Madeira Barbeito

Founded in 1946 by our grandfather Mario Barbeito de Vasconcelos our company has always been managed by members of our family. At the time of Barbeito’s foundation over 30 other Madeira Wine exporters were still operating in the business. Today only 7 companies can be found in the hard working business of exporting Madeira Wine. Step by step, our grandfather gained customers in many parts of the world, always trying to build a good and close relationship with them. In 1985, our mother, Manuela de Vasconcelos took our grandfather’s place – who died in that year - in the general management of Barbeito. Some of our actual customers and agents come from those old days. Like our grandfther, we like to keep the closest possible relationship with our customers around the world. In fact it was one of our mother’s great jobs: strenghen relationships with customers and agents due to the many trips and visits she made to many countries. It is good to see many people still asking for her in the wine fairs. At the beginning, our company concentrated its efforts in the production of wine to be sold only in bottle. Our grandfather introduced new concepts of marketing in the Madeira wine business and many new and innovative packagings like the wickered flagon. The quality of our wines gained good reputation among the consumers. This fact helped to settle a strong basis for Barbeito’s image and an increasing growth of sales along the years. As time went by our company increased its activities and ended up involved in the bulk wine exports in the beginning of the 70’s. This involvement brought many changes in Barbeito’s daily operating. More wine was sold and consequently the blending and lot preparation activities increased considerably. The competition among exporters in the bulk wine business was very high and small companies like ours had to fight a lot to keep that area of business active and profitable. However, during the 80’s we started realizing that Barbeito’s involvement in that kind of exports started to damage the quality of the bottled wine that was produced. The difficult decision to stop exporting wine in bulk only came in 1991 with the entrance of Ricardo Freitas in the company. In fact, 1991 was the year of the beginning of many changes in Vinhos Barbeito, being one of the most important the abandonment of the bulk wine business. This decision was the basis to start concentrating our efforts in just ageing, producing and blending the best wine we could. It was like going back to the past, when our company started operating and our grandfather just wanted to make and sell good bottled wine.