Tavares de Pina

The Portuguese winery Tavares de Pina is a small family business, producing quality wines with passion and artisanal spirit. It offers a range of bottles that give voice to the best traditions of this wonderful land, which has been devoted to viticulture for millennia, ever since the colonization of the Iberian Peninsula by the ancient Romans. João Tavares De Pina, after completing his studies in agronomy at Trás-os-Montes University, moved with his wife Luísa to Penalva do Castelo, in the Dão region, in the early 1990s to take care of a family property and with the intention of producing wine. In those years he began planting the first vines, which have been replaced over time with new, more qualitative plantings.

The estate covers a total area of 40 hectares, of which only 13 are planted with vines, carefully selected from the most suitable plots. The vast uncultivated areas, left to woodland, encourage the presence of a habitat that is still wild and rich in biodiversity. The vineyards are located at an altitude of 500 meters above sea level and are cultivated on rather rocky soils composed of granite and schist. The inter-rows are left grassed to ensure a natural balance of the soil and its spontaneous vitality. Over the years, João and Luísa's work has increasingly focused on the vineyard and in particular on the recovery and enhancement of ancient native varieties. In 2010 they planted two new plots with about 50 ancient native grape varieties, saved from almost certain extinction and from a mass selection of old plants.

The painstaking work in the vineyard, managed with extreme care for the plants and based on low yields per hectare, makes it possible to bring to maturity grapes of excellent quality, which express the unique and original personality of this magnificent terroir. As for the work in the winery, everything is done in a very simple way and with the utmost respect for the raw material, trying to accompany the transformation of the grapes into wine by intervening as little as possible. The desire to always leave the varietal characteristics of the grapes in the foreground and to produce wines with a classic and elegant profile has led João to prefer the use of large oak or chestnut barrels, so as to avoid extremely intense notes of boisé.