Aline Domingues grew up in Paris with her Portuguese parents. She studied molecular biology, but it was the capital's wine bars that drew her to fermentation. She went on to study in Dijon, on a course covering wine, beer and cheese, and soon began to think about a project of her own. That meant swapping city life for her family's small village of Uva in northeastern Portugal, home to just 45 inhabitants and tucked close to the Spanish border and the deep canyons of the Douro.

She produced her first bottles in 2018, using grapes from her grandfather and father. There was some resistance to making wines in a more hands-off way, but this only encouraged her to show the local, native varieties in a more unadulterated light, as in the ways of old.

She slowly began working more old vineyards, mostly tiny parcels of mixed plantings that had survived while many others were ripped out in favour of more commercial varieties. She now works a mixture of old vine plots, while also sourcing fruit from local growers.

The climate here is dry, which keeps the bush vines small and close to the ground. They're a pain to work by hand and very labour intensive, but disease pressure is low, so farming organically is rather straightforward compared to many other regions.

Cellar work is lo-fi but attentive. Grapes are foot-trodden and fermentations kick off with indigenous yeasts, with no temperature control or other additions. Aline works a manual, traditional wooden press and ages mainly in neutral vessels such as fibreglass, steel and concrete, with a small amount of old oak being experimented with too. The aim is always to let the purity of grape and site shine through. She uses only tiny amounts of sulphur at bottling, for stability during shipping.

Aline is bringing new energy to the viticultural heritage of this quiet, ageing village, and is one of the most exciting producers we've discovered in Portugal. The future looks very bright.