Herdade Aldeia de Cima

In Herdade Aldeia de Cima there is no piece of land like the other.

Its particular characteristics have attracted and settled here since time immemorial and it was in a cool land, at 330 metres of altitude and on the slope of the xisto mother rock, that the village was built.

Santana is a small village in the municipality of Portel, near the old Roman road between Évora and Beja, which borders the Vidigueira, on the southern edge of the Alto Alentejo. “Sant’Anna da Serra do Mendro” is mentioned for the first time in the 18th century, after the remodelling of the medieval church, between “two villages that call it huma a de Baxo, another one a de Sima”, according to the Parish Memories of Portel, Vila Viçosa, from 1722 to 1832. The village of “Sima”, referred to in 1758, gave rise to the Herdade Aldeia de Cima.

Portrait of ancient knowledge

With a unique biodiversity, in Herdade da Aldeia de Cima the wines are designed in the vineyard where we look for the ancient knowledge, the diversity, the minerality of the soils and the silky textures that the story told us and revealed!

Working for nature and not against it is the motto of Luisa and Francisco who see Herdade Aldeia de Cima as a life project, living the authenticity of this place and the community spirit of the village that is in the Iberian-Mediterranean ecological area of the Ossa-Morena Zone.

Comprising a huge expanse of cork oak and holm oak, including 1750 hectares in the Serra do Mendro, here a typically Mediterranean land has always been used on apparently poor but rich schist soils.

This agro-sylvo pastoral system of the anthropogenic montado is based on the mixed presence of two species of oak – the cork oak (quercus suber) and the holm oak (quercus rotundifólia) – providing a variety of food and wildlife habitats, fundamental for soil conservation, regulating the water cycle, reducing carbon emissions and conserving biodiversity.

Today we still practise sustainable agroforestry management, which provides for medium-long term profit.