João Pires & Becky Turner, the Luso-American couple who in Baião turned their lives upside down with Avesso. Driven by a humanitarian spirit, by sustainable community and economic development, they are in wine what they are in the other life outside of wine.
The purchase of the Quinta de Alvites property, in Baião, did not only mean the taste and pleasure of wine, or the pride of seeing his wine creations in the glass or at the table of connoisseurs. It meant being on the right side.
The project would have to represent the enhancement of a neglected interior and that would promote the socioeconomic development of this municipality, which is Baião. This was the right side where they wanted to be.
His strength would reside in the awareness that his success would be everyone's success, similar to his other professional life in humanitarian improvement missions. It is at Quinta de Alvites, in the southeast of the Demarcated Region of Vinhos Verdes, already in the heart of the Douro Valley, that the Pires & Turner project was born. On the property, the vineyard has always had tradition and residence since the end of the 19th century.
The 3 hectares of vineyards at Quinta de Alvites are located at an altitude of around 300 meters with different exposures to the sun and where the granite soil is the undisputed lord. The grapes are carefully treated by hand along the slopes of this sub-region, facing the hot summer and the cold and dry winter as well as the high temperature ranges.
Despite the hardness, these conditions prove to be perfect for the Avesso variety, which, as it is late, needs heat for the full development of its maturation. Baião is recognized as the terroir of excellence for the Avesso variety. Pires & Turner is a very recent project, a boutique winery that produces wines in small quantities.
Its first wine, Pires & Turner Escolha 2020, combines Avesso with a little Laurel, completely made in stainless steel where it was aged for 4 months on fine lees and with batonnage. It is a wine that aims to be of superior quality in a contemporary register of the region and very faithful to its terroir.
The portfolio, in the future, will consist of a few more wines and a sparkling wine, always in small quantities. The wines carry with them the project guided by the values of quality, exclusivity and consistency, and by the pillars of sustainability.
“And suddenly life turns you inside out, and you discover that inside out is your right side.” - Caio Fernando Abreu
