If a single person can be said to have placed Algarve wines on the map, that would be Joana Maçanita

By: James Mayor

A visionary winemaker

Joana Maçanita is driven, juggling a series of winemaking consultancies across several of Portugal’s wine regions alongside a close winemaking collaboration with her brother, António Maçanita.

Along the way, she has played a defining role in changing perceptions of Algarve wine and giving the region a distinct identity of its own.

Hailing from a family of academics, Joana studied Agricultural Engineering, specialising in livestock breeding, and never imagined a life making wine. The family owned no vineyards.

Joana Maçanita

Her wine epiphany came when, one summer, António, passionate about all things wine, asked for her help on one of his projects. Joana caught the wine bug and never looked back, switching to a degree in Viticulture and Wine.

In the 2000s, no knowledgeable wine buff viewed the Algarve as a serious wine region, on par, for example, with the Alentejo or Douro, although it had the climate and terroir to produce quality wines.

Joana began to ask questions. How about turning the region’s wines on their head to take consumers by surprise? Instead of making powerful reds in a warm wine region, why not create lighter, fresher wines, easier to drink?

Why not take full advantage of the region’s limestone and clay soils and diverse microclimates, from the coast to the hills, tempered by Atlantic breezes?

João Clara©Héio Ramos

In 2013, working as a consultant winemaker at the João Clara winery, Joana was responsible for creating the Algarve’s first Negra Mole monovarietal red.

This was the region’s inflection point. “We understood we had our opportunity to really change the region and put Algarve wines on the map,” she recalls. Joana began to work on positioning Negra Mole as the region’s flagship grape variety.

Negra Mole

“Negra Mole is unique and versatile: it doesn’t fit what we had always been led to believe makes a good wine – more concentration, more colour, more wood, more everything…” Negra Mole is, in fact, the opposite: it’s light and medium-bodied. Joana began to experiment, testing the variety’s possibilities, picking early, picking later, trying different styles – red, sparkling, rosé. “I loved the excitement and the idea that you can create something from scratch.”

But creating distinctive wines was only part of the challenge. Joana also realised that if the Algarve was to compete with the Alentejo and Douro, the region’s best wines had to be brought to the attention of journalists and consumers.

Trained as a high-level competition gymnast, Joana’s tenacity complemented her vision.

“Amazingly, there was nobody showcasing Algarve wines,” she recalls. She set about convincing the restaurant trade and attracting wine writers to the Algarve to write about the wines they tasted in local restaurants. Slowly, awareness of the region’s wines began to grow. As Portugal’s third region in terms of wine sales, the potential for the Algarve was huge. “Next we had to win over the public,” she states.

Does she see herself as a traditionalist or an innovator? “I think I’m a bit of both. There are a lot of reasons for tradition. It takes many years to create the history of a wine region. Terroir is about taking the old and showing it through a new lens. Wine producers must believe in the potential of their terroir.

I’m part of a group of winemakers, working with low intervention or organic farming, trying to express the different terroirs, explain the grapes, and give people knowledge. The more knowledge consumers have, the more they tend to reject commercial wines. Everyone loves a strawberry that tastes like a strawberry.”

“I think I’ve succeeded in giving the Algarve an identity as a wine region. We now need more exposure, and for wine producers to come together. We will be so much stronger as a wine community,” she says.

Part of strengthening that identity, Joana believes, means bringing consumers closer to the places where the wines are made. She is encouraging wine estates to open their wineries, talk about their wines, and give people the opportunity to taste them. “People don’t just want to go to the beach every day, they want interesting things to do.

Cabrita Wines

Cabrita, for example, has an incredible tasting space, with a view of the vineyards,” she points out. Morgado do Quintão, where Joana is the award-winning consultant winemaker, is also heavily involved in wine tourism.

Yet developing a stronger regional identity is only one of the challenges facing winemakers. Changing climatic conditions are increasingly influencing what happens in the vineyard and, ultimately, in the cellar.

Morgado do Quintão

For Joana, climate change is about much more than rising temperatures. “Climate change has fundamentally altered the way we make decisions in the vineyard. It’s much more unlikely now to reach full maturation without something unexpected and challenging happening.” She forecasts that production will be lower this year than last year, with fewer bunches and earlier maturation.

The challenges facing contemporary winemakers are being tackled by a new generation across Portugal, and when asked whose work she particularly admires, Joana references two other women, both working in the Douro: the independent low-intervention winemaker Joana Pinhão, and Rita Marques, who gained recognition at her family winery Conceito and now works with South African winemaker Marc Kent on their Companhia de Vinhos Invencível project.

And how about her famous brother, António? “My brother is my inspiration. He’s unique. If you want to learn about wine, talk to him!”

Their collaboration extends across the country. Brother and sister run four separate wine projects, in four very different wine regions: the Azores, Madeira, Alentejo, and Douro.

Joana, who lives with her three children in Porto, is responsible for the Douro project.

“We have 22 vineyards in the Douro, with only old vines between 80 and 140 years old,” she reveals. Since 2019, they’ve been conducting a deep study of Douro varieties. “With the University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro (UTAD) we’ve now identified the vines in all 22 parcels, 125 different varieties in total. We’re creating a genetic map with UTAD.”

For someone whose career has been defined by exploring the potential of places and grape varieties, there are inevitably more ideas waiting to be developed. So, is there something special Joana still wants to achieve? “We have a project deep in the Douro, at altitude, with granitic soils…” Essential will report back when this project is ripe.

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