Menina d'uva

A student job in a wine bar led her to internships at wine estates and eventually a course in winemaking in Dijon.

And then, in 2017, she went back, to her parents' village in Portugal to make wine. That is pretty remarkable but it becomes even more so when you look up the village of Uva on the map. It lies deep in the inhospitable region the Portuguese call Tras-os-Montes, or "beyond the mountains.

That Aline grew up in Paris is no coincidence. Her parents, like so many Portuguese, emigrated from the poor countryside because life there was too hard.

Today Tras-os-Montes is a bit more opened up by new roads but there is not much action.

Still, the urge to make her wine made her move from the metropolis to the village of 50 where her roots lay.

Her recipe is extremely simple but anything but obvious. Aline works with vines planted decades ago, but whose owners do not make wine themselves. In addition, she owns a small amount of vines and plants new plots every year.

She does all the work organically and by hand.

The harvest is processed without the addition of yeasts or enzymes. After fermentation, the wines age in stainless steel vats until July and are then bottled without clarification or filtration.

Aline adds only a minimal dose of sulfite during bottling. In this way, she avoids the aromas that make some wine lovers turn away from natural wine.

In total, it produces about 10,000 bottles a year. We were fans from the first hour and remain with an allocation of

1,200 bottles a year one of its largest customers.

Aline's wines stand out for their purity and their character. They already offer us much drinking pleasure.