Elisa Freire Lobo took over her family’s vineyards in the Dão, central Portugal, in 2010. They were planted in 1956, but before Elisa took the helm the grapes were sold to the local co-operative, but Elisa’s vision was to build a winery and make her own estate wine.
But first she began a patient three year-long organic conversion process to clean the land before making her first wine in 2014.
She felt that modern winemaking was leading to homogenised wines; wines that were clean and fresh, but which all tasted and smelled the same, due to the use of aromatic yeast strains. So she has returned to traditional methods – most notably wild yeast fermentations. She eschews synthetic fertilisers in the vineyard and instead keeps a flock of sheep to ‘mow’ the vineyard and to ensure a bounty of natural fertiliser in a closed loop system. She also makes a range of raw sheeps’ cheese from their milk.
She has had to overcome significant adversity, losing 6 of her 12 hectares of vines in the 2017 forest fires that raged through central Portugal. She has since replanted, and is now making distinctive and intensely mineral wines that speak of her granite soil base.
We’re excited by Portugal’s rich heritage of indigenous grape varieties, with which the UK market is only starting to become familiar. Most of Elisa’s wines are field blends, traditional for the region; the whites made principally from Bical, Cerceal, Barcelo and Malvasia-Fina, and the reds from Jaen, Alfrocheiro and Tinta Roriz, She also makes single varietal Encruzado and Touriga Nacional.
We are proud to be the sole UK importer and distributor of Freire Lobo wines.