Filipa Pato

Filipa Pato is the daughter of Luís Pato, the Bairrada modernizer who, in the 1980s, pulled Baga out of the bulk-wine business and turned it into something that could hang with serious Portuguese reds. Filipa trained as a chemical engineer at Coimbra, apprenticed in Bordeaux, Mendoza, and Margaret River, spent time at her father's domaine, and in 2001 started her own project. In 2020 Revista de Vinhos named her Portugal's Winemaker of the Year - the first woman so named in thirty years.

She works with her husband, Belgian sommelier and restaurateur William Wouters, from Antwerp, who joined her on the project in 2006. The joint venture is now branded Pato & Wouters, based in Amoreira da Gândara / Ois do Bairro in central Bairrada. Twelve to twenty hectares across thirty-odd parcels, Demeter-certified biodynamic (one of only two Demeter estates in Portugal), including ancient pre-phylloxera parcels over 140 years old. Indigenous grapes only: Baga (the traditional Bairrada red), Bical, Maria Gomes (also called Fernão Pires), Arinto, Cercial/Sercialinho.

Her slogan is vinhos sem maquilhagem - "wines without make-up." Native yeasts, minimal sulphur, amphora and larger neutral oak rather than small barriques. Clean labels, Belgian design sensibility.

The key cuvées:

• 3B - traditional-method sparkling (Bical, Cercial, Maria Gomes, Baga). Brut Nature in Blanc and Rosé.
• Nossa Calcário - single-vineyard limestone bottlings, Baga for the red and Bical for the white.
• Post-Quercus - Baga aged in large chestnut vats and amphora.
• Missão - pre-phylloxera parcel Baga from a 0.57 ha plot, with vines over 140 years old.
• Flos Castanea - 100% Bical, skin-fermented with chestnut flowers (a technique traced to Fernando Paiva of Quinta da Palmirinha in Vinho Verde), aged in large neutral pipas and amphora.
• Dinâmica (DNMC) - Baga and Bical core line.

Filipa is often placed alongside Dirk Niepoort in conversations about modern Portuguese wine. Where her father rescued Baga from obscurity, Filipa has built the case that it belongs in serious-European-red company.