The region got lucky—the village of Monção in the most northern part of Vinho Verde region—once birthed a winemaker with vision, precision, and a knack for rewriting rules without announcing a revolution. And while officially Anselmo Mendes makes Vinho Verde, unofficially, he makes wines that create a different dimension to widely known “easy” white wine. Which—while still being white—isn’t easy anymore.

Around here, he’s famous. People know the car, know the face. An unknown woman once hugged him out of nowhere at a foggy gas station, I was present. We were driving through the hills, windows down, warm wind blowing in, the air thick with the smoky-sweet scent of burning vine cuttings. It was that quiet moment after harvest when sausages go on the grill, the tanks are burbling, and vineyard life exhales for a second.

Anselmo and his son Tiago picked me up at an hour that felt illegal. “Why so early?” Crickets. They’d sped the hour-and-a-half from Monção to Porto — my phone rang, “We’re here,” hang up. Perfect. Ceremonies are overrated. In a minute we were speeding north, to the misunderstood margins of Portuguese wine: Vinho Verde. It was a warm, generous Saturday. That morning I found myself quietly envying these so-called “simple” Portuguese farmers. I expected five or six wines. Anselmo coughed up twenty-three. No complaints, I won’t drag you through every pour. Let’s just say: not a dud among them, even the youngest bottles seemed to have great manners. And the others? They knew exactly who they were, but I wasn’t ready for that yet.

Unlike bulk producers who blend anything legal (and maybe a little extra), Mendes works in monovarietals. Loureiro, Alvarinho, a hint of Avesso. His Muros Antigos line (“Old Walls”) is all structure, no filler. He explores single-vineyard identities. Some wines nap in oak for a year (Parcela Única). Others stretch out in 400-liter barrels (Muros de Melgaço). His skin-contact line of Curtimenta leans textured, aromatic, and slightly bitter — like a great idea with a difficult past. These are wines that speak — and know when to pause.

We sipped through Muros Antigos Loureiro: a burst of lemon blossom that finishes dry and quietly assertive. Wants a salad or, maybe, some nervous turkey meat. An older vintage might speak with more depth, warmth, and that flash a signature bitter flicker of wisdom of time. That one came from the Lima Valley, not Melgaço.

Though not a fan of blending, Anselmo makes rare exceptions. Passaros (Alvarinho + Loureiro) is for the purists who pretend they’re not. Light, clean, almost traditional — the wine you serve at lunch with bitter olive oil and very little conversation. 3 Rios blends Loureiro, Avesso, and Alvarinho into a gently bitter, floral hum. Think tea rose for the mild skeptic.

Parcela Única is the alpha of the range. A single vineyard, tightly orchestrated wine. Precision meets quiet power. Not sterile, not stiff — more like a Swiss watch reassembled by an attentive monk. This is the point where Vinho Verde conceptually reinvents and reintroduces itself: gone are the tropical notes; here come angles, clarity, structure. It goes straight to the part of your brain that responds to architecture, sculpture and silence. If you’re trying to understand life, start here.

Curtimenta Alvarinho? Twelve hours on skins, and it shows. Thick, tactile, exotic. Like a fruit salad served in a jungle at dusk. Bright, loud, bold. It doesn’t ask for understanding. It dares you to keep up.

The 7-10 year old wines are the ones you photograph before you drink them. They shimmer in the light, each vintage wrapped in a bottle like memory preserved. I forgot the details — vineyard, blend, élevage. What I can’t forget is this: these are made to last for a long, long time.

Muros Antigos Alvarinho: wide as the Danube, humming with cigar box, yeast, and something you might call spiritual frequency. It resets you. Muros de Melgaço, 10 years in bottle: the color of wild honey and baby bee spit — fermented joy, aged six months in oak, still with decades to go. Muros Antigos Loureiro, 13 years in bottle: sharp, generous, alive. A wine that calls for another glass, and then another after that.

I held onto those wines longer than I should have: two hours with Anselmo and Tiago passed like a fever dream — intense, personal, eye-opening.

It wasn’t over yet. As I was leaving, Anselmo reached under the table and pulled out a jug — deep black-red vinho de mesa, the kind local farmers drink in terrifying quantities. Raw, rustic, acidic. Unfiltered and probably unfinished, it felt like it might complete its fermentation inside you. “With our peasant food, it’s perfect,” they said. And Vinhão it was, of course, the peasant wine that seems to be finding new ground these days. A joyful one, for sure.