The Quinta do Romeu started as a vision Clemente Guimarães Menéres once had.

Born in 1843 in Vila da Feira, Clemente da Fonseca Guimarães was a man of great energy. He travelled to Rio de Janeiro when he was 15 to join some relatives who lived there. He returned five years later and became involved in commerce. He later went back to Rio de Janeiro. He travelled through Central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East trying to single out markets. This was a new path to tame. This is perhaps why he added a surname - Menéres - to his original surname. He felt he neither fitted in the country nor in the family. He founded several companies to export Portuguese products, namely wines, tinned food and cork. He set up the first food cannery and the first cork factory in Portugal. 

In 1874, at 31, Clemente Menéres left on a horse-cart to Trás-os-Montes to buy the cork tree groves he had heard of so often. He founded an estate, the Quinta do Romeu, with thousands of hectares scattered over eight councils in the Bragança district. He restored the vineyards which were destroyed by the grapevine pest and extended the existing olive groves. Because the quality of wines and the terroir legitimised it, when the Douro Region was re-structured in 1907 he was authorised to produce Port Wine.
He took part in many exhibitions all over Europe and in North and South America. In his book “Cartas do Japão”, the diplomat Venceslau de Morais commends him highly for his participation in the Osaka Exhibition in 1903.

He founded the current company - Clemente Menéres Lda. in 1902. After his death in 1916, his sons, grandchildren and great-grandchildren followed in his footsteps.
In the sixties, one of his sons, Manoel Menéres, was personally committed to recovering and refurbishing three local villages, opened kindergartens for the children and a restaurant to cover their entire running expenses, the Maria Rita, and also built the Museu de Curiosidades.
His endeavouring spirit was carried on by his descendants, who continue to improve the Quinta do Romeu with care and dedication but also with a great deal of determination.
The Company lived through the troubled years of the implantation of the Portuguese Republic, two World Wars, the 1974 April Revolution, the admission into the European Union and now this global society.

In Romeu, we seek harmony among people, among crops, in the environment and the economy, as if it were music. Over and beyond agriculture, with soul. Ethically committed. We are aware that our feet rest on solid ground and the Divine is above, in the Sky. Fed by Both.

March 2008
João Pedro Menéres