The Follies of Bacchus, the High Planalto & the Howl
In the high flatlands of the Douro's Cima Corgo, at 500–700 metres above the Port vineyards everyone fights over, a young PhD dropout from Oregon State came home with no money and an idea: make wine the way his grandfather did, from the family's 90-year-old field-blend vines, and let the mountain's freshness do what extraction never could. Folias de Baco — the follies of Bacchus — and its Uivo ("howl") range are now the benchmark of Portuguese natural wine: low alcohol, low sulfur, pet nat by conviction, and a proud renegade's freedom from the DOC that once kept this valley's imagination in a tasting panel.
Origin — Porto, Oregon & the Grandfather's White Wine
Tiago Sampaio grew up in Porto, but his inheritance was a two-sided one: his mother from Alijó, his father from Sanfins do Douro, and on both sides of the family, vineyards and homemade wine until the late 1950s, when the cooperatives appeared and family winemaking, across the whole interior, quietly died. His grandfather sold white wine by the cask — the alcohol was low enough in the high country that Caves Aliança bought it for sparkling production down in Bairrada. The lesson lodged early: cooler fruit is worth more. "Ever since I was a kid, I always liked agriculture in general, and winemaking," Tiago says. "When I was 13 I decided to study in agricultural school instead of regular high school."
From agricultural school he went to agricultural engineering at Vila Real — and then, through a professor's conference encounter, to Oregon State University, where he went for a six-month internship in 2001 and stayed for a doctorate in viticulture and enology, returning to Portugal in 2007. His research was foundational: a collection of 19 rootstocks, studied from vine physiology all the way to wine, answering the Oregon industry's question of which rootstocks actually suit cool-climate viticulture — Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris, Chardonnay, and Merlot as the test varieties. He mastered the rules completely. Then he came home to break them.
In 2007 the fork in the road was real: Vila Real offered him a postdoc, and his own project — the idea already fully formed — offered him very little money and a few very hard years. He chose the project. Folias de Baco — "the follies of Bacchus" — began in the family vineyards of the high Cima Corgo, with a first vintage of Uivo wines the same year, and the conviction that the Douro everyone knew — the hot, extracted, Port-deep river floor — was only half the region's truth. The other half was up the mountain: the planalto, the high flatlands at altitude, where his grandfather's vines still stood.
The follies compound. He bought the old cooperative in Sanfins — the very institution that had ended his grandfathers' winemaking — and turned it into a working cellar that now houses other young winemaking projects beside his own. He opened the Taberna Folias de Baco in Porto's Rua dos Caldeireiros, serving only his wines with torricado — charcoal-toasted bread soaked in olive oil — a year-round urban embassy. And by 2020 the wine press made it official: Enólogo Revelação — Winemaker of the Year, Revista de Vinhos. The kid who rode his grandfather's piggyback through the vineyards had become, in the words of his importers, the definition of the avant-garde master.
The Place — The Planalto: Where the Douro Gets Its Freshness
Folias de Baco's vineyards sit at 500–700 metres in the planalto — the high flatlands near Alijó, in the Cima Corgo sub-region, far north of the Douro River and worlds away from its famous terraces. Here none of the valley's conventional wisdom applies: the land is rough and challenging, the soils a blend of schist and granite, the nights cold, the ripening slow — and it is precisely this altitude that lets Tiago make the low-alcohol, high-acid wines that were always his family's birthright. Twenty hectares, eight plots, all within a 5-kilometre radius, and not one vine purchased — everything is family land.
The 90-Year-Old Vineyard & the Two-Tranche Harvest
The soul of the estate is a 3-hectare plot planted around 90 years ago — remarkable for its era in that many vines were planted by variety in separate blocks rather than jumbled. The upper part is mostly white varieties, the lower part more red, and Tiago picks it in two tranches — white first, then red — to make the paired Vinhas Velhas Branco and Vinhas Velhas Tinto: two wines from one ancient vineyard, one memory in two colours. When the family wanted to replant the plot because of missing vines and low yields, Tiago persuaded them to keep it — and replanted the 1950s higher-yielding blocks instead. The old vines stay.
