Magazine Liderança no Feminino spoke with Lúcia Freitas, winemaker at Quinta da Mariposa who, in 2014, won the Young Farmer of the Year award. She is currently also General Director of the company Seacampo, Soc. Lda.

You created your own project in your homeland. How did Quinta da Mariposa come about?

Since I started working as a winemaker in 2005, I have always wanted to make my own wines. Since I was very little, I have been following my grandfather’s farm and it has always been a great joy for me to be able to participate in the harvest and the production of wine.

How do you characterize the Quinta’s wines?

These are very typical Dão wines! We only use traditional grape varieties, we work with vineyards that are over 30 years old and practice minimalist winemaking, that is, intervening as little as possible with the aim of obtaining the best expression of the region’s grapes, and thus producing wines that are faithful to the terroir.

This year, Wine Enthusiast magazine awarded 92 points to the wine “Mariposa Tinto Reserva 2013”. What was it like to receive this important international distinction?

Wine Enthusiast is part of the most recognized publications and achieving this score in the first harvest of this wine makes us proud, obviously, but above all it gives us credibility on an international level.

Portuguese wines are becoming increasingly known abroad, but there is still a lot of work to be done… in order to sell a new brand on the foreign market, we need to have some reference that attests to the quality of the product and that is recognized by the public.

What are Quinta da Mariposa’s future projects?

This year we bought a space to build a winery and we intend to increase the vineyard area. However, this will be slow and sustained growth, with a focus on the quality of the wines. We are in no rush to grow up, we have our whole life!

What does it mean to you to have been at the forefront of the biggest projects in the Dão region?

It was essential to being able to create Quinta da Mariposa. In these companies I had the opportunity to make various types of wines, from high-volume entry-level wines to the rarest and most award-winning wines. I worked in several wine regions, with different grape varieties and different types of wines. At the same time, I learned a lot about marketing and promoting wine in foreign markets and it is not possible to have a successful wine project without having this knowledge.

Source: Liderança no Feminino