Portugal: The 2022 and 2023 Vintages in Bairrada

Luis Pato is the pope of Bairrada. He has been joined by his younger daughter María João in 2015. She was an engineer in Porto but changed her life and joined the family business, going back to her roots, representing the fifth generation of Patos in the wine world. As I've seen in many wineries in the region, sparkling wines have grown tremendously, both in quantity and in quality, and today, they represent around 40% of the total production of the winery. The wine they produce the least is...reds!

They have 60 hectares of vines ranging between one and 125 years of age and produce 300,000 bottles. As for the recent vintages, they explained that the 2020 harvest was warm and of excellent quality for the Baga variety. The 2021 harvest, as is generally the case with harvests ending in one, had a longer maturation period and more pronounced acidity. The 2022 harvest was easier because it was warm, while the 2023 harvest was more acidic… there is a noticeable alternation of harvests—colder…warmer. The 2024 and 2025 harvests were greatly impacted by downy mildew in the vineyards due to negligence in treatments; while in 2024 the downy mildew was late, in 2025, due to heavy rain in the winter and spring, there were strong attacks of downy mildew, especially in vineyards treated organically.