Wines are Portugal's best-known export .
Even people who don't know a lot about Portugal, its history and its culinary traditions have heard of Port wine and Madeira . These two elegant dessert wines are world-renowned and have been for hundreds of years. The vineyards were established in what would become Portugal around 600 B.C. by the Phoenicians. When the Romans invaded Portugal in 219 B.C., those grape vines were well established. Some authorities claim that some Phoenician vines have survived for 2,500 years and that certain varieties of wine are descended from those vines and are grown no where else in the world.