Address: Valenca do Douro, 5120-495 Tabuaco- Portugal
Phone: +351-254 732 800
Website: www.sandeman.eu
Hours: everyday March thru October from 10:30am to 12:30pm and 2:00pm to 6:30pm/ November to February Wednesday thru Sunday from 10:30am to 12:30pm and 2:00pm to 5:30pm/Nov. to Feb. Monday and Tuesdays only for group tours with reservations.

We welcome visitors to our sites, and our award-winning guides will show you around the atmospheric, chilly cellars where Sandeman is produced, and you can taste the characteristic woody air of the bodega and feel the atmosphere of 200 years of noble wines. Douro Quinta do Seixo located in the Cima-corgo, in the heart of the Douro Valley DOC, Sandeman’s guides can take you on a tour around the cellars, show you the production processes that have been used over the centuries and how they have evolved. There is a stunning view of the river Douro to admire, whilst you taste a specially selected range of our finest wines.

In 1928 George Massiot Brown was an artist working for the Lochend Printing company, who approached Sandeman for business. Sandeman requested some designs for posters, and the remarkable silhouette of the Don was born. Dressed like the Spanish caballeros de Jerez in a Portuguese student’s cape and wide-brimmed hat, the Don cuts a dark, dramatic figure with his glass of ruby coloured Porto. George Massiot Brown was well aware that French poster artists were very much in vogue, so signed his artwork as G. Massiot to hide his Scottish origins.

Little did he know that The Don would be the very first iconic logo for a wine. Recognised throughout the world, The Don represents the mystery and sensuality that communicates the Sandeman brand. In 1790 George Sandeman, an ambitious young Scotsman from Perth, founded a wine business in London. With a £300 loan he bought his first wine cellar and started trading in Porto and Sherry from Tom’s Coffee House.

Sandeman was the first company to brand a cask. In 1805, Sandeman started fire branding their trademark GSC (George Sandeman & Co.) in a crow’s foot design on all pipes they sold, thus giving the wine a name that assured quality. At the end of the nineteenth century “brand” names were largely unheard of but Sandeman wanted to give their customers a guarantee of quality so in 1880 they became the first Porto House to export bottled and labelled wines. The Sandeman brand was registered as a trademark in 1877 (First Trademark Registrations Act) making it one of the oldest in the world.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Sandeman wanted to tell the world of their fine wines and so became among the first wine companies to label and advertise its wines. In 1905 press marketing began, followed by more substantial advertising campaigns. An enormous advertisement in the “Irish Times” was accompanied by a merchant’s announcement that a “Sample Case” of six Sandeman wines was available at 15s (75p) “delivered to the customer’s door”. Meanwhile, similar advertising started appearing in Continental Europe, the United States and what was then know as “the Nations of the British Empire”.

Now, for the first time in decades, the Sandeman collection is open to the public in a series of themed exhibitions covering the key moments of both the evolution of Porto Wine and of Sandeman, the company and brand. Sandeman went on to build a website in 1998, and then in 2006 the story is continued in the launch of new packaging featuring modern, cutting-edge design.

For more than 200 years Sandeman has handed down expertise from generation to generation to maintain the excellence of their wines, appreciated around the world for their quality and taste, mystery and seduction.