Background

The happy encounter of two aficionados

They'd known each other for a long time… The idea had been simmering in their heads for years. Jorge Roquette, owner of Quinta Do Crasto in Portugal and Jean-Michel Cazes, who owns Château Lynch-Bages in Bordeaux, went into partnership in 2002 to create Xisto – Roquette & Cazes, a Portuguese grand vin produced in the Douro valley.

Its name, “Xisto”, (pronounced “sheestoo”) depicts the schist soil of the great terroirs of the Douro valley: that magnificent valley whose vines seem to have taken over the mountainside and where a continuous succession of terraces marks the majestic landscape with deep grooves.