Cool climate curtimenta from Humus

Rodrigo Filipe has come up with a strange way to make his orange wine, but it's an unqualified success.

I used to think that Southern Portugal counted simply as a hot, dry region - but it turns out that's a serious misconception when it comes to Lisbon and Tejo. Two bodies of water - the Atlantic and the river Tagus (Tejo in Portuguese) - ensure that this west-central slice of Portugal is one of the cooler parts. Historically it's done little more than churn out cheap quaffing fodder over the decades, but more recently there's a hotbed of interesting winemaking happening here.

Rodrigo Filipe makes wine under the "Humus" label, working with around 10 hectares of vines on his family's estate Quinta do Paço. He's got a bit of an issue with white grapes - there aren't enough in the vineyards. His creative solution was to take some Touriga Nacional and vinify it as a "blanc de noir", but that isn't the whole story. He's also added a bit of Sauvignon Blanc and Arinto, both fermented with their skins - and then takes those skins and adds them to the pressed Touriga, so it too does a kind of ski…