Purista is the project of Ana Cardoso Pinto, a consummate renaissance woman who is an architect, sommelier, and winemaker in the Alenquier subregion of the Lisbon appellation. In parallel with a successful course of study and training in architecture, Ana decided to pursue her passion for wine and enrolled in Enology courses at UC Davis and sommelier courses at the Culinary Institute of America. She returned to Alenquer in 2012 to work at her family’s winery and immersed herself in the many aspects of winemaking, from vineyard and cellar management to sales and marketing. Throughout this experience, Ana’s desire and passion to undertake her own project emerged and she undertook to become a winegrower in 2019 by planting her own vineyards. In 2021, using grapes from her family’s estate, Ana released her first vintages of wines focusing on the hallmark indigenous Portuguese varietals of the region that were ideal for expressing the unique characteristics of the terroir and the vintage.
About her own project Ana says, “The Purista project arises from a symbiosis between the two worlds that I am passionate about, Architecture and Wine, and which I consider both forms of art. As an Architect, I identify with a more “minimalist” / “purist” architectural language, and I wanted to create wines made in this style - an expression of the grape varieties in their Pure form, following a philosophy of minimal intervention both in the vineyard and in the cellar.” The wines that Ana creates are intended to be irreverent, authentic, and expressive of the year of harvest in its purest form. For this reason, extremely minimal intervention is used both in the vineyards and in the cellar to create wines that are unencumbered and honestly expressive about the time and place from which they come.
