Arribas Wine Company Saroto Branco 2024

Made by Frederico Machado and Ricardo Alves, who founded Arribas Wine Company in 2017 to rehabilitate old, abandoned vineyards around Bemposta in Trás-os-Montes, Portugal. Saroto Branco is a low-intervention, skin-contact white built from an old-vine field blend of indigenous varieties — Verdelho, Malvasia, Posto Branco and Bastardo Branco — sourced from 55-year-old plots in Urros, grown at 650–700 metres on soils of decomposed granite, quartz and clay.

The 2024 fruit was hand-picked on the 3rd and 4th of September and carried to the cellar in 20kg cases, then whole-bunch foot-trodden in traditional stone lagars. Fermentation ran entirely on wild yeast with no temperature control, alongside 4 days of skin maceration. After pressing, the juice was racked into used French oak, where it finished both alcoholic and malolactic fermentation and spent around 7–8 months ageing on lees. The wine was then moved to stainless steel for natural decantation before bottling — unfined, unfiltered, and left as a genuinely natural product, so some sedimentation may appear over time.

The result is a gastronomic orange wine with real intensity and textured complexity, balanced by natural acidity throughout. Around 12% ABV.