How Simplesmente Vinho Changed the Game
Looking back at 14 editions of Porto's iconic artisanal wine fair
Two weeks ago, I attended the fourteenth edition of Simplesmente Vinho – a now iconic artisanal wine fair that takes place every February in Porto. I’ve been along for the ride for almost all of them1, and I’ve watched the event evolve and change. When João Roseira and Mateus Nicolau de Almeida first conceived the idea in 2013, it was a far cry from today’s polished offering.
“When the sun came out, people would spill out into the car park overlooking the river.
With its graffiti-covered concrete and half-ruined walls,
it felt like the after party of an illegal rave.”
The very first Simplesmente took place in two cramped cellars on the Largo do Terreiro, a downtown side-street next to the Douro river. It was a gritty, punky affair with just 16 winemakers. The lighting was dim, the music loud. Bathroom facilities were nonexistent. When nature called, you either had to find a dark corner on the street, or sneak into a nearby restaurant and pretend to be a customer.
It wasn’t Portugal’s first grass roots wine fair, but certainly the first to focus entirely on Portuguese growers and to audaciously schedule itself simultaneously with Porto’s biggest wine event. Essencia do Vinho is a glitzy, commercial fair that takes place in the Palácio da Bolsa, the old stock exchange building. Producers pay a four figure sum to exhibit, and the event is mobbed by a public eager to ‘taste’ as much free wine as possible.
Simplesmente 2014 was revelatory for me. I met a young French-Portuguese engineer named António Madeira, a nascent Douro grower marketing his wines as Olho No Pé (Tiago Sampaio, who later changed his brand to Uivo) and an already confident Filipa Pato. This was a side of Portuguese wine that I’d never previously experienced. Heavily oaked reds, fizzy Vinho Verde and off-dry rosés were nowhere to be seen.
It may have begun as a tiny gathering for friends and friends of friends, but Simplesmente swiftly changed the game. It gave smaller, artisanal winemakers a platform. There was nothing else like it in Portugal. By 2016 the fair already started attracting international attention and the word was out. This was the hipper, more exciting gathering, for those who found Essencia do Vinho too tame and corporate.
Every year I returned and made new discoveries. I watched the careers of young winemakers blossom. Every year there were new names, and a heartening trend towards more and better low intervention winemaking.
In 2017, Simplesmente found its spiritual home in Cais Novo, a beaten-up but spacious old warehouse on Rua da Monchique. When the sun came out, people would spill out into the car park overlooking the river. With its graffiti-covered concrete and half-ruined walls, it felt like the after party of an illegal rave. If you were lucky, the toilets even functioned.
That era came to an end during Covid. Simplesmente pivoted to an outdoor summer affair during the pandemic. When the world returned to normal, Cais Novo was no more. Now, the fair has moved to the Alfândega, a massive old customs building on the river. It’s light, airy and functional, but a tiny bit sterile. I can imagine it’s much easier for the organisers: everything works, it’s clean and easy to access, exactly what you’d expect from a modern events space.
Personally, I struggle with the producer selection. Simplesmente always had a broad approach to curation: it is resolutely not a natural wine fair and its manifesto is simply “wines without makeup”. João insists that it’s important not to shut people out, even if they’re not (yet) farming organically, even if they’re still fermenting with selected yeasts or filtering. No dogma here.
Here’s how Simplesmente Vinho summarise their concept, on their website:
Simplesmente… Vinho is an off-salon, an independent and alternative gathering that brings together vignerons united simply… by Wine.
Wine that respects the land and terroir, the vineyard and the grapes, people and traditions. Wine that simply… wants to be wine — drunk, appreciated, shared.
Sincere wines, with a healthy dose of madness and poetry.
But what if the message becomes too dilute? If there are too many exhibitors pouring unexciting, mainstream wines, it’s hard to see the “alternative” part of the proposition. Then there’s the ever-increasing number of major estates - the port house Churchills was this year’s inexplicable addition. There are countless other opportunities to taste wines like these, and I don’t understand what purpose they serve at this fair.
Has Simplesmente simply become a victim of its own success? Once the counter-culture, it’s become an institution in itself. This year, the so called ‘off-event’ reportedly had more exhibiting winemakers (126) than Essencia do Vinho. Perhaps a stricter, more focused exhibitor policy would create a clearer point of difference - and help Simplesmente retain its cutting edge.
Another sign of the fair’s success is that there are now off-events from Simplesmente - ‘off-off events’ if you will. This year, the first edition of Mira Vinha took place just down the street. Organised by a small group of Lisbon-area growers who variously call themselves Passevinho or Os Invictos, it captured something of the old Simplesmente spirit - it was small, bustling and full of exciting wines.
Despite my wingeing, there were many highlights at this year’s Simplesmente. For paying subscribers, here are are some favourites:
