Tiago Teles - 'Raiz' - Loureiro - Bairrada, PT - 2018

Bairrada Branco, "Raiz” 100% Loureiro From the same vines as the ‘Raiz’, the grapes are hand-harvested in mid-September, not de-stemmed, spend two months in concrete tanks macerating and fermenting, with indigenous yeasts, before being aged on lees for 11 months in concrete tanks. Not fined or filtered. --- It had always been Tiago’s dream to own his own vineyards and find himself through the wine. In 2012 he got the opportunity and, in partnership with his father, began planting himself in the Bairrada. Tiago holds two qualities above all else: freedom and friendship, both gained out of their family’s history and passion for the sea. It is this motivation that leads them to craft wines with ethical relationships, starting with the treatment of the vines all the way down to the final product in the community. In the cellar they aim to allow the wines to make themselves, setting aside anything that might distort the true expression of the grapes, while keeping an open mind to new methods that might pop up. Here co-fermentation is typical, without pumping in order to gain greater cohesion in the blends and then followed up by rest in used oak barrels for 6 months. Like their relationship with the sea, they aim to create wines of pleasure.