Álvaro Castro is widely acknowledged as the leading producer in Portugal’s Dão region.
Álvaro Castro inherited his 16th century family farm, on which his family had been making wine for centuries, in 1980. Under political regimes of the not-so-distant past, every farmer in the region was forced to sell their grapes to Co-ops. In the early 1980’s, Álvaro made a fulltime commitment to reestablishing the family tradition of winemaking. In 2000, after having worked at wineries in Bordeaux and in Portugal with Dirk Niepoort and José Neiva Correia, Maria Castro began working with her father, ensuring the future of the family winemaking legacy.
With three farms on which to grow grapes (Quinta da Pellada, Quinta da Saes, and Outeiro), Álvaro is leading the Dao’s viticulture movement. Álvaro Castro has harnessed the characteristics of the Dão to produce wines of great freshness and finesse without sacrificing complexity or depth. A long family legacy of winemaking, generations of grape growing and his drive to better understand his terroir culminate in incredibly expressive and pure wines that are never formulaic and reflect a constant evolution…a feeling that has caught the attention of the world.
