CHINADO
In 2017, João Tereso, a sound engineer, ventured into winemaking to save his grandfather’s small plots of field-blend vines in Alcobaça, an hour north of Lisbon, from abandonment.
With the guidance of friends, he learned the craft of caring for vines. With a focus on low doses of sulphur but high doses of care & attention, the work required to produce low intervention wines is hefty, but João loves it.
By 2018, he had added two more abandoned vineyards to his flock. These 30-80 year old vines are situated on hillsides at about 150 meters (around 500 feet) elevation and have been farmed organically since 2021.
The name “Chinado” has a perfect double meaning.
‘Chinado’ is slang for ‘stabbed,’ as ‘chino’ is slang for knife. Some of João’s wines can catch us off guard and might give us a little nick, perhaps a little zip on our palates.
However, ‘chino’ also refers to a stone used to demarcate property boundaries, so a plot marked by stones is ‘chinado.’
Can’t get more old-school than that.