Regenerative Viticulture, Researcher-Style
The PhD shows in the field. Against the Armillaria fungus spreading from surrounding pines, Tiago cover-crops with legumes and barley — the barley's root exudates suppress the pathogen, a living pharmacy he describes as "like a circle of missing vines that keeps spreading" being slowly closed. He sprays kaolin, a white clay, against sunburn and grape berry moth; treats vines with Romeo, a yeast-derived elicitor that thickens leaves and skins and primes their own defences against downy mildew. He doesn't trim the growing tips — he weaves them around the wires. And his replanting program uses the Rupestris du Lot rootstock, beloved of the ancients for penetrating bedrock, field-planted and grafted a year or two later: "I love the acidity it imposes."
Practicing Organic, Living Ecology
Farming is practicing-organic and regenerative in spirit — control deliberately relinquished back to the ecosystem, soils built rather than mined, chemistry replaced by biology wherever biology can do the job. Low vigour, Tiago notes, is itself a form of disease management; a vine in equilibrium doesn't need rescue. In the warm, dry Douro interior, this is a different proposition from the Atlantic coast's mildew war — here the enemies are sun and drought and fungus from the forest edge, and the answers are shade, mulch, and patience. The result: vines that ripen slowly at altitude, sugar modest, acid intact, flavour specific — the raw material for everything Uivo.
White Country, Not Port Country
The planalto is historically white wine country — "this is primarily a white area, so it wasn't really about Port," as Tiago puts it. Before the co-ops, families here made white wine or sold fruit for it; the reds that do grow are field-blend castas like Tinta Francisca, Samarrinho, and Donzelinho alongside the Douro canon. That indigenous white portfolio — Rabigato, Moscatel Galego, Arinto, Avesso, Gouveio, Bical, Alvarinho, Loureiro — is the estate's playground and its argument: the Douro's future may be up the mountain, in grapes the Port trade never valued.
Winemaking — Low Sulfur, Pet Nat by Conviction & the Renegado Declaration
The cellar doctrine is transparency over power: whole-cluster ferments where the grapes ask for them, spontaneous yeasts, no new oak, minimal sulfur — around 20 ppm total for the whites, a mere 15 mg/L added at disgorgement for the pet nats. Vessels are a working vocabulary rather than a dogma: stainless steel, 5,000-litre cement tanks, old chestnut vats, smaller old barrels, and talhas of clay from the Alentejo for the Ânfora cuvée. Nothing fined, nothing filtered, nothing corrected. These are natural wines by any sensible definition — and, Tiago would add, by his Oregon-honed definition of sensible.
Then there is the fizz. He and Aphros were the first in Portugal to make pet nat, more or less simultaneously, and Tiago was among the first to bring it to commercial scale — his first was 2014, made from a still rosé of Pinot Noir and a white of Moscatel, bottled from tank with a manual capper. The early years were a comedy of errors he tells on himself gladly: bottles leaking; a cold November that dropped a huge plaque of tartrates in bottles lying down until the wine went "explosive" — "I had to bang bottles against a car tire just to break the tartrates." Now pet nat is around 40% of production, and every harvest the phone rings: producers across Portugal asking what to do. His answer is the project's motto: "There's no unique recipe: you need to adapt every year."
He also helped drag curtimenta (skin-contact whites) and palhete (red-white co-ferments) back into the Portuguese mainstream — techniques as old as the lagar, reborn here as Uivo Curtido (Moscatel macerated four months in cement) and Uivo Renegado (mixed red and white field-blend grapes foot-trodden in lagar for three or four days — a recreation of the traditional farmhouse style, made to drink at home, not to sell). The Renegado name turned out to be prophetic: after repeated failures in the DOC's tasting-panel approval process, Tiago walked away from the Douro appellation altogether — the Renegado was the first wine released outside it. The wines are now Vinho Regional Duriense / table wines by choice, a renegade by certification as well as by name.
And the waste question gets the researcher's answer too: Acqua Nat, a piquette made by macerating the spent pet-nat skins with water from the vineyard — pH 5.5 — and fermenting the leftover sugars: 5.5% alcohol, "massive drinkability," sold in half bottles for €1.50 at the cellar door. Joyful, borderless, and unclassifiable — which is exactly where Folias de Baco wants to live.
