Forerunners: The Winemakers of Portugal

Winemakers Susana Esteban and Sandra Tavares da Silva. Photo: Susana Esteban Vinhos

No discussion about female winemaking pioneers in Portugal would be complete without a nod to Doña Antónia Adelaide Ferreira (1811-1886), considered to be a leader in the cultivation of port wine, and for the winemaking innovations she introduced. Indeed, the history of women in the country’s wine industry spans centuries. In Portugal, many women train in oenology but their post-graduate pursuits often lead to city-based jobs in labs or research offices, rather than roles in wineries situated outside of major towns. For this and other reasons, female winemakers are uncommon. That’s slowly changing, however, due in no small part to several exceptional women paving the way for future generations with innovative approaches to vineyard management, terroir-driven wine styles through meticulous standards, and attention to detail in winemaking experimentation. These contemporary, award-winning oenologist each entered winemaking through familial connections, and they have a deep attachment and respect for their land, the nuances of which they aim to express in every vintage. Meet some of the women making great strides in Portugal’s wine regions.

Susana Esteban / Photo: Susana Esteban Vinhos

Susana Esteban: Susana Esteban Vinhos, Alentejo – She skillfully produces character driven, award winning blends that reflect her passion to reveal the timelessness of old vines.

With a degree at chemistry and Masters in oenology, Susana Esteban started working as a winemaker in 1999 at Quinta do Côtto. From 2002, she worked five years at Quinta do Crasto, also in the Douro valley, and since 2007 she worked as a consultant for several Alentejo wineries including: Tiago Cabaço wines, Herdade do Barrocal, Monte dos Cabaços and Monte da Raposinha. In 2011, Susana began producing her own wines full of character in a decidedly different style than that of the Alentejo traditional way. In Portalegre, in the mountains of S. Mamede, she discovered two small vineyards that set the foundation for her two wines, each with old mixed plantings of several different varieties and with very small yields that provide an exceptional complexity and freshness. By blending these two vineyards, she made Procura, and went on to receive “Best Winemaker of the Year” 2012, by Revista dos Vinhos.

Susana recently established a partnership to make wines with her good friend and fellow winemaker Sandra Tavares da Silva. Together, they have created Crochet, a red wine form the Douro region, and Tricot made at Susana’s Alentejo winery.

Sandra Tavares da Silva / Photo: Jorge Simão

Sandra Tavares da Silva: Wine & Soul, Douro; Quinta de Chocapalha, Lisboa – She expertly crafts wines that build and evolve with age, without losing their terroir expression of the Douro.

A skilled interpreter of local terroir, Sandra Tavares da Silva is a highly talented oenologist and winemaker respected by her peers and considered by many to define the new generation winemakers in Douro. Trained at Lisbon University for agronomy, and then in Milan for oenology, Sandra began her winemaking career in the Douro in 1999 working alongside Cristiano van Zeller at Vale Dona Maria, and later at her family’s vineyard, Quinta de Chocapalha in the Estremadura region of southern Portugal, which produces indigenous red grapes on clay soil. She created Wine & Soul shortly thereafter in 2001, along with her husband Jorge Serôdio Borges, to channel their extensive experience into a winery that would showcase the traditional varieties and terroir of Douro Valley wines made with a minimal intervention.

The wines come from a vineyard the couple inherited, Quinta da Manuella, planted mainly with very old vineyards (some over 100 years old), south oriented; and some younger, just over 30 years old. The wines embody the spirit of the new wave of high quality and strong individuality Douro wines sourced from very old individual vineyards, and low yields that showcase the character of each particular vineyard and special nature of each unique terroir. In the past six years, Wine & Soul has have achieved an impressive string of high scoring wines, including the much acclaimed Pintas and stylish newcomers Character and Guru.

Rita Ferreira Marques / Photo: Conceito Vinhos

Rita Ferreira Marques, Conceito Vinhos, Douro – She constantly experiments, most recently making sulfur-free wines, and one made from Bastardo, an underappreciated grape variety.

Though her family owns 212 acres of vines spread across plots in the Douro Superior, Rita Ferreira Marques, an oenology graduate of Bordeaux University, is her family’s first winemaker. After leaving school, she worked with and learned from some of the most influential winemakers in Bordeaux, California, South Africa and New Zealand. In returning to the Douro, she was the bridge that allowed the family owned company, led by her mother Carla Ferreira, to combine history with the ambition to create new brands of both technical know-how and intuition. In 2008, Rita formed an ambitious and dynamic team with the goal to make unique wines that reflect the raw land and that are personal, passionate, and fresh. She created Conceito Vinhos and two ranges of wines, Contraste, and the top of the line Conceito, both of which regularly garner scores of 90 points or higher.

Always keen to experiment, Rita planted Grüner Veltliner in a corner of a white-wine vineyard at 2,000 feet in elevation, to make a sparkling wine; old-vine Bastardo to make a sulfur-free red wine, and with old vines that were virtually abandoned further south in Beira, she’s producing both a white and a red wine called Ontem (Portuguese for “yesterday”). As if that doesn’t keep her busy enough, she works as a winemaker in Franschhoek, South Africa too! “If you don’t do anything new, it gets boring,” she says.

