Chão dos Eremitas Tinta Carvalha 2018

In the southern foothills of Serra d’Ossa, this place is special, you can feel it! Two streams bring the rainwater from the Serra keeping the ground cool in the torrid Alentejo heat, never lowering the water table below 5 meters. Here is where the vine used to be planted, the Chão dos Eremitas, “Chão”, an old term for flat areas, and “Eremitas” referring to the Hermit monks of São Paulo’s order. Here, there’s evidence of uninterrupted wine production since the 14th century. XIV. The vineyard was so important that a Papal Bull in 1397 exempts the “Pauperes Eremitas” from paying taxes in their vineyards. But archeology goes further, discovering the only Phoenician wine amphora of Portugal’s inland, dating to the 8th century BC. This links this place to wine about 900 years before the arrival of the Romans, in which there are 3,000 years of history linked to wine.