The Wines — A Howl in Every Direction
The Uivo range — uivo, "howl" — is one of the most complete natural-wine portfolios in Portugal: still whites, skin contacts, amphora wines, reds, palhetes, pet nats, piquette, and multi-vintage solera experiments, all from indigenous varieties of the high planalto, all low-sulfur, none of it DOC. Below, the core of the range as it stands today.
Uivo Vinhas Velhas Branco
Old-vine white — Alijó, planalto do DouroThe flagship and the argument: white Douro of place, at altitude, from the 90-year-old family vineyard — picked in the first tranche, whites first, from the upper blocks. A little skin contact; fermentation starts in stainless steel, then moves to 2,500-litre chestnut vat and smaller old barrels; bottled unfined, unfiltered, ~20 ppm sulfur. The profile: juicy, linear, bright and stony with vivid citrus fruit — pure, energetic, high acidity (93 points, wineanorak; "a steal at €12"). Compact, complex, saline, with crystalline citrus, apricot and grapefruit, and a grainy mineral finish — a wine that tastes like the planalto: altitude as flavour. This is what the grandfather's low-alcohol whites always wanted to become. ~12% ABV. Old family vines.
Uivo Pet Nat Branco, Rosé & Curtido
Pét-nats — Alijó & Sanfins do DouroThe wines that changed Portuguese drinking — among the country's first commercial pet nats, now ~40% of the estate's production. Pet Nat Branco blends six varieties from the newer vineyard (Arinto, Rabigato, Avesso, Gouveio, Bical, Moscatel, Alvarinho): bottled at the end of primary fermentation, matured upside down, disgorged by hand, only 15 mg/L sulfur at disgorgement — pure, bright, dry, mandarin and orange peel with dry herbs. Rosé is Pinot Noir: pale, cherry-citrus, delicately crisp. Curtido is 100% Moscatel with about a week on skins, undisgorged and unashamedly cloudy: grapey, terpenic, floral, gastronomic — texture and bubbles in concert (93 pts). From leaking manual-capper bottles to the reference Portuguese pét-nat program — the comedy became the curriculum. ~10–12% ABV. Zero to minimal SO₂.
Uivo Renegado & Renegado PT Nat
Palhete & palhete pet nat — AlijóThe recreations of the farmhouse wine Tiago's grandfathers drank — and the wines that broke the DOC. Mixed red and white field-blend grapes, foot-trodden in lagar, three or four days of skin contact, then pressed: red-pink in colour, floral red cherry with almond notes, a touch of tannin, easy-drinking but with personality (92 pts) — the wine people made for home, now made for the world. The PT Nat version finishes its single fermentation in the bottle: undisgorged, cloudy, juicy cherries and plums with a gastronomic grip. Both are bottled without the Douro DOC — the first releases after Tiago walked away from the tasting panel — and both wear the freedom well. Some wines defend tradition by leaving its paperwork behind. ~11.5% ABV. No added SO₂ (PT Nat).
Uivo Curtido & Uivo Ânfora
Skin-contact whites — Alijó, planaltoThe maceration studies — two intensities, two vessels, one researcher's curiosity. Curtido is 100% Moscatel Galego from 35-year-old vines on granite-schist soils: partially destemmed, unpressed, macerating four months in 5,000-litre cement tanks, spontaneous fermentation of about three weeks, two months on lees after pressing, six months' cement ageing — bright, exotic table grape with a hint of mint, lemony acidity and tannin in concert (93 pts). Ânfora is the rarest corner of the cellar: Samarrinho and Donzelinho — two varieties almost nobody bottles alone — spending 11 months in talhas of clay from the Alentejo: beautiful aromatics, floral and exotic with powerful lemony notes, concentrated, structured, stony-mineral on the finish (94 pts). Not fined, not filtered. Orange wine as field research, and amphora wine as variety conservation. ~12% ABV. Cement & talha.
