If wine pips found in ancient archaeological sites are any indication, people have been making wine in the rolling hills of Portugal’s Douro Valley since a few thousand years B.C.E. Centuries later, it became the world’s first regulated wine region, and in 1756 was demarcated for the creation of a port. As of 2018, Portugal was the 11th-largest wine-producing country in the world, though it still generated only about 161 million gallons of wine a year (compared to over a billion each from Spain, France and Italy).
But that long history hasn’t been without its valleys. Less than 200 years ago, the country’s entire wine industry was on the brink of extinction. A business historically hostile to women, one female entrepreneur not only survived she sustained the entire industry.