Casa Ermelinda Freitas

Castelão before the cellar door

Castelão still sets the first measure for Leonor Freitas, winemaker at Casa Ermelinda Freitas in Aguas De Moura, where sandy Fernando Pó soils hold water through dry summers. She leads the family house as President of the Board of Directors, with the winery’s work tied to Fernando Pó, Palmela, in the Península de Setúbal. The estate began in 1920 under Deonilde Freitas, and Leonor carries that line as the fourth generation of the family and the fifth generation of the winery. Her own mark has been expansion with discipline: Trincadeira, Touriga Nacional, Aragonês, Syrah and Alicante Bouschet joined the older base of Castelão and Fernão Pires, broadening the bench without cutting it loose from the region. Leonor Freitas puts the credit beyond one pair of hands: “My success is related to the generations that worked before me, to my family, to the team I have, to the region and, ultimately, to the consumers. The house lives on for them.”

Five hundred and fifty hectares under river air

The method here belongs to scale, but not anonymity. Casa Ermelinda Freitas works as a large estate winery, with vineyards listed between 445-550 hectares and about 9 million liters of wine produced per year. The house manages 29 grape varieties, with Castelão accounting for 40% of the vineyards, a proportion that keeps the Setúbal signature visible even as the range widens. Sado and Tejo river breezes cool the vines during dry summers, while the sandy soils of Fernando Pó, often compared to beach sand, help with water retention and grape maturation. In the cellar, red wines are described through controlled stainless steel fermentation, fine lees contact for a few months, and, for some selections, time in small barrels. It is a program built to hold fruit, volume and regional identity in the same frame.

The cellar route and the House of Memories

The place is arranged for the work to be seen: vineyard visits, winery facilities, cellars, bottling section and dedicated tasting spaces sit within the same estate rhythm. The cellar has the practical air of a house that bottles at scale, then turns toward the visitor with structured tastings and local products rather than spectacle. In the tasting room, the language returns to grapes and ground: Castelão, Fernão Pires, Touriga Nacional, Trincadeira and Syrah; sandy soil, river air, Palmela. The House of Memories and Affection gives the family story a room of its own, close enough to the production areas that heritage does not feel separated from tanks, barrels and glass.

Dona Ermelinda in small format

The current signature points include Dona Ermelinda 375ml Red 2024 and Dona Ermelinda 375ml White 2024, small bottles carrying the family name into the most direct part of the program. The house comes back to scale with Leonor’s broadened varieties, Deonilde’s founding line, and Dona Ermelinda 375ml Red 2024.