Passágem takes its name from a crossing: an abandoned mountain railway line still traceable on the property, the last Portuguese stretch of a route that ran on to Salamanca and Madrid. That same border has been crossed here since prehistory: the rock art of the nearby Côa valley, carved as far back as 22,000 BCE, shares a UNESCO listing with its counterpart at Siega Verde on the Spanish side. Sophia Bergqvist and her brother Philip, who own Quinta de la Rosa fifty km downriver in the Cima Corgo, bought the estate in 2005 in partnership with winemaker Jorge Moreira. The Douro Superior was still sparsely planted at the time, its table wine reputation resting almost entirely on one neighbor: Vale Meão, standing directly opposite, whose grapes went in part into Barca Velha before being bottled under its own name. Notably, Jorge had come to La Rosa in 2002 as interim winemaker and stayed on for good, having proven his palate keen enough to catch a trace of Brett so faint the family had missed it in a blind tasting. Passágem extends into Douro Superior a seriousness about table wine the Bergqvists had already proven downriver.