November 2024 - Portugal, Dão & Bairrada

November 2024

Portugal

Dão & Bairrada

Featuring:

Quinta da Saes

Caves São João 

We last covered Portugal in June 2023 and October 2021. Those write-ups have more information about the broader country as a whole. This month, we will focus specifically on these two producers and the knowledge gleaned from a personal visit to their historic estates in March 2024. See the end of the writeup for a photo album.

Quinta da Saes

I will never forget meeting Álvaro Castro. We disembarked the tour bus in the small town of Pinhanços, central Portugal. A happy, older gentleman with sun-leathered skin was standing in the middle of the quiet street, with his Basset Hound, Tobias, at his side. He gave a warm welcome to the owner of the import company, Patrick, and chatted quietly with him as we all walked up the gravel driveway towards the winery. Suddenly, Álvaro stops and grins at Patrick, turning to address the rest of the group for the first time. “I need to feed my donkeys.” he says with a grin. Álvaro grabs a bottle of cloudy, orange/brown liquid from the back of an old flatbed pickup truck and calls the donkeys over. Reaching through the wire fence, he starts to pour the concoction into the donkeys’ mouths, who feverishly lap it up.

“What are you giving them?” someone calls out. “Ehhh, it’s wine and sugar and, you know, brandy.” Álvaro says, laughing. “So kind of like Port wine from where you just were.” (We had visited the Douro the day prior). “They love that sweet… shit. Just like you Americans.”

Much later in the day, after we all had enjoyed our own (unfortified) pick-me-ups, someone asked Álvaro what the donkey’s names were. I can’t recall their names, but he had named them after the current and past mayors of Pinhanços. He said that he much preferred the donkeys to their namesakes. I’ll never forget Álvaro, or those Donkeys.

The story of Quinta da Saes is also that of their sister estate, Quinta da Pellada. The two properties have been in Álvaro’s family for generations, with records dating as far back as 1527. Unlike many other multi-generational winemakers, however, Álvaro did not grow up in the vineyards nor learn the craft of winemaking from his parents. Rather, he was born in Lisbon and was educated as a civil engineer. His parents had moved from the country to the city at a time when prosperity in the wine industry was nonexistent, and agriculture was a slow death sentence rather than an agrarian dream. When Álvaro’s father passed, he took it upon himself to return to the family estates he inherited and take up the family business his ancestors had established. 

In 2000, Álvaro’s daughter, Maria, joined the family business. Maria has a degree in biotechnology and, like her father, lives in Lisbon and commutes to the Dão often to oversee the winery and vineyards. Unlike her father, however, Maria did seek mentorship in winemaking before joining the family business - first Bordeaux and then at Nieport, in the Douro. That said, she aligns closely with her father when it comes to hands off, traditional style winemaking - choosing to make classically styled, understated wines rather than trendy oak/ripeness-laden wines, or overly ‘natural’ tasting specimens. Together, the father-daughter duo are some of the most respected winemakers in the Dão, and Portugal as a whole, with their Quinta da Pellada wines fetching high prices and 95+ scores, and are sought after by collectors the world over.

The two estates are similar but differ in their terroir and styles. Quinta da Pellada is generally regarded as the more esteemed of the two properties (Grand Cru, to use French terms), while Quinta da Saes is well-respected but more approachable (Premier Cru would be apt). Pellada translates to ‘naked’ and refers to both the minimalist, low-intervention winemaking style as well as the location of the estate. Rows of vineyards, an old stone wall, and a couple almond trees are the only features on the barren hilltop leading to the centuries old family home and winery. White quartz boulders are strewn amongst the granitic sand and wildflowers bloom in between rows. The wines from here showcase this site alone, and are made to be single-vineyard wines. Some aren’t even made every year (or even every decade - a 2018 ‘Naked Vine’ cuvee we tasted had not been made since the first vintage in 2003). While the Pellada wines are indeed exceptional, unfortunately they are out of the price range and production of this wine club and even the pickup party.

Saes is a family name. This estate is located near the town of Pinhanços and sources from vineyards spread around the immediate area, including a site near the Pellada property. These wines serve as reference points to the Dão and are meant to showcase the typical styles one would see in white, red, rosé, and long-aged wines from the area. The vineyards of Saes are younger than those of Pellada, with many vines around 30-40 years of age. 

