Biography
I make wine to give Portugal’s terroirs a future
I am a winemaker. I have been one since the harvest of 2000, in California, Germany and, since 2001, in Portugal — the last eighteen of those harvests with a company of my own. This is the short version of how that happened and what I do with it now.
Where it started
I learned the trade far from home. My first harvest was in 2000, an internship at Kent Rasmussen Winery in Napa Valley, and it showed me what ambition looks like inside a cellar. I went back to finish my degree, wrote my thesis at Geisenheim in Germany and worked harvests in the Rheingau and the Mosel, where I learned the opposite lesson: that precision, patience and cold climates make wines that last. I came home with both, and with the conviction that the country I grew up in had vineyards nobody was listening to.
From 2001 to 2004 I made wine in the Douro. From the 2005 harvest I was the winemaker at Sociedade dos Vinhos Borges, one of Portugal’s historic houses — the only one on staff, with Anselmo Mendes as consultant. From 2003 I sat on the jury of the International Wine Challenge in London for ten consecutive years; judging teaches you what quality is when nobody tells you the label. In 2005 I completed WSET Level 3.
Casca Wines
The 2008 harvest was my last at Borges and the first of my own: the first Colares, and the founding of Casca Wines. The idea was simple and slightly unreasonable — one company, one winemaker, and vineyards in the regions of Portugal that deserved a voice: Colares, the Douro, the Beira Interior, the Dão, Bairrada, Lisboa, the Alentejo. Not one estate, but a map. Old vines, native grapes, growers who had been there for generations, and wines made to show where they come from rather than where the market was going.
Colares became the centre of it. Ungrafted vines in sand, a region that was nearly gone, and two grapes — Ramisco and Malvasia — that I have spent eighteen harvests arguing for. When a wine finally carries my own name on the label, it will be from here.
Telling the story
In 2013 I conceived, produced and presented Rotas do Vinho, a documentary series for SIC television that travelled Portugal’s wine regions. In 2020 a National Geographic crew filmed with me in Colares for Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted; the episode aired in 2021 and did more for the region in one evening than a decade of visits. The full story →
Between 2017 and 2020 Casca was among the first Portuguese producers to work seriously with organic grapes, minimal-intervention and vegan wines — the Cascale range, with its orange and palhete wines, came from those years.
What I do now
I still make every Casca wine. Alongside, I advise producers on winemaking and viticulture and on brand and market strategy — in the Beira Interior, the Alentejo and elsewhere — and since 2026 I am strategic adviser to the Municipality of Sintra for the recovery and promotion of the wines of Colares and Sintra. Consulting →
In 2024 I gave a name to something I had been practising for years: Drinkfulness — drinking less, drinking better, and paying attention while you do. The manifesto →
And I write. Histórias do Vinho is a history of wine in 118 chapters, published here as it is written, in Portuguese and English. The book →
In short
- Born in Cascais
- First harvest 2000, Napa Valley
- Geisenheim; Rheingau and Mosel
- Douro 2001–2004
- Winemaker, Sociedade dos Vinhos Borges, 2005–2008
- WSET Level 3
- Jury, International Wine Challenge, ten consecutive years
- Founder and winemaker, Casca Wines, since the 2008 harvest
- Rotas do Vinho, SIC (2013)
- Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted, National Geographic (2021)
- Grand Gold Medals, Concours Mondial de Bruxelles
- Strategic adviser, Municipality of Sintra (2026–)
- Creator of Drinkfulness (2024)
- Author, Histórias do Vinho