Sogrape, a founding member of Forum Portugal Global

Sogrape was founded in 1942 by Fernando van Zeller Guedes to produce and market table wines from the Douro region in Northern Portugal. The product which was then conceived, Mateus Rosé, quickly became a major international brand, and it is now on sale in 125 countries.

The Sogrape group started developing new wine products, to avoid the risk of having a single brand and it acquired the Ferreira Port wine in 1987. More recently it created a holding company and entered into a strategic partnership with the Bacardi-Martini group.

While the Sogrape group is made up of over 30 professionally managed firms with annual sales of about $100 million, the capital structure remains family owned.

The group is represented in Forum Portugal Global by Salvador Guedes, a graduate of the City of London Business School, who began his career in the Marketing Department of Sogrape Vinhos de Portugal in 1980 and is currently on the Executive Board of Sogrape Vinhos SGPS.

Last updated 26 September, 1996.