Anselmo Mendes

Skin contact as a working decision

Curtimenta has stayed on the bench since 2001 for Anselmo Mendes, winemaker at Anselmo Mendes in Moreira, Vila. The gesture is simple to name and exacting to hold: white grapes left with their skins, texture treated as part of the wine rather than an effect added later. Mendes came to this station through Lisbon, then through Borges in Porto, consulting work at Gaivosa in the Douro and Ameal in Vinho Verde, and his own Muros de Melgaço project from 1987 to 1997. Since 1998, a small property in Melgaço has given his work a fixed point in the north. Since 2008, the Quinta de la Torre vineyards have given it another, followed by the restoration of the property from 2016. The line is not decorative lineage. It is a maker moving through commercial cellars, consulting rooms, rented fruit, owned vines and recovered buildings, each stage adding another kind of control.

Alvarinho, Loureiro and the long study of place

The program here rests on Alvarinho, with Loureiro kept in the work since 2005 and red varieties brought back into attention since 2012. Across three family properties in Monção and Melgaço, about 60 hectares are planted with Alvarinho, with Quinta da Torre described as the largest viticultural area in the region. The soils move through granitic ground with sandy loam, alluvium near the rivers, and more skeletal, sandy slopes higher up. Mendes uses that variation as material, not backdrop. Contacto Alvarinho, Curtimenta, Muros Antigos Espumante Alvarinho, A Torre and Parcela Única each press on a different part of the same question: how much structure, lift, skin, parcel and time can Vinho Verde carry without losing its northern line. The house works sustainably, and the scale remains that of a medium estate rather than an anonymous industrial program.

The cellar beside old granaries

The room sits inside a restored rural estate, with Alvarinho vineyards around it and a house whose history reaches nearly 600 years. The old granaries date to the 17th century; ancient olive trees hold the ground with the same quiet authority as the stone. The tasting room and cellar do not need to overstate the setting. They let the estate do the speaking: vineyard rows, thick walls, modern comfort held inside agricultural memory. In the Monção e Melgaço sub-region of Vinho Verde DOC, that matters. The cellar is close to the material, and the place keeps the visitor near the work without turning the work into theatre.

A partnership folded into the estate

In 2023, Mendes and Symington Family Estates formed Mendes & Symington to develop premium Vinho Verde brands from this part of the north. The partnership acquired Contacto, the 100% Alvarinho wine already tied to Mendes, and Casa de Rodas, a 27.5-hectare vineyard in Monção and Melgaço. Mendes remains the winemaker in the arrangement, which keeps the next chapter attached to the same discipline rather than a change of costume. For now, the concrete thing to follow is Contacto, still carrying the pressure and clarity of Alvarinho from Monção and Melgaço.