Why it matters
The producer
Sandra Tavares da Silva and Jorge Serôdio Borges founded Wine & Soul after bringing different Douro experience to the same project: Jorge had worked as an oenologist at Niepoort, while Sandra had worked at Quinta do Vale D. Maria and her family's Chocapalha estate. Sandra is recognised as the Douro's first female winemaker. Their first site, Pintas, remains the thread through the house: old vines, mixed planting and a red wine shaped by one small vineyard.
Wine & Soul started with the intention of making wine together, beginning from Pintas rather than from a large inherited holding. The first vineyard's 1.5 hectares gave Sandra and Jorge an immediate constraint: a very small crop from old, mixed-planted vines. The result was a house whose central red could be tied to one field blend from the beginning.
Place and vineyards
Where the wines begin
The winery is in Vale de Mendiz, a few kilometres from Pinhão, in a converted old Port lodge. This is Douro country where vineyards are broken into terraces rather than broad, level blocks, making the movement from vine to cellar a manual one and keeping the estate's wines close to individual sites.
Pintas is a southwest-facing old-vine vineyard with deeply rooted plants. The exposure was sought for ripening, while the old roots were valued for balance; together they provide the fruit basis for a red field blend rather than a wine defined by one named variety.
In the cellar
Vineyards and cellar
At harvest, Sandra and Jorge inspect the fruit and may reject about 20 percent. With hand-picked grapes coming from narrow terraces, that selection is a direct way to protect ripe fruit before fermentation and reduce the risk of coarse, green tannin in the reds.
Wine & Soul also uses foot-treading in lagares, the open stone vats associated with Douro winemaking. Fermentations have been kept at no more than 24°C to avoid green tannins; the cellar work therefore aims for colour, fruit and grip without pushing the skins into a hard finish.
Wines to know
The range in view
Pintas is the old-vine red reference: a field blend of roughly 40 varieties from the estate's first vineyard. Its role in the range is structural as much as aromatic, bringing mixed fruit, tannin and weight from one small site rather than a single-grape expression.
Pintas Character 2023 offers another red view of the house, with documented vinification and élevage behind a fruit-led, tannin-bearing Douro style. Guru 2024 takes the field-blend idea into white wine and includes oak treatment, giving citrus and fruit a broader texture rather than a simple light-bodied profile.
A useful way in
A bottle to begin with
Start with Pintas Character 2023. It is a red that leads back to the estate's original old-vine project while showing the house's current cellar work. Look for ripe fruit, spice, dry tannin and a full-bodied palate; the temperature-controlled fermentation is intended to keep the grip clean rather than green. It is the most direct route into Wine & Soul's combination of mixed Douro fruit, hand harvest and careful extraction.