With both Saes and Pellada, the vineyards were traditionally planted in the style of field blends, where the vineyard is interplanted with multiple varieties that are harvested together. This is an old method meant to promote balance and consistency in the age before science and technology ruled the vineyard. If it is a warm year, for example, one variety might start to over-ripen but others will be at optimal ripeness allowing the wines to still have acidity and brightness. The same happens in a colder vintage, while some of the later-ripening varieties may struggle, there are others who can provide ripeness and flavor in even the coldest years. While the Castro family undoubtedly has the means and know-how to plant blocks of each grape and harvest/vinify separately, they instead choose to follow tradition and continue to maintain their vineyard replantings using this method. While we walked the vineyard, Alvaro showed us old, dead wood on some of the 75+ year old vines at Pellada. He kicked a piece off, exposing the termites eating the dead wood. Two rows over, the vines were all clean of this. Laughing, he grabbed his son-in-law by the shoulder and said “He’s a slow worker, he hasn’t cleaned these up yet.” Later, said son showed us a video of him cleaning up the vines with a hand-ax. He was absolutely not a slow worker, there were just A LOT of vines.

The Saes winery is located in the town of Pinhanços (where we met the donkeys) and is a rustic, unfussy winery meant for working and living rather than entertaining. The wines are made with the same traditional mindset as the vineyard management, however certain technological advancements like stainless steel and fining/filtering (for certain wines) are embraced. The family chooses to measure the duration that their wines age by winters rather than months. The grapes are harvested and fermented in autumn, then the wine spends between one and three winters (12-36 months) in old oak barrels before being bottled in the spring. For the red cuvees, they are starting to move to the use of lagars for fermentation and extraction. These traditional vessels are large, open-air granite vats (think a large hot tub, waist deep) where grapes ferment. Due to the stone retaining cold, there is no need for temperature controlled stainless steel tanks or central air conditioning. As it turns out, the traditional methods have merit beyond marketing. 

For the white wines, the family uses either stainless steel, neutral oak, or concrete eggs for fermentation (depending on the caliber of the wine). Their whites generally showcase a bit of reduction and a signature rusticity while still being clean, precise, and delicately aromatic.

  Grapes in use are numerous but here are the main ones: (red) Alfrocheiro, Touriga Nacional, Baga, Tinta Pinheira, Jaen, Tinta Roriz, and some experimental plots of international varieties; (white) Bical, Encruzado, Sercial, Malvasia, Arinto de Bucelas, and Chardonnay.

Quinta da Saes, Rosado, Dão 2023 

The Quinta da Saes Rosado is an interesting wine, and unlike anything I’d had in Portugal prior. With the Dão having a cool maritime influence and roughly 1,500 ft elevation, the region does see cooler temperatures than much of the rest of Portugal. Because of this, ripening is slower and reds can be harvested when they are physiologically ripe but not quite to the sugar/acid balance for red wines. This makes for rosé wines that are very delicately aromatic without showing the intensity of the red varieties from this area. 

This wine is a blend of Tinta Roriz (aka Tempranillo) and Jaen (aka Mencía), with a small amount of Baga (a native grape) and Cabernet Sauvignon (from an experimental vineyard plot) added late to fill the wine out. Everything is entirely stainless steel fermented and aged. The end result is a wine with under-ripe tropical fruits, a beautifully minerally, and a rustic, chalky kind of mouthfeel. The wine showcases primarily earth/mineral notes yet still has a very pretty, alluring nose. This would be a fantastic pairing with some white meat or fish, but would also hold its own as an aperitif wine.

Caves São João 

I equate visiting Caves São João to visiting some sort of WW2-era museum, where everything seems fixed in time to about 80 years ago. Most wineries smell like, well, wineries. Here, the walls have a scent similar to an old decommissioned Navy ship, probably from the oil used to heat the hot water for cleaning, the paint caking the walls, or a combination of other things. The tasting room bathroom has utilitarian exposed piping, lever-style faucets, and a pull chain toilet. As we take our glass of sparkling wine and start to walk through the winery, we are flanked on both sides by hundreds of thousands of bottles of back-vintage wines lying on their sides in storage bays. There are no massive stainless steel tanks, forklifts, barrel rooms, and pneumatic presses. Just bottles… everywhere. Dates read 1993, 1978, 1966, and so on. As we walk through the halls, people stop to take pictures next to their birth year. Finally we turn a corner and see about 120 barrels. These are dated from the mid 1960’s to present day. They are the only barrels in the winery, and rather than containing wine, they contain brandy. 

As we double back to the other side of the building, we come upon the fermentation tanks. These are floor-to-ceiling, 45,000 - 99,000 liter concrete tanks custom poured in the facility. There is no catwalk above the tank or area to move behind it, because they are in fact a part of the building. The opening to drop the grapes in must be on the second floor. These tanks, the largest of which is equivalent to 450 barrels, are where the wine ferments and matures. 

