Os Goliardos - European Terroir Wines

We’ve enriched our wine vocabulary with the goliardic entry of the Beiorte project, which means wine in the local dialect. Led by João Costa, Costinha, and Bea, around the remote village of Santa Ovaia in the camouflaged area of Serra do Açor that will soon become the new unmissable terroir for red and white gold diggers. We are in a granite area that belongs to the Alva sub-region of the Dão, in the municipality of Oliveira do Hospital, with a tradition of quarrying, as tough as the winegrower, with an old vineyard fragmented into mini plots. Here the Beiorte duo invest their “arguina” (mason’s) energy and the knowledge they have accumulated from various existential experiences to give expression and a future to an area that is sentimentally important to them, with an airy and free approach to the alchemy of wine. The winemaking is very similar to the Dão of the 1950s, with a significant proportion of Baga, Alfrocheiro, Tinta Pinheira and Trincadeira in the red grapes and Fernão Pires, Bical, Arinto, Encruzado and Malvasia Fina in the white. Farm work is done with a hoe and a rucksack on their backs on a “canny” moon because everyone has another job on the side. The wines are made per plot to singularise each one and the work in the minimalist family winery reveals the ingenuity of the producers and their ability to do good with little. We’re happy to have yet another good wine (Beiorte gido, as the cork indicates) and confirmation that the Dão region has a lot to say when your appetite is big, as is the case with Costinha, the wide horizon and the contagious laughter.