Far out in the Atlantic Ocean, between Lisbon and New York, vines grow between the cracks of black basalt lava stone on Pico Island.
The best ones grow close to the sea, there where the crabs sing, as the local saying goes; it's where there’s greater exposure to the sun, far below the rainy heights of the clouded Mount Pico volcano, Portugal's highest mountain.
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Over the past decade António Maçanita, winemaker at the Azores Wine Company (AWC), has played a key role here, more than a thousand miles from Portugal's key wine regions, transforming wine production in the Azores archipelago.
In a bid to further raise the profile of the company's wines, Maçanita has released Vinhas dos Utras, one of Portugal's most highly priced still white wines. With a retail price of €240 ($280) a bottle, it is also Maçanita and the AWC's most expensive wine.
Maçanita made 1116 bottles of this wine, which the AWC says has production costs totalling close to €20 per kilo of grapes. The white wine is made from Arinto de Azores grapes grown on old vines on Pico Island.
Maçanita says that Vinha dos Utras 2019 shows how the potential of the Azores has now started to come to the fore. "2019 was the best vintage – the wine shows depth and power." The elegant wine, made with low levels of sulfur, is now being distributed mainly to Michelin-star restaurants and independent wine merchants.
Azores revival
Having been involved in the recovery of native Azores white grape varieties Arinto de Azores, Terrantez de Pico and Verdelho, in 2014 Maçanita teamed up with viticulturalist Paulo Machado, and finance manager Felipe Rocha, to create the Azores Wine Company.
The company now makes a total of nine wines (four of which were released this year) with a production of about 100,000 bottles of wine per year – it's no mean feat when considering that average yields are about 1200 kg per hectare in the Azores.
Despite hostile viticultural and climatic conditions, including humidity, substantial rainfall levels and low yields, Maçanita was convinced he could create value by making singular premium wines with a sense of place, made in an unusual location.
Pico Island is home to the Unesco World Heritage vineyard site, and to black basalt stone, once removed in the late Middle Ages to render volcanic soil fertile, and then used to form dry-stone enclosures known as currais to protect vines from the battering winter wind and rain. During its pre-phylloxera heyday in the mid-1800s, 10 million liters of wine were made on the Azores each year. Rapid decline in production later led to the state-run co-operatives in the 1950s, during the Portuguese dictatorship.
When Maçanita first looked to make wine on Pico Island in 2010, growers sold grapes at €0.70 per kilo. Since 2014, the average price of the island's grapes has increased more than five-fold, to €5 a kilo. If, in 2003, there were about 120 hectares of vines, over the last decade the number of producers on the archipelago has doubled (from 246 in 2012 to 517 in 2019), with close to 1000 hectares of vines now growing on the islands.
The Azores Wine Company, which now owns 55 hectares of vines on Pico Island and rents a further 71 ha of plots, has reaped the rewards of its efforts to revive local grape varieties, and shown that it can make a range of singular, racy still wines, which speak of a place.
Rise of Portugal's still wines
If Portugal was once best known for its Port and Madeira fortified wines, it's the country's graceful, elegant still wines – including Maçanita's wines – that are seizing the world's attention. Still wines now account for about 65 percent of the value of Portuguese exports, a market share held 20 years ago by Port exports, according to the ViniPortugal national wine promotion agency.
Portuguese reds from the Douro and Alentejo (Maçanita also makes wines in these regions at Fitapreta and Maçanita Vinhos) may be better known, yet Maçanita, a key protagonist in the revival of the Azores, has shown how an undervalued smaller wine region can be transformed to generate value.
Prices in the pandemic remain a challenge for Portuguese winemakers, due to the overall quality of wines made in greater volumes by bigger companies, sold at attractive prices. Despite the tremendous export growth in Portuguese still wines this year (up 20.3 percent to May 2021 in comparison with 2020) and growth in 2020, when wine exports from EU competitors decreased, Portugal faces the challenge of increasing low export prices.
In 2020, the average price of Portuguese wines fell by 1.6 percent to €2.71 per liter, compared with 2019, according to IVV, Portugal's wine and vine institute. That said, there's an increasing number of high-end white wines, made in smaller volumes with retail prices above €40, in revived areas like Bucelas, Colares, Portoalegre in Alentejo, and areas of Vinho Verde.
New winery
Maçanita, aged 41, is one of many young Portuguese winemakers who are making graceful, elegant, less-oaky wines, with low-intervention practices. Having named Maçanita Winemaker of the Year in 2018, in 2020 the Portuguese wine magazine, Revista de Vinhos, named Maçanita’s Fitapreta estate in Alentejo Producer of the Year. In May this year, the Portuguese newspaper Jornal de Negocios even described Maçanita as "the astronaut of wine": bold and adventurous, going beyond Portugal's key and esteemed wine regions of Douro, Alentejo and Vino Verde.
It could have been a reference to the Azores Wine Company’s new €3 million space-age winery, which is etched out of the lava stone on Pico Island. Opened in June this year, the classy, contemporary, and tilted structure, designed to retain rainfall, includes accommodation for tourists.
In his quest to create value from lesser known or undervalued regions, Maçanita has now started to make wine from grapes grown on the Portuguese island of Porto Santo, located next to its bigger sister island, Madeira.
In September this year, Maçanita plans to release Profetas, (Prophets), a new still white wine made from Listrao Branco (Palomino Fino) grapes, grown on Porto Santo's limestone soils, where lower acidity levels are a greater challenge than the rainfall of the Azores. Having first made wine in the Alentejo in the mid-2000s, the island is unlikely to be Maçanita’s last stop on his winemaking journey.
In the spirit of his Azores venture, which helped put the Azores on the modern wine map, it would not be surprising if he were to make wines elsewhere on Europe’s Atlantic edge.
In 2019, when Brazilian online wine publication VivaOVinho asked which region he would choose if he had to produce wine outside of Portugal, Maçanita replied: "I very much like the air of coastal sites: Muscadet, for example, is a very interesting and much undervalued wine, made in a region with a great maritime influence – for this reason I could also choose Cape Verde or the Canary Islands; let it be islands or places close to the sea."
