Douro’s associations have invited winegrowers to talk about potential preventive measures that could help anticipate issues and help minimise uncertainty in grape delivery. This comes after social discontent being felt in the region caused by large firms not buying grapes from producers or buying less of them due to difficulties in wine sales, during last year's harvest.

Rui Paredes, a member of Douro’s Renewal Federation (FRD), has told Lusa "We need to anticipate and take measures so that winegrowers do not experience the same uncertainty that they experienced in 2023 when they did not know where to deliver the grapes." The winegrowers were invited to a meeting on 5 April, in Sabrosa, Vila Real, by the FRD and the Associação da Lavoura Duriense (ALD), which represent the production sector in the interprofessional council of the Instituto dos Vinhos do Douro and Porto (IVDP).

According to Rui Paredes, this meeting and two others which followed this one were put together with the aim of gathering winegrowers and inputs for the measures being proposed in the working group established at Interprofessional, which unites commerce and production. In addition to calling for increased IVDP surveillance and stating that it is imperative to determine whether wines from outside the region are entering "without control," Rui Paredes also defended the development of standards and a formula for calculating yield per hectare.

As Rui Paredes has claimed “We will, in the next few days, request an audience with the Minister and the Secretary of State, in order to explain the problems of the Douro, what we are doing and what also needs to be done, on the part of the State”, adding “Naturally we don’t want the State to intervene alone, we also have our share of responsibility, but I think it’s important that the State has a say and doesn’t let the sector remain freewheeling without intervention and without positive contributions to the growth of the sector”.