Mira do Ó En - MIRA DO Ó VINHOS

Philosophy

“It’s all about the grapes”

Breeding good grapes, picking them at the right time and winemaking with little intervention so as to obtain the wines that we believe that best mirror the “terroir”. That’s what we try to do year after year, either with Arinto in Bucelas or with Encruzado, Jaen, Alfrocheiro and Touriga Nacional in Dão.

Viticulture therefore plays a crucial role. All the decisions we make throughout the year are reflected in some way in our wine glass and this is indeed something that is truly captivating.

Here oenology consists simply in choosing the best winemaking techniques that allow us to interpret the different grapes in the best way, with minimal intervention but always controlling the processes in all stages.

We seek to obtain wines that are faithful to their origins but are always elegant and fresh, provide drinking pleasure and know how to age gracefully.

The Vineyards

In the Dão region, the vineyards are located in São João de Lourosa, between Viseu and Silgueiros. It is a plateau at 500 meters of altitude on the right bank of the Dão River, with Serra do Caramulo to the northwest and Serra da Estrela to the southeast as the main landscape and climatic influences. Here the bed rock is granite as in most of the region but with a great richness of clay that allows a great balance of the vineyards, especially in the drier years and also to get wines with a richer texture and depth. The white queen variety is Encruzado and in the reds the bet is always on blends of Jaen, Alfrocheiro, Baga, Touriga Nacional and Tinta Pinheira.

In Bucelas, just 20 km north of Lisbon, the vineyards are located in the area of Freixial and have a very particular climate strong Atlantic influence but protected within the valley. The soils are clay-limestone, here one can only speak of white wine and the variety that rules is Arinto, one of the most planted in Portugal but that has its birthplace here as well as its maximum potential.

Winemaking

In white wines we use mainly used barrels with the Encruzado, without adding yeast and with very slow fermentations. They are usually bottled after 10 months of aging in wood, and then they age in the bottle until they are released. In reds, we use a variable percentage of whole bunches with stems. Some reds are fermented in a press with foot treading and others in vats, with little forced extraction. They age in “Tonel” and barrels, usually for 20 months before being bottled.