Quinta da Falorca

Quinta da Falorca is the main label of QVE, Quinta Vale das Escadinhas, a Sociedade Agrícola at Silgueiros in the Dão, about 12 kilometres from Viseu. The house tells its story as the union of two families, Silva Costa and Barros de Figueiredo, late in the twentieth century, and counts five generations behind the present estate. Wine left the property in bulk until 1963 and then went to the Adega Cooperativa de Silgueiros for the next three decades; only in 1999, when the family turned the holding into a company and built a winery around a set of traditional granite lagares, did it start bottling under its own names. Alongside Quinta da Falorca those include Palha Malhada, T-nac and Noblesse Oblige.

The estate works about 13 hectares, planted at 3,500 to 4,000 vines per hectare on the granite that dominates the Dão, and makes 70,000 to 80,000 bottles a year entirely from its own fruit. The producer puts Silgueiros itself at around 500 metres. Touriga Nacional accounts for around 60 percent of the reds, drawn from a large clonal collection, with Alfrocheiro, Jaen, Rufete and Tinta Roriz behind it; the whites are led by Encruzado. Farming is certified integrated production rather than organic.