We are based just south of Porto where we have a small cooperage that specialises in producing virgin oak barrels, used port wine barrels (and other used barrels)and STR casks. The work at our cooperage is split more or less evenly between producing virgin oak barrels and refurbishing used barrels (where as well as our main focus on Port and Madeira barrels, we also supply Sherry barrels and other used barrels from a variety of sources).

Our cooperage is now in its third generation of ownership, having started as a business repairing barrels for the Port wine trade 80 years ago, we are now mainly an export business selling barrels all round the world. Over the lasst 20 years, we have made considerable investments in more modern cooperage machinery to complement  the skills of our expert coopers. This allows us to produce higher quantities of our barrels without sacrificing the quality.

Northern Portugal has a long tradition of cooperage and there is a deep reservoir of cooperage skills and costs are typically lower than many other European countries, which means you can find attractive prices for the quality of workmanship on offer. We certainly take enormous pride in the skill of our coopers and we welcome all our customers to come and visit our cooperage to see for themselves!

Most of our work with used barrels is refurbishing used port wine barrels and madeira barrels, seeing as they are available locally – when we refurbish the barrels, we do all we can to preserve all the unique flavours that these barrels bring, whilst ensuring that the barrels are watertight and ready for filling. This means that any staves we replace are taken from other barrels in the batch, we keep a few litres of the original port in the barrels to stop them drying out and we never use sulphur – for us preserving the magical flavours of these barrels is a source of enormous pride!