PGA - Pedro Guilherme Andrade

PGA's product portfolio reflects a will to preserve the genuine Bairrada wine from small batches of wines laboriously prepared and matured. This at a time of great massification and diversification of the offer of wines on a world level but also, and paradoxically, of a certain homogenisation of their organoleptic characteristics.

Instead, PGA creates wines with identity, character and complexity. Wines with a feeling of belonging to a terroir, but at the same time with a cosmopolitan profile thanks to the oenological know-how and to the technological innovation that globalisation provides to producers all over the world.

Deep down, PGA reinterprets tradition so that its wines are authentically Bairrada, like a poem that needs the roughness of yellowed paper and the subtlety of permanent ink to achieve exuberance.

It was Pedro Guilherme Andrade's great-grandfather, António Martins Simões, who planted the first vines. At that time, the traditional varieties of Bairrada predominated, such as Baga and Castelão. After harvesting, the grapes were placed in wooden vats, where they later fermented in a cellar built next to the family home. Once produced, the wine was stored in barrels built in wood by coopers from neighboring towns.

With the death of the patriarch, it is Pedro Guilherme Andrade's grandfather, Agostinho Andrade, who continues wine production on the Vale de Boi property, which in the meantime has gained greater dimensions precisely because of the latter winegrower. Vine cultivation was carried out according to the methods of the time, the land being dug with hoes and enriched with abundant weeds. Wine production would be taken over in the last decades of the 20th century by Pedro Guilherme Andrade's father, António Guilherme Andrade, after the death of his father, Agostinho Andrade. It was a family imperative to continue the cultivation of vines, but now with a new impetus motivated by the expansion of land and the introduction of new techniques and equipment.

The almost total transformation of production immediately involved the vineyard, whose cultivation area increased significantly and gained new varieties. At the same time, the maturation of the wine ceased to be carried out in wooden vats, however, they were replaced by stainless steel vats and French oak barrels. This viticultural work that spans generations is based on a terroir with exceptional characteristics for the production of still and sparkling wines with the Bairrada Denomination of Origin. In clayey-limestone soils located at a high elevation, the red grape varieties Baga, Touriga Nacional and Merlot and the white varieties Bical, Cercial and Chardonnay predominate. The vineyard at a higher altitude means that the still and sparkling wines produced here have good acidity, balance and freshness. Characteristics that also result from the moderate climate of the Bairrada region, whose temperate winters are followed by summers softened by the Atlantic breeze.

For its part, the cellar, meanwhile modernized, ensures that the quality of the grapes gives rise to well-structured, elegant still and sparkling wines with the potential for longevity.