In 2017, Aline Domingues left her home city of Paris for Uva, a remote village on the Planalto Mirandês, a quiet and mostly desolate countryside in northeast Portugal’s Trás-os-Montes wine region. While the Trás-os-Montes is known for heavy wines, Menina d’uva couldn’t be much further from that style. Here, she’s begun to modernize the wines in the best possible way: indigenous local grape varieties, organic farming, naked wines made through gentle extraction and a low-tech, heavily thought out, soft-touch approach. The result is wines with soft-colored hues, low-to-medium alcohol with natural freshness and tension. Her wines have heightened aromatic nuances of spring fruits, moorland brush and flowers, with unusually profound minerally and metallic textures that vibrate on the palate. It was about time we were offering the amazing natural wines of Portugal and this wine signals that start. Menina d’Uva is a small winery located in Uva, a remote village in the quiet and desolate countryside of the Northeast of Portugal.  Made from 70% red grapes (including Bastardo, known in the Jura as Trousseau) and 30% white grapes including Malvasia and white Bastardo. It’s still a hearthy red that’s crispy and refreshing; cherries, pomegranate with a beautiful smell of the forest. Highly recommended.