Our producers

Quinta de Penhó

Ricardo Moreira
2017
Sustainable, Organic, Dry Farmed
Portugal
Vinho Verde
Atlantic - Sub Continental
180m to 550m
Granite, Quartzite & Schist
15 hectares in 2020, 5ha planted to vines
10,000 bottles
About the Producer

Quinta de Penhó, located in the Vinho Verde region in the North of Portugal, is a garage winery on an old family property of 15ha at the top of a mountain, looking down on a breathtaking valley.

The dream of returning to their historic roots in winemaking took over a decade to become a reality. From 2017 on the family began to add small parcels of vineyards to their property and as of 2020 5ha are planted with native varietals: five white – Arinto, Azal, Loureiro,  Alvarinho, and Trajadura, and one red – Vinhão. Soils vary by parcel: granite, quartzite and schist that allows different wine profiles for the same grape and elevation is between 180m to 550m above sea level which originate different acidities.

With Ricardo Moreira at the winemaking helm, they started producing wines in 2018 following a hiatus of 20 years in the family’s wine producing. The resulting wines were part of a small, but unique, batch of white, red and orange wines.

The wine is produced as naturally as possible, with minimal intervention, resulting in unique natural wines with very low sulphite levels. Every wine is made with 2 days of maceration before pressing, foot pigeage, fermentation with indigenous yeasts only, and after pressing they remain over the lees with no racking, no bâttonage, no filtration, stabilization, or clarification performed. No products are used to correct the wine or to alter it with the exception of 30ppm of SO2 at bottling.

What came from a joint outcome of contributing to a meaningful family legacy and a desire to return to the Moreira family roots, while believing that climate change is real and winemaking should be sustainable and environmentally responsible. 

“We aim at a vineyard existing [as] part of a healthy ecosystem where we grow our grapes following organic farming guidelines. Furthermore, at a time when climate change is no longer possible to ignore, we [grow our] grapes without the need of irrigation methods and using dryland farming techniques.

We believe that a healthy ecosystem needs biodiversity, that is why next to our vineyard there is an orchard of more than 100 fruit and nut trees, as well as many other native tree species scattered around, such as oaks, cork oaks, planes, pines, olive trees among others, totalling more than 1,000 trees.”


“We aim at a vineyard existing [as] part of a healthy ecosystem where we grow our grapes following organic farming guidelines. Furthermore, at a time when climate change is no longer possible to ignore, we [grow our] grapes without the need of irrigation methods and using dryland farming techniques."