Julia de Melo Kemper / Photo: Julia Kemper Wines

Julia de Melo Kemper, Julia Kemper Wines, Dão - She converted the family’s 150 year-old historic estate to organic viticulture.

Though she worked as a corporate lawyer in São Paulo and Lisbon as recently as 2016, Julia de Melo Kemper took over the 150-year-old family estate in 2000 and the family vineyard in the heart of the Dão in 2003. She released her first wines under the Julia Kemper label in 2008 with a mission is to encourage the passion for Dão’s wine throughout the world, in a differentiating, innovative way and exemplifying how terroir finds its way into the wine. As soon as she took over, Julia converted to organic viticulture. “In my private life, I am organic, so I didn’t want to do these vineyards in a chemical way,” she says. She has since developed two modes of production: the oaked Julia Kemper range and the unoaked Elpenor, named after a nocturnal green caterpillar whose appearance in the vineyards signaled that the switch to organic practices encouraged biodiversity. The Kemper range is particularly acclaimed for the high quality of the Encruzado grape, blended with Malvasia and occasionally Verdelho, while the complex yet focused red Reserva, a field blend of Touriga Nacional, Tinta Roriz, Alfrocheiro and Jaen, comes from a vineyard in the heart of the Dão. Of the business of making wine she says, “When I was younger, we girls were not even allowed in the cellar to taste. Now it’s my baby for the rest of my life.”

Ana Rosas, Ramos Pinto, Oporto – She is Master Blender of Port, which the company makes with increasing success, where her skills come into play balancing viticulture, aging and blending.

Ana Rosas is the Master Blender for Ramos Pinto Ports, the only female in that position among the Port producers. While the Rouzaud family of Louis Roederer Champagne now owns the firm, her family still runs day-to-day operations at Ramos Pinto. Always involved in the business in some form or another, she was studying engineering and forestry in 1990 when she was asked to help out during harvest. She stayed, first in the lab, then in quality control, and in 2002, she was put in charge of Port winemaking, her passion. She’s proud of the vintage ports that Ramos Pinto makes with increasing success, as well as her favorites, the tawny ports, where her blending skills come into play. “We have a million liters of port, some back to 1880, in the lodge [cellar] here,” she says. “Port is all about viticulture, aging and blending.”

Filipa Pato, Filipa Pato Wines, Bairrada – She creates pure expressions of biodynamic wines with a strong sense of place. “Authentic wines without makeup” is both Pato’s slogan and philosophy.

Filipa Pato, winegrower in Bairrada with a degree in chemical engineering, refined her winemaker skills doing harvests in Bordeaux, Mendoza, Margaret River. Passion for the traditional indigenous grape varietals of Bairrada led to starting her own project in 2001. “Authentic wines without makeup” is both Pato’s slogan and philosophy. Her vineyards are around Ois de Bairro, with some parcels near Mealhada, 24 in all scattered around the region. She searches old vines to craft wines released under the label Nossa, with her husband, William Wouters, a Belgian sommelier, chef and restaurateur, and one of her earliest supporters in that country. Filipa’s mandate is to create wines that express the true nature of the vineyards from which they come, focusing only on indigenous grapes. Baga, Bical, Arinto, Cercial and Maria Gomes create soulful wines from vineyard sites with soils and micro-climates ideal for their biodynamic viticulture practices. There is minimal intervention and strict monitoring of the wines to allow the grapes full expression “Ultimately, we create "terroir" wines by uniting knowledge, art and nature to produce ‘without make-up’, each wine with its own character.”

Teresa Ameztoy, Ramos Pinto, Oporto; Muxagat and Mateus Nicolau de Almeida, Douro – She is a skilled winemaker with a talent for highly nuanced experimentation.

Teresa Ameztoy is a highly skilled winemaker with a talent for experimenting and coaxing the best expressions of regional wines. In addition to working as Master Winemaker at Ramos Pinto, she created the brand Muxagat with her husband Mateus Nicolau de Almeida in the Douro Superior in 2003, with a view to explore and experiment. What resulted was the creation of modern and interesting wines that respect the terroir and reflect the Douro. Today, they work together in a wine cellar they call Shad’s Winery (Alosa Alosa), named after the fish that crossed the Douro River from the Atlantic ocean. The wines produced there give different perspectives and approaches to the vineyard and wine, based on organic and biodynamic farming. They present three sets of wines. The Trans Douro Express, seeking to show the climatic characteristics of each sub-region of the Douro: Baixo Corgo, Cima Corgo and Douro Superior. Eremitas, are white wines made with the same variety but from parcels with different soils; and, Curral Teles which are the result of different vinification techniques. All done in an underground wine cellar, dug in the schist, creating an unusual aesthetic where nature and man meet.

— Christina Spearman

VanguardsChristina SpearmanJuly 20, 2019Forerunners