Why it matters
The producer
Before he made wine, Daniel Afonso owned a wine bar. He founded Baías e Enseadas in 2013 without prior wine industry experience and taught himself winemaking. A first vineyard was planted for the project. The project operates from a garage facility in Mercês, Sintra and produces about 8,000 bottles a year.
Afonso uses indigenous yeasts, gentle pressing and neutral oak barrels under a minimal intervention approach. The method keeps the oak flavour quiet and leaves the vineyard character visible in the wine. Baías e Enseadas works with Arinto, Malvasia and Castelão across white and red wines.
Place and vineyards
Where the wines begin
Two small vineyards lie on calcareous clay a few kilometers from the ocean. Calcareous clay combines water holding clay with limestone, so the soil can retain moisture as grapes ripen. The nearby ocean places the parcels in a maritime environment. In the wines, this setting appears as intense ocean salt minerality, with sea salt, kombu and oyster shell.
Colares is the vineyard place. Winemaking is based at Rua Damião de Gois nº 8ª, Mercês, Mem Martins, in Sintra.
Wines to know
The range in view
Castelão is the red wine in the range. Arinto, Arinto Escolha Pessoal and Malvasia Colares are the white wines. Malvasia Colares carries the Colares appellation and is the inaugural Colares DOC wine. It is made from ungrafted Malvasia. Ungrafted vines grow on their own roots, and the bottle names that vine condition alongside Colares.
Arinto spends eight months in used French oak barrels with weekly bâtonnage, which stirs settled yeast through the wine. That movement can add roundness and texture, while used French oak allows ageing without the stronger wood flavour of new barrels. Arinto brings spiced citrus and stone fruit. Its fresh palate has flinty minerality and briny acidity, and the wine is 13.5% ABV. Arinto Escolha Pessoal is the other Arinto bottling in the white range.