After we walk through the cavernous halls where the tanks are located, we exit the winery and are back on the quiet street. Aside from the tour bus, there is no one in sight. There are maybe 30 houses in this town and seemingly no other commerce. We cross the street and head into the ‘old winery’ - here similar fermentation tanks, now decommissioned, line the long hallway. These are only 18,000 liters (80 barrels equivalent) and are where the winery first made its wine over 100 years ago. As we descend further into the cellar, we are greeted by a large room with set tables, a gorgeous spread of Portuguese meats and cheeses, and numerous bottles of wine. Dark cellar mold lines the walls and spiderwebs intermingle amongst the towers of bottles, metal gates, and light fixtures.

As we sat down to taste vintages of red, white, and sparkling wine dating from the 1970’s to today, a sense of calm and profound surrender came over me. I slowly came to terms that this was truly a once in a lifetime experience.

Time is the ultimate transformer. Caves São João was not always this established, historic house. Without a doubt, there are far older wine houses across the world… probably even some in the next town over. But what sets São João apart is their dedication to saving wines and maintaining their winery in its historic state, including how they make their wines.

 Just over 100 years ago, this now renowned property was simply a small Port distribution house and tavern on the side of the road in rural Bairrada. Brothers José, Manuel and Albano Costa founded Caves São João in 1920 to bottle and resell Port bought in bulk from the Douro valley to the north. In the 1930’s, the laws changed to forbid any Port production outside of the coastal cities of Porto and Vila Nova de Gaia. With no backup plan or any other local wine market, the brothers hired a French enologist, Gaston Mainousson, to teach them the art of making Method Champenoise sparkling wine, which was also popular at the time. By the 1940’s, the brothers were making red and white table wines as well. They started to expand their production when markets opened up in Brazil and the Portuguese colonies in Africa. 

In the 1950's, the family had coined their signature wines, “Frei João" from Bairrada and "Porta dos Cavaleiros" from nearby Dão. These became the top wines of the two regions and elevated both regions in the eyes of wine consumers in Lisbon and beyond. Two decades later, and well into the second generation, the family added their signature property and their first vineyard to the mix - Quinta do Poço do Lobo. This almost 100-acre estate is planted to primarily Baga, with small amounts of Castelão and Moreto, plus a block of Cabernet Sauvignon. The first three varieties are field-blended together, while the Cabernet Sauvignon is vinified and bottled separately. All of these wines are aged for many decades. Instead of following a linear, chronological release schedule, the wines are released when they are deemed ready, by judgment of taste and aroma.

Today, Caves São João remains a humble and understated winery, especially when compared to modern wineries across the globe. They continue to embrace tradition by producing wines in the way they always have - purity of fruit, long macerations, extended aging, and always zero oak. Their sparkling wines - the first of their kind in Portugal - remain benchmarks for what Portuguese sparkling can be. Their top reds continue to be stashed away within the winery walls, maturing and patiently waiting decades to finally be released to the world.

After tasting these wines for years and finally visiting the winery, the whole experience - the place, the wines, the people, and the history - all feels like some great secret that the rest of the wine world isn’t quite ready to know yet. 

Caves São João, “Baga Novo” (Nat Cool), Bairrada 2023

I fully recognize that I just wound you up to taste some elusive, aged wine from the prior millennia. Unfortunately, those wines are incredibly hard to buy in quantity and, while they may be reasonably priced for their pedigree, are out of the scope of this $45/month club. However, during our visit to Caves São João, the family presented this wine that I just couldn’t pass up on. It was an unfinished plan, but we immediately committed to it for the wine club once customs/TTB approved the import. (On a later trip, the corporate buyer at New Seasons also fell in love with the wine - to my knowledge Dogwood and New Seasons are the only places in Oregon you can find this bottle.) But I digress…

It’s incredibly cool to see a winery steeped in tradition also embrace modernity. Several years ago, the influential winery Niepoort released a cheeky sub-brand called ‘Nat Cool’. This wine is an easy-drinking liter bottle that is meant for picnics, parties, and general unfussy consumption. Caves São João and Niepoort chose to partner up for another ‘Nat Cool’ wine - also made with 100% Baga from Bairrada. The grapes are picked early to allow for low alcohol and bright acidity. The wine is fermented via a 5 day carbonic maceration (similar to Beaujolais Nouveau, hence the ‘Novo’) and doesn’t see any intervention with yeast, fining, or filtering. It is aged a short while and released directly. The resulting wine is fresh and bright, with red fruit, savory spices, and a touch of floral notes. 

Is this the absolute best representation of São João’s 100+ year history? I’ll admit not. But was the granddaughter of the founder beyond excited to share it with us? Yes. While the estate will undoubtedly continue to let the slow and steady march of time be the ultimate force in deciding their future, it was incredibly cool to see them embrace modernity and add another key wine to their portfolio. If they can sell 10,000 cases of this wine each year to pay the bills that keep 100,000 bottles of their 1970-2024 vintages aging in the cellar, I’ll be first in line to support.

And it doesn’t hurt that the wine is pretty damn good either.