The Cerdeira family pioneered the idea of planting Alvarinho and making upmarket Vinho Verde in the 1980s. Brother and sister Luís and Maria Cerdeira took over from their father in 1994 and Soalheiro has since gone from strength to strength. Luís has a point to prove that Vinho Verde is a wine for serious ageing.

Maria began the conversion of the quinta’s original 10 hectares of vineyards to organic viticulture in 2004. These vines now form the core of a premium cuvée named Primeiras Vinhas. Maria also masterminded the creation of Quinta da Folga, a neighbouring property where the family keeps rare-breed Bísaro pigs and produces a range of cured meats. Added to that is a range of herbal teas (infusões), harvested or foraged from their own organically farmed land.

Although Luís likes to joke about the natural wine world and its supposedly weird, funky or faulty wines, his winemaking is pretty hands off. He’s proved that Vinho Verde can be incredibly exciting when it’s made in a back-to-the-roots fashion. Terramatter (a wild fermented Alvarinho which spends some time in chestnut wood barrels) and Nature (an unfiltered, zero-added sulphites version) are his more experimental examples. Both are highly recommended.

The estate is in the heart of Alvarinho-country (Monção), and Alvarinho is the sole focus of their wines and their 7.5 hectare vineyards. Joanna has worked only with wild yeasts since 2018.

‘Santiago na Ânfora’ is a collaboration with Pedro Ribeira (Herdade do Rocim), with grapes from Quinta de Santiago fermenting and ageing in an antique talha which belongs to Ribeira. It’s notable for its lean purity and a very subtle, almost undetectable oxidative influence.

Also worthy of note is ‘Rascunho’, an Alvarinho made with a week’s skin contact during the fermentation. The 2016 still feels a little oak-dominated to me, but with a fine texture and sweet fruit.

White-haired and with the lean, weathered look of someone who spends a lot of time outdoors, Paiva isn’t a big talker. When he’s asked how biodynamics can work in the wet and challenging climate of Vinho Verde he just smiles doggedly and says one word: “Faith”. He counts himself as an agnostic, however when it comes to biodynamics he’s now very much a believer.

The vines at Quinta da Palmirinha are still interplanted with vegetables in traditional Vinho Verde style and Paiva has chickens on bug-eating duty among the vines, too. Taking the Steiner idea of closed-loop farming to its extremes, Paiva even uses the fronds of his palm trees to attach the vines to their trellises. He’s fashioned a contraption with a wooden board and two nails which allows him to strip the fronds into thin ties.

Wanting his winemaking to be as minimalistic and additive free as his viticulture, Paiva started experimenting with making wine without any added sulphites in 2016. Simultaneously, he discovered that the Polytechnic Institute of Bragança were trialling powdered chestnut flowers as an alternative antioxidant to sulphur dioxide for the production of cheese. Paiva felt that if it could work for cheese, there was no reason why it wouldn’t work in wine. He has worked closely with the institute ever since, and now uses this naturally occurring substance made from chestnut trees that grow on his land in all his wines.

Although he is not alone, Araújo has been one of the more vocal disparagers of brand Vinho Verde, pointing out that its associations with cheap wine make it almost worthless as a label marketing term. Araújo often declassified his wines to the theoretically more lowly Vinho Regional Minho denomination to make the point.

Approaching retirement age, Araújo sold the winery to Esporão in 2019. It is expected that full organic conversion will follow, in line with Esporão’s strategy towards their entire 700 hectares of vineyards.

The aim is to produce high-quality dry Vinho Verde, which is “without equal” as their name translates. To that end, the Vinho Verde wines are always dry and not fizzy – making a clear point of difference with most mass-produced Vinho Verde.

The focus at this estate is on two grape varieties: Arinto and Azal. However, in 2016 João additionally planted a hectare of red varieties including Touriga Nacional and Baga. These make, among other things, a really sensational Pet Nat which is crisp, nutty, and complex – more like a traditional method sparkler than a typical Pet Nat, in my opinion.

The wines from Sem Igual show generous fruit character, and always feel clean, refreshing and true to their region’s origins. Their “Ramadas”, produced from a 70-year-old pergola-trained vineyard, is particularly recommended for its complexity and more full-bodied texture.

Recently they converted some of the buildings on their property to rooms so as to allow visitors to come to spend some time among the vines.

After being abandoned for several years, the estate was acquired in 2011 by Lima Smith Associates – a partnership between Brazilian entrepreneur Marcelo Lima and British journalist Tony Smith, who previously worked for Condé Nast International and now lives on the property. Smith’s colourful and cosmopolitan past reflects his young adulthood living in Austria, where he originally fell in love with wine, and working as a foreign correspondent in Brazil.

The pair have breathed new life into the beautiful estate, transitioning it to a focus on two white grape varieties which are considered to be more typical in this part of the region: Avesso and Arinto. Winemaker Rui Cunha has a long history at Covela as well as his own project Lacrau in the Douro valley. Working with Lima & Smith, he creates wines that stay true to the Vinho Verde imprint of freshness and purity, whilst injecting welcome diversity in terms of the grape varieties and styles.