Beira Interior: These vineyards will drink from the best the altitude has to offer
Next to the border, and surrounded by the Serra da Estrela, Marofa, and Malcata, a wine-growing region is flourishing with conditions to achieve more and more recognition. In and out of doors.
Rodolfo Queirós welcomes us to the Solar do Vinho da Beira Interior, a building that is itself a testament to the image that the wine-growing region intends to pass on to the outside: a project grounded in tradition, without giving up a touch of modernity. The building that houses the headquarters of the Beira Interior Regional Wine Commission (CVRBI), of which Rodolfo Queirós is president, is located next to the wall and the cathedral of Guarda, high above the city, echoing the main identity mark of the wines of the region. region: altitude.
“It is a differentiating factor in the quality of wines because it allows for slower maturation [of the grape]. While in nearby regions the harvest begins in August, here we harvest in October”, extols the president of CVRBI.
The weather also helps. And it even ends up adding a major piece to the puzzle. It helps make Beira Interior one of the regions “with the most potential” in the area of organic wines. “As the relative humidity is low, there are no major problems with diseases in the vineyards”, he maintains, ensuring that the production of organic wine is gaining more and more ground in the region that covers three sub-regions (Castelo Rodrigo, Pinhel, and Cova da Beira). ) and a geographical indication covering 20 municipalities.
Spread the regions image
“It has enormous potential”, predicts Rodolfo Queirós, without hiding that there is still a lot of work to be done, all the more so because “Beira Interior started later”, he notes, alluding to the examples of neighboring Douro, Dão and Alentejo. Even so, the winds have blown favorably towards the wine-growing region located in the interior of the country, which has around 15,000 hectares of vineyards. “Our region already sells around 25% for export and we are convinced that we will grow this year”, highlights the president of the organization, which has been working to improve this and other figures.
“We want to increase the number of certified wines and try to attract new producers to the region”, he notes, admitting that it is also important to continue to promote the brand wines from Beira Interior. The creation of the Beira Interior Wine Route came to help, along with the opening of a physical store (at Solar do Vinho) and another online store dedicated to local producers. The objective of these stores is to “spread the image of the region in the country and abroad”, argues Rodolfo Queirós.
That's what Beira Interior needs, to become known. Everything else is already there, assures José Almeida Garrett, leader of what is one of the main wineries in the region: Almeida Garrett Wines. “Beira Interior traditionally has very interesting wines, it is only behind because it is less known”, highlights the representative of the family descended from the writer Almeida Garrett and who started producing wine there in 1856 – he is the oldest producer in the region. “It has native varieties that allow us to have different wines, along with other national and international varieties”, he says, recalling that it was his grandfather, over 100 years ago, who brought the first Chardonnay grapes to the region.
Currently, Almeida Garrett Wines has 44 hectares of vineyards in the municipality of Covilhã (Cova da Beira) and has also been investing in wine tourism - through its winery and also an accommodation unit -, aware that this aspect has a leading role in the affirmation and promotion of the region. “And things have been moving along. In the beginning, there were few bottling producers in the region just us and Quinta do Cardo – and today we already have many”, notes José Almeida Garrett.
The ground that saw the birth of Beyra
Another producer who has contributed most to the affirmation of Beira Interior wines is Rui Roboredo Madeira, who already seemed destined to invest in Beira vineyards, despite having started in the Douro. It was the 1980s and Rui had come to the region where his family came from to recover from a road accident. He was challenged by a friend to participate in a harvest at Vermiosa, in Figueira de Castelo Rodrigo, far from imagining that such an experience would change his life. “The little bug stayed and I decided to go to Enology, in Vila Real, but I never thought about Beira Interior again”, he recalls. In 2010, Beira Interior went to meet him. “I was contacted by the owner of the Vermiosa winery to say that he wanted to sell the property,” he says. He thought, did the math, asked for a loan from the bank, and started the Beyra adventure, precisely in the same place where, more than 20 years before, he had awakened to the world of wines.
“Beyra came from scratch”, he insists on emphasizing, recalling the efforts and changes he had to start making, in the vineyards and in the cellar, to arrive at the wines he aspired to. “I started to change the philosophy, including the grapes. I've had a lot of experimentation here”, he says, giving the example of his experience with Touriga Nacional, which despite having good credits for those bands, is far from convincing him. “It's a variety that can be a little vintage from the area, not every year it works well”, he evaluates.
The experiences that he has been keen to carry on at Vermiosa lead him to confess that Syria, one of the region’s two (white) varieties of identity, is also not among his favorite white grapes – “it is a variety that loses acidity, which is fundamental for whites” –, contrary to what happens with Fonte Cal. “As much as I experiment, changing the yeast, changing the vinification, this variety from Beira Interior always maintains a very strong identity. Very full-bodied wines, with a great structure”, praises the producer who, at the moment, already has 48.4 hectares of vineyards in Beira Interior.
Rui Madeira is peremptory in stating how much he believes in this region. “Beira Interior has enormous potential”, he underlines, before giving us the figures that speak for themselves. “In 2019, the Douro denomination represented 77% of my business and Beira 22%. In 2021, Beira rose to 30% and the Douro dropped to 69%”, testifies the producer who aims, in the medium and long term, to produce “one million bottles in Beira Interior with a good average price”.
Resurrect “virtually extinct” castes
Another winemaker who is closely linked to the Beira Interior region is Virgílio Loureiro, an academic and a great specialist in wines. Born on the banks – although “on the other side of the mountain, in Viseu” –, he started to have a direct relationship with Beira Interior in 2000, when he was challenged to make the wines of Quinta dos Termos. “An adventure that continues to be very rewarding”, he insists.
Virgílio Loureiro firmly believes in the uniqueness of Beira Interior wines, marked by continentality, altitude, and also by the diversity of terroirs. “I vinify grapes from Quinta dos Termos in the so-called albicastrense* field and also in Pinhel, and the same variety has a month of maturation difference between one and the other”, he exemplifies.
A confessed fan of the region's identity castes – in addition to Syria and Fonte Cal, he also has Rufete ink – Virgílio Loureiro says he would even like to “resurrect castes that are practically extinct”. “I am remembering Folha de Figueira, do Casculho, a series of grape varieties that practically no one knows today, but which still appear in old vines”, he says, arguing that “it would be much more important to do this work than to import French grape varieties to Beira Interior”. In this regard, he warns: “This is the worst way to work the wine from Beira Interior. Because we are making copies and any copy, no matter how good, is always before the original.”
*Relative to or belonging to the Portuguese city of Castelo Branco, in the district with the same name. "albicastrense", in Priberam Dictionary of the Portuguese Language [online], 2008-2021, https://dicionario.priberam.org/albicastrense [accessed on 29-06-2022].
Source: https://www.publico.pt/2022/06/21/fugas/reportagem/beira-interior-vinhedos-vao-beber-altitude-melhor-2010437
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