; different cellar smell.
A soft drink plant never got paid to leave ripe fruit on a schist terrace. Douro growers just did — at about fifty cents a kilo.
Remember: €12m one-off via IVDP at ~€0.50/kg to leave grapes unsold — not distillation — plus a €100m pay-the-grower credit line.
Source: ECO