Long before Cabernet Sauvignon was bottled in Bordeaux or Pinot Noir was the elegant darling of Burgundy, Portuguese vines were weaving their way through the fertile plains of the Tagus and Sado valleys in central Portugal, with roots over 4,000 years old.
Ancient winemaking practices were passed down through generations of fathers and sons, crafting what we now call low-intervention wine—using natural fermentation and minimal additives—from indigenous grapes that grew wild on the Iberian peninsula for millennia. During the Middle Ages, as the Catholic Church’s influence grew, Portuguese monasteries became centers of winemaking, with priests, monks, and friars producing sacramental wines for Mass.
Throughout it all, women were excluded from the cellars—where the real magic happened—and relegated to the vineyards to pick grapes during harvest time, the product of both patriarchal traditions and a widespread European superstition that a menstruating woman could spoil a batch of wine just by being near it. But today, as low-intervention wines trend in hipster bars from Berlin to Brooklyn—driven by wine lovers seeking sustainability in an increasingly processed world—Portugal’s ancient winemaking traditions are having a moment, and a wave of women are at the forefront.
Among these pioneers is Ana Cardoso Pinto of Purista Wines. Pinto is something of a renaissance woman—an architect, sommelier, and winemaker who combines her minimalist design sensibilities with her production process. At her family’s estate, 50-minutes north of Lisbon, she uses her parents’ 19th-century concrete tanks for spontaneous fermentation, which adds texture and minerality, while keeping sulfites low, the body light, and alcohol reduced—creating expressions of grape varieties in their purest form.
Her Fernão Pires 2024 white exemplifies this philosophy, with its unique freshness, and a touch of saltiness due to the vineyard’s proximity to the Atlantic coast. “It wasn’t until there were demands for increased production that winemakers started adding chemicals for control,” she says, noting that most Portuguese wines were naturally low-intervention until the 1970s and 1980s. “But these days, people are more aware of what they put into their bodies, including wine.”
For Mariana Salvador of Revela wines, up north in the Dão region, the proof is in the taste. Salvador fell in love with low-intervention wines after a series of blind tastings with one of Portugal’s leading wine producers. “It just clicked,” she says. “I understood that this is what I wanted to do. If this is the more natural way, and the wines taste so good—with so much texture and vibrancy—I knew this was the only way I wanted to make wine.” Salvador sources grapes such as Alfrocheiro, a vine primarily grown in the region, exclusively from small winegrowers, crafting wines with minimal intervention—using little or no sulfites—so that each vineyard can speak for itself. “Each vine tells its own story,” she explains. “That’s how the name Revela—which means ‘reveal’ in Portuguese—came about. I wanted to show what each grape has to offer.”
