Uivo Curtido Branco 2025

The ‘Uivo Curtido’ is comprised of 100% moscatel galego from 35-year-old vines in soils spattered with schist and granite. The grapes are hand-harvested and undergo vigorous sorting in the vineyard. The grapes are partially de-stemmed but not pressed and allowed to macerate for four months, with spontaneous fermentation taking place with natural yeast in cement tanks. The extended skin contact gives the wine a beautiful peachy hue and tannins on the palate. Even more complexity comes from 2 months spent on the lees, and it is bottled unfined and unfiltered. As tasty as it looks, this bursts with jasmine, chamomile, and exotic wildflowers on a chewy grapefruit core! Organically grown, low-intervention/natural wine, vegan.

Tiago Sampaio is the definition of the avant garde master. He grew up in a wine family in Douro, and had a serious wine education, traveling the world and earning a PhD in enology from Oregon State. His winery is located in Sanfins do Douro, a satellite village of the Cima Corgo in Douro, far north of the river, at an altitude of around 700 meters. Here, he utilizes the freshness of the mountains to make a wide range of low alcohol, minimal intervention wines that have become the benchmark for natural wine in Portugal.

Tiago was an incredibly important innovator in the Portuguese natural wine scene. With the launch of his brand, Uivo, he was among the first in the country to make Pet Nat at commercial scale, and helped reintroduce concepts like curtimenta (skin contact white) and palhete (red and white co-ferment) back into the mainstream.