Mendes describes himself as a ‘long-distance runner’, in life as in wine. He started running about 10 years ago, at first no more than 3 km because his knees hurt. He explained that he ignored the knee pain and eventually it went away. ‘I kept increasing the distances until I ran my first marathon. It’s an incredible feeling, so deep in my soul ... something like “If I can do this … I can do everything that depends entirely on me!”. Unfortunately … almost nothing depends entirely on me!’
It’s a story that tells you a lot about Mendes, his combination of ambition, determination, self-deprecation and dry, iconoclastic humour. This wine also tells you a lot about the man and the winemaker. He is deeply and restlessly thoughtful about what he does, revealed in his comments below. When you ask Mendes a question, his replies are as enlightening as his wines are delicious. He also wants his work to benefit the local community in Alenquer, north of Lisbon (see this World Atlas of Wine map), and in Ribeira de Santarém, a little further north, where he was born and continues to live with his family. He is pragmatic enough to admit that his young business – which, he gratefully acknowledges, began with crowdfunding – needs to be firmly established before this dream can take shape. His new Pitau range was created ‘to release funds for social intervention’ in the area where he and his wife grew up.
Curtimenta means that the wine is fermented with the grape skins, a style of wine described in detail in my boot-camp article Soaked to the skin, which was illustrated by a photo of Hugo Mendes’s son watching attentively as the fermentation was about to start. Most red wines are fermented with the grape skins; most whites are not. So-called skin-macerated whites are often referred to as orange or amber wines.
This wine, however, is golden in the glass. It has a gorgeously inviting aroma of apricot and candied citrus plus a hint of honeysuckle and jasmine, which I don’t usually find on Arinto. As it opens up in the glass, an impression of dried grasses – which I often find on skin-fermented whites – adds another aromatic layer. Such complexity shows the effect of this winemaking style on a variety that is not typically highly aromatic.
The combination of light body (it’s only 11% alcohol) and definite but not in the least aggressive tannins creates a perfect balance. Somehow the fruit tastes sweet even though the wine is bone dry. The persistent flavours finish with a sour-fresh aftertaste. This is one of the purest, freshest and most elegant skin-fermented whites I have tasted. Irresistible – even for those who do not love skin-fermented whites.
Some producers prefer using more aromatic varieties for this style of wine but, Mendes noted, ‘I’m pleased to be working with Arinto because it doesn’t overwhelm with aroma; it has the structure that makes me believe it will age gracefully in the bottle without the aromas turning unpleasant’.
A second advantage is that Arinto tends to have naturally low levels of malic acid at the end of ripening so that Mendes can work with very low levels of sulphur dioxide without worrying that ‘a malolactic conversion might change the fresh profile I expect from it’.
Mendes told me that, growing up in a region where Arinto is the dominant variety and having worked for many years as a winemaker in Bucelas, a DOC where Arinto rules, he has a soft spot for the variety: ‘naturally it’s the grape of my heart’.
He believes that as well as being perfect for curtimenta wines, it has other advantages: ‘It’s very versatile and balanced, allowing for many different technical approaches and adapting to almost any terroir. But it’s a neutral variety, and when handled naturally (meaning, when you don’t add selected yeasts that will change and mask the true grape expression), it shows a very straightforward signature, so those looking for wines with greater aromatic range won’t find it here. Its best and most complex expression comes from wines we allow to age for two or three years. If I had to choose just one grape to work with for the rest of my life, it would be Arinto. You can make everything with it, and at the highest quality, as long as you know how to interpret it and respect it.’
Mendes owns neither vineyards nor winery though he would like to have his own winery nearer home so that he doesn’t have to drive back and forth between Santarém and Alenquer. He currently buys fruit from three growers, including Quinta do Carneiro, where he makes his wines. ‘I want to grow enough to bring them a good and profitable business.’ There may not be many old vines in Lisboa but, he believes, there are plenty of grapes that can be saved from those bigger businesses and co-operatives that tend not to add value to the farmer’s work.
The grapes for this wine come from a 25-year-old plot of vines (pictured above by Mendes a week ago) at Quinta do Carneiro in Alenquer, his longest-standing partner. It’s planted on the region’s typical clay-limestone soils, at low elevation and in quite a flat area. About this vineyard he wrote, ‘I believe the clay lends it a particular floral note that I don’t usually find in Arintos grown purely on limestone’, confirming what I tasted in this wine even though the Curtimenta 2023 is shaped to a large extend by the winemaking style.
The grapes are fermented in small (up to 1,000 litres) open-topped food-grade plastic tanks (below). He prefers this size because it means he has greater control over the cap, the skins that rise to the surface during fermentation. By keeping it submerged, he minimises the risk of bacterial spoilage.
The small vessels also naturally lose heat more easily, so he does not need to cool the tanks. ‘Additionally’, he explains, ‘one of the advantages of fermenting with skins is that they rise, and when they do, they release a significant amount of heat; in other words, they cool down. When we punch them back down, we trigger a natural cooling effect.’
Immediately after fermentation, the tanks are closed with steel lids that have an air chamber that adjusts to the level of the wine to prevent any contact with oxygen. This is ‘a hygienic measure’. However, the wine stays in contact with the skins for a total of 6–9 months (including the fermentation period) because only after this extended maceration, he believes, do the characteristics of maceration show; in the case of Arinto, these characteristics start to intensify after about three months. He finds that very short macerations produce ‘little more than structured white wines’.
The Curtimenta label (below) is a good example of Mendes’s approach to giving back. ‘I don’t come from a family connected to wine. I have no history to honour and no great-grandfather to be ashamed of anything I might do. Everything here is being built from scratch, and for that reason, I’ve decided to include everything that makes me happy. I’m a big believer in the sense of community, and I feel that Portuguese wine is still missing a touch of “pop culture”. With that in mind, in some of my wines (like this skin-contact), I’ve chosen to invite amateur artists, those at the beginning of their careers, or anyone who could benefit from showing their work, to create an original artwork which I buy and use on the label. In this way, I feel I’m also, in a small way, a patron and a supporter of someone just starting. Filipe Pereira created this one.’
The wine is imported into the UK by Festa and is available online directly from them or from Hedonism and Drop Kensington in West London.
It has recently arrived in the US, where it is imported by GK Selections. Lewis Kopman told me it is already available in Fiasco! Wine and Spirits in Brooklyn and will soon be more widely stocked. Email Kopman (lewis@gkselections.com) for more information.
Main image by Ricard Bernardo.
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