Antonio Madeira

Serra da Estrela, Dão, Portugal

Born and raised in Paris, Antonio frequently visited his grandparents and extended family in the Dão, and it is here where he would find many of his great loves: his wife Marina, the freedom of being in nature, and the vineyards.  As a successful professional in Paris, it was not too long before António found himself drinking fine wines, wines which moved him, and which made him start to look at the vineyards he had seen on the slopes surrounding his grandparents’ village in quite a different light.  

 

After traveling around France to spend time with some leading lights of the Loire, Burgundy, and Jura, Antonio began his quest to locate the ‘Grand Crus’ of the Dão.  As in all the great regions of the world, he looked to history and word of mouth.  “Around here everyone helped with each other’s vines, and they all share bottles, so they know whose vineyards made the best wines.”  From 2010, Antonio began acquiring small parcels of these old, traditionally co-planted vines, and traveling back and forth to tend to them and begin his first forays into winemaking.  Like so many burgeoning rockstars, his initial experiments were conducted in his parents’ garage.  By 2017, Antonio took the decision to move his family from Paris to live in the Dão full time, and put everything into regenerating these historic vineyards and expressing a new potential of the wines from his ancestral homeland.  

Antonio has now amassed 8 hectares of vineyards, split amongst 20 disparate plots of old, low-yielding vines, worked biodynamically by horse.  This is intense, painstaking work, but it is this work which he considers essential.  “In natural wine, we are growers of yeast… I have 50 different yeasts working on 40 different varieties.  Imagine the complexity!”  And it is not only this microscopic life which he prizes - “Minerality only comes to wine from the microbes in the soil.  They are the ones that break down the minerals into something the roots can absorb.”  It is difficult to argue with Antonio once you taste his wines.  The depth, complexity, and minerality of what he is able to produce is undeniable.

Each parcel is vinified separately so Antonio can understand what is happening in the soils with the passing years.  He creates stunning blends with the majority of his wine, but whenever a vineyard expresses exceptional delicacy and finesse, it is bottled as a single vineyard, and these bottlings are truly sensational.  

Though Antonio’s wines are already rightly revered by those who know them, we are sure that his unique vision, dedication, attention to detail, and unwavering passion will lead him to ever more pure and spellbinding expressions of his region and heritage - all residing in the deepening roots of his treasured collection of old vines.