Uivo Chronológico Branco & Tinto / VVB+++
Multi-vintage solera wines — AlijóThe time experiments — wines blended across vintages the way memory actually works. Chronológico Branco folds together wines from 2008 to 2018, made by different techniques in different years — some raised under flor, some skin contact, some old barrels: deeply coloured, complex and spicy, vivid and grippy, oxidative, salty, with apple and citrus (95 pts). Cronológico Tinto leans on the 2011 vintage, bottled in 2016: minty, fresh raspberry and cherry, ageing beautifully (94 pts). And VVB+++ — Vinhas Velhas Branco plus-plus-plus — is a multi-vintage blend from the 90-year-old parcel reaching back to 2014: juicy, bright, complex and layered with real depth (95 pts). These are the wines that prove the cellar's confidence: nothing to hide, vintages blended like an argument accumulated. Variable. Limited.
Acqua Nat, Rabigato, Tinta Francisca & the Rest
Variety bottlings, piquette & experiments — planaltoThe edges of the map, where the howl gets loudest. Rabigato — a variety Tiago believes has enormous Douro potential, normally lost in blends — bottled alone: so bright, light, pure and focused, lemony acidity, fresh mineral drive, a bit saline (92 pts). Tinta Francisca, which "looks like Pinot Noir in the vineyard," a year in chestnut barrels: juicy, tart, aromatic red cherry (93 pts). Uivo Loureiro — a cross-regional nod, made from Aphros grapes in Ponte de Lima, foot-trodden whole-bunch in lagar with four days of skin contact: power, texture, weight (94 pts) — the natural-wine world's handshake across Vinho Verde. And Acqua Nat, the 5.5% piquette from pet-nat skins and vineyard water: massive drinkability, €1.50 a half bottle, joyful. Every release answers the same question: what else can this mountain do? Variable. Small lots.
Legacy — The Howl That Taught the Douro to Whisper
Folias de Baco matters because it is the central figure of Portuguese natural wine's second generation — the bridge between the biodynamic pioneers of this series (Aphros, Palmirinha) and the young Douro producers now flooding the market with light reds and pét-nats. When Tiago began in 2007, the Douro's identity was monolithic: Port, extraction, heat, power. He answered from the planalto with the opposite register — low alcohol, high acid, field blends, fizz — and the region answered back: Uivo Tinto became one of the most talked-about Portuguese reds in the US on-premise market, and his importers now call him, without hedging, one of the central figures in Portugal's natural wine community. The project inspired a generation of younger Douro winemakers to look beyond the Port tradition toward a lighter, more expressive style.
Their legacy is technical and freely given. With Aphros, he was first to make pet nat in Portugal — and first to scale it; he helped reintroduce curtimenta and palhete to the mainstream; every harvest his phone rings with producers asking for advice, and the advice is always the same lesson Oregon taught him: adapt every year. His regenerative toolkit — barley against Armillaria, kaolin against sun, yeast elicitors against mildew, Rupestris du Lot against shallow soils — reads like a field manual others are already copying. The knowledge moves freely because he never tried to own it.
Their legacy is also institutional, in a sideways way. The bought-back cooperative at Sanfins now houses other winemaking projects, turning private infrastructure into a shared incubator — the exact inversion of what co-ops did to his grandfathers. The Taberna in Porto serves only Uivo wines with torricado, a permanent classroom where natural wine meets the general public at €-friendly prices. And Acqua Nat — the piquette sold for €1.50 — makes the anti-waste argument with a price tag instead of a press release. Institutions, Tiago seems to believe, are just buildings and habits; both can be bought, opened, and re-inhabited.
And their legacy is aesthetic: the proof, conducted in public over nearly two decades, that the Douro's greatest asset was never its concentration but its contrast — mountain against river, granite against schist, freshness against sun. The howl is not loud for its own sake. It is loud because the planalto was silent for fifty years, and someone had to make the first noise.
From a 13-year-old choosing agricultural school, through an Oregon PhD and a refused postdoc, to 20 hectares of family vines at altitude and a cellar full of experiments aging beautifully, Folias de Baco is a testament to the series' recurring theorem, stated here in its Douro dialect: learn the rules completely, return to the land completely, and then — politely, scientifically, joyfully — break everything that deserves breaking.