José Maria da Fonseca
Portuguese winery
José Maria da Fonseca, also known as JM da Fonseca, is the oldest table wine company in Portugal, though some port wine houses pre-date it. The family-owned company was founded in 1834 and is based in the village of Azeitão on the Setúbal Peninsula. It is now in its 7th generation and most of its production is exported internationally. Among its best known wine brands are Periquita and Lancers.
History
José Maria da Fonseca started the business in 1834, and the family has maintained it since then. In addition to its vineyards on the Setúbal peninsula, the company operates a number of vineyards in the Alentejo and Douro Valley regions.
The company's winery based in the Alentejo town of Reguengos de Monsaraz, uses the ancient Roman tradition of fermenting wine in clay pots along with modern technology.
Brands
The company introduced its Periquita wine brand in 1850. The brand was initially produced from the Castelão variety of grape at one of the company's estates, Cova da Periquita. Unusual for the time, Periquita wine was bottled rather than sold in bulk.
“José Maria da Fonseca” enters the record as portuguese winery. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what José, Maria and Fonseca can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 20, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q6293107. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1834 and 1850.
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This entry incorporates text from “José Maria da Fonseca” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.