Piteira

José Piteira dived into the world of winemaking at the age of 12. It all started with helping his granddfather, José Amante Baleiro, at the current piteira winery in Amareleja to make Talha wines - an amphora wine making technique that has been in use in the region of Alentejo in Portugal for at least 2000 years.

In the 70’s, at a time where Talha winemaking was fading, Jose Piteira went against the grain reading everything he had available about this particular art of winemaking, researching, experimenting and perfecting his technique.

By the time DOC Talha saw the light in 2010, Piteira had been dedicating himself exclusively to this ancestral technique for at least 3 decades. His name is today intimately associated with Talha.

His Talha wines are more classic, more simplistic, more faithful to what was done in the old days, the closest one can get to the “original” Talha wine”. And it is this simplicity and this purity that prompted Grandes Escolhas in 2021 to award him for the “singularity” of his wines.

In 2019, Robert Parket gave a 95 points score to one his red talhas.