Susana Esteban’s story is very much about old grape varieties, old vines and wedding these to clay pot winemaking.

Originally from Spain’s cool, wet Galicia region, she searched northern Alentejo for three years for the perfect place to grow and make the kind of wines she has always wanted to craft. Eventually she settled on a site in one of its cooler parts, a little east of Portalegre on the southern slopes of its adjacent Serra de São Mamede mountains.

The new vineyard site lies below the impressive hilltop castle town of Alegrete and sits astride the southern slope of a natural wilderness preserve. Occupying a semi-derelict, over 400-year-old olive grove, Esteban left the older trees in place mixed within the vineyard following traditional practices ‘as in the old days’, while replanting the younger 200-year-old trees to border a boulevard-like road up its centre. This new vineyard is very much connected to the past.

An important draw for her was proximity to a favorite 85-year-old, field blended vineyard, Saio Frio, from which she has been sourcing grapes since 2011. Back in the day, she used to search out tiny pockets of old vines, calling on the owners to negotiate access to their grapes. Now they call her. Saio Frio contains around 20 white varieties - several of which remain unidentified.  As of 2022, Esteban is in the process of replicating this vineyard by carefully transplanting individual cuttings, vine for vine, into her new vineyard.

Not minding that she doesn’t know exactly what grapes are being replanted, selection is based on the health and quality of each plant. Her only concern is to maintain this old vineyard’s biodiversity and high-quality fruit, ensuring the old vineyard’s DNA will live on while maintaining a source of fruit similar to what she has been using for years.

Her vineyard site is relatively cooler than most of Alentejo because of its high altitude at 700 meters/yards. More similar to the Dao region to the north, its diurnal temperature shifts between 28C-degree days down to 14C degrees at night in August, guaranteeing higher natural acidity. Where most of Alentejo harvests in August, her vineyard begins significantly later in early September.

Estebans’s winemaking pedigree is impressive. After having earned a Chemistry degree from Santiago de Compostela University and then a Masters in Enology at La Rioja University, she has since worked as winemaker for two top Douro adegas, Quinta do Côtto and  Quinta do Crasto, as well as consulting for several Alentejo producers and picking up several wine-making awards in the process.

Not unlike Rui Reguenga’s long history of consultancy, much of her previous working life was based around ‘modern’ conventional, technologically driven winemaking. But now she is free to create her own project, she is making the kind of wine she wants to make, which is less technologically driven,  leaning more towards traditional, local practices. Esteban’s winemaking style focuses on elegance and seeks to preserve the identity of her vineyards. In brief, it is about the fruit produced and, ultimately, the way it is shaped by clay.

That said, she is not strictly following the traditional talha white-wine formula. Her approach is more a pragmatic mix of old and new. Aiming for more freshness and fruit purity, juice is pressed off the grapes before fermenting in talha, to avoid the tannins produced by the DOC’s required extended skin contact. Nor does she rigidly follow the St. Martin's Day deadline. She also inserts stainless steel tubes into talha to reduce and control fermentation temperatures more along lines of conventional ‘modern’ stainless steel fermentation. And so her wines don’t carry Vinhos de Talha DOC certification.

Her interest in talha is more for its internal convection currents and the natural battonage produced by the shape of inside walls, along with its neutrality and oxygen transfer rate, similar to barrel fermentation and maturation. She believes this provides the advantages of oak fermentation without any negatively intrusive oak characters: aromas, flavors, tannins, etc.

Esteban’s first talha-produced wine style, Procura na Ânfora, was born from this approach.

And then something unexpected happened. In 2019, Covid forced a change in processing, which, along with distinct weather conditions, created an entirely new wine style. Experimenting that year, her Procura used 30% skin contact, which she worked in three talhas like a red wine. She kept the wine on the skins until January, intending to then bottle it. But at that point, she felt skin tannins were still too pronounced, and so she returned the wine to the talha for ageing to refine and soften its tannic structure.

Covid forced her to defer any bottling until July, by which time cellar temperatures had increased beyond all previous conditions. That warmth, in turn, caused a flor to develop, similar to the carpet of yeast that forms on top of Fino Sherry, bringing with it flor’s distinctive floral-saline aroma.

Obviously it wasn’t ‘Procura’ anymore. But she liked its accidental complexity and unexpected distinctiveness. The wine’s uniqueness was derived from long skin contact, Alentejan grapes, and the flor and talha created textures, all at a low 12% alcohol. Nothing like barrique-produced Sherry at 15%, nor characters previously found in talha wine for that matter. She dubbed this lighter, finer form of Portuguese ‘Fino’ Tira O Veu meaning ‘veil of flowers.’

Unexpectedly, although the cellar temperatures were cooler, she reproduced the style in 2020. This time the flor developed spontaneously, but earlier in November, likely because the flor probably now inhabits the talha. These characters now belong to her wines alone, not replicable by anyone else, anywhere else.

So the current plan is to continue making Tira O Veu in a flor-infused cellar on one side of the adega, separating this from a new flor-free cellar on the other side, where the original Procura na Anfora style will continue to be made. Her new adega has been built on the shell of an old adega, which Susana has transformed into a light and airy white-washed space, with remnants of old wine-making equipment placed like works of art.

Susana’s story is a testament to how a new approach, reconceiving ancient talha technology, can spin off entirely new forms of wine beyond anyone's wildest imagination.

Susana Esteban Wines

Susana Esteban Tira O Veu Vinhas Velas 2022  

Susana Esteban Tira O Veu Vinhas Velas 2021  

Procura na Anfora 2022 

Procura na Anfora 2018 

Procura na Anfora 2017 

Susana Esteban Tira O Veu 2019 

Susana Esteban Tira O Veu 2020