“We [CVRBI], last year, had around 22 million liters of wine in the region and, this year, we hope to have a value around that order of magnitude. Although, as the saying goes, 'even washing the baskets is vintage'. And we haven't even started to fill the grape baskets yet, in most areas, and therefore, until the end of the harvest it is a little difficult to make a certain forecast”, he said.

The official predicts that this year's wine is of good quality due to the rain that fell in the region last week.

The rains “were important”, because in some areas the vines were under water stress and “the increase in soil moisture will allow the plants to hydrate a little more and the maturation to be carried out in a more balanced way”.

“In short, I think we will have a year of normal production (…), let's hope that São Pedro will help us, as they say, so that we have a vintage, in qualitative terms, as we hope,” he said.

At this moment, according to Rodolfo Queirós, “the indicators are for this, the grapes are good, they are healthy”.

The president of CVRBI admits “that things can go quite well” in the area of ​​influence of the CVRBI, which is headquartered in the city of Guarda.

The harvest has already started in the southern part of the CVRBI area (Cova da Beira and municipalities in the district of Castelo Branco), while in the northern part (namely in the municipalities of Pinhel, Trancoso and Figueira de Castelo Rodrigo, in the district of Guarda) it will begin in the second half of this month.

Due to the pandemic caused by Covid-19, for the second consecutive year, that entity is sensitizing its associates so that, during the harvest, they adopt good hygiene and safety practices, in order to minimize the risk of contagion.

CVRBI is headquartered in the city of Guarda, at Solar do Vinho, and covers the wine growing areas of Castelo Rodrigo, Pinhel and Cova da Beira, in the districts of Guarda and Castelo Branco, which correspond to an area of ​​20 municipalities, where about five thousand growers are accounted for.

In the CVRBI area, with close to 16 thousand hectares of vineyards and a wide variety of grape varieties (highlighting the whites Syria, Arinto and Fonte Cal and the reds Tinta Roriz, Rufete, Touriga Nacional, Trincadeira and Jaen), there are around 60 wine producers, four of which are co-op wineries and the rest are private producers.