Chinado White 2024

João Tereso is a sound engineer who ventured into winemaking in 2017 to save his grandfather’s small plots of field-blend vines in Alcobaça, an hour north of Lisbon, from abandonment. With the guidance of a close friend, local agronomist and winemaker Rodrigo Martins, he learned how to care for the vines. By 2018, he had begun tending to two additional neglected vineyards in the Tojais Valley. These vines, aged between 40 and 80 years, are situated on hillsides at about 150 meters (around 500 feet) elevation and have been farmed organically since 2021. Being just 15 minutes from the Atlantic means that even in early September, when the grapes are picked, nights can be chilly and mornings misty. His wines are crafted with “low doses of sulphur and high doses of care and attention.” Discussing field blends and the labour they require, he often says, “The fun is to live with it.”

He is often asked about the origin of the name Chinado. His friend Claudia, an illustrator and bass player he has known for years, created the original illustration. Along with it came the name, even before the first vintage. ‘Chinado’ is slang for ‘stabbed,’ as ‘chino’ is slang for knife. Some of his wines can catch you off guard and might give you a small nick, in a good way, he hopes. Additionally, ‘chino’ also refers to a stone used to demarcate property boundaries, so a plot marked by stones is ‘chinado.’ For years, he was not concerned with selling or marketing the wines because he was focused on learning how to cultivate the grapes and create the wines he envisioned. When the pandemic finally gave him the time to focus on it, he pulled the drawing out of the drawer. It fit the wines perfectly, and thus the brand was born.