Forrester’s Map of the Wine District

[JacobH]

With apologies for Yet Another Map Thread, I thought some readers might be interested in a project I’m working on on Forrester’s 1844 map of the demarcated zone of the Douro. I have finally managed to get a version together and viewable in a Google-Maps-like way on my website: http://www.jacob-head.com/port/forrester_map/original/.

My eventual plan is to annotate it with some information about the quintas he showed and perhaps even integrate it with the modern map.

I do not thing the map has been previously available electronically and certainly not free.

If anyone would like a copy of the full map as a single high(ish) resolution file then please let me know. It’s about 55mb so I’m no so keen to host it on my website! Smaller versions could also be arranged, too.

[JacobH]

I’ve made it out to the Rio Tedo with annotations for individual Quintas.

Interesting, it seems about 40% of the Quintas still exist, with a further 20% having been merged into larger properties. The remaining 40% seem to be obscure, although I’m hopeful I might be able to find some more information about them in the future.

[Roy Hersh]

Jacob,

Very nice work!

Should you ever look for a prominent place to park this, (preferably the full map version) I'd be happy to provide the space, attribution of course and kick it off by featuring it and you, in a newsletter. It would have to be something that would pass muster w/ copyright laws. I will certainly understand if this is not something you'd like to do and either way, please feel free to email me with your thoughts.

[RAYC]

Jacob --

This is fantastic, nice work.

I will have take a moment of your time over a couple of glasses of port at some point so you can talk me through how you did this.

[Glenn E.]

Jacob - I used your map yesterday to answer a question that Graham's posted on Facebook, and in the process I managed to glean an additional piece of information for you to fold back into your map.

Quinta da Vila Velha is situated across the Douro (on the South bank) from Quinta do Tua (on the North bank). It is also very slightly down river, but the two quintas' frontages do overlap across the river.

[JacobH]

Jacob - I used your map yesterday to answer a question that Graham's posted on Facebook, and in the process I managed to glean an additional piece of information for you to fold back into your map.

Quinta da Vila Velha is situated across the Douro (on the South bank) from Quinta do Tua (on the North bank). It is also very slightly down river, but the two quintas' frontages do overlap across the river.

Fantastic. Thanks! I need to update the maps at some stage to take account of a few changes recently sent to me. But finding time is proving a bit hard.