There are few solid rules when it comes to curating a successful portfolio, but one gold standard is "start with quality and you'll attract more of the same".
For example, Fílipa is good friends with such stellar producers from our previous portfolio selections, including Alvaro Castro and Mário Sérgio (not to mention Austria's famous producer, Heidi Schröck), plus Vasco Croft loves her wines, and... so on and so forth.
She is the daughter of Portugal's legendary Bairrada producer, Luis Pato, and she began by producing wines for others and then on her own - a common European approach to passing the family business to the next generation.
She purchased a small winery in Bairrada, which she has now significantly expanded (by digging downwards!). In relatively short order, she claimed a spot on the global stage through her strikingly expressive and honest wines, so reflective of her own personality.
Joined now by her husband, renowned Belgian sommelier Willem Wouters, they have enthusiastically embraced the rigors of bio-dynamic farming and have been steadily buying up new parcels of land near their home-base. Some of the plots already contain old vines, others are being replanted with massal selections.
Move quickly please, their inventory consistently sells out.
