JamesSuckling Interviews: Daniel van der Niepoort

JamesSuckling Interviews features innovative and influential winery owners, winemakers and industry notables representing the new generation that is shaping tastes, trends and techniques in the greater wine world. 

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As the head winemaker at Niepoort Wines in Portugal’s Douro Valley, Daniel van der Niepoort represents (along with brother Marco and sister Anna) the sixth generation of  the family business, which has been pushing the boundaries of Portuguese winemaking since its founding in 1842. His father, Dirk, with whom Daniel works side by side, pioneered premium red and white table wines from the Douro Valley starting in the 1990s, building on centuries of Port and brandy production by the family.

In addition to continuing their tradition of producing world-class vintage Ports and brandies, the house of Niepoort is increasingly focused on terroir-driven, unfortified wines from some of Portugal’s oldest vineyards in the Douro, the Dao, the Azores and Bairrada. Innovations like Nat’Cool – a series of natural, low-alcohol, one-liter wines geared toward a younger crowd – continue to build the Niepoort name on Portugal’s winemaking scene.

Susan Kostrzewa recently talked with Daniel about what drives his and Dirk’s often unconventional project choices; finding a balance in sustainable approaches; embracing old-school vineyard practices as the ultimate modern vision, and why he thinks Portugal has a decided advantage in the wine travel sphere.

Prior to joining Niepoort full-time in 2020, you worked in global wine regions including Australia, Argentina, South Africa and France. How did these stages prepare you for your work with Niepoort?

It was really nice to travel to and work in so many different places, but at the end of the day you have to figure out for yourself how you want to make a wine in a specific place. There’s no by-the-book technical logic you can take from other regions, assuming you’re looking to make wines that reflect a personality that reflects the place. I actually think the best part of working around the world was learning about different cultures and seeing how people behaved in different situations, in the winery and beyond. An example is when I worked in South Africa. My mother is Swiss and we complain when the train is one minute late. In South Africa you’re dealing with a situation like not having any electricity from hour to hour and you learn from the people there how to adapt. I think that’s incredibly valuable. It’s a beautiful lesson.

Your father, Dirk, in addition to further elevating Niepoort to the global Port pantheon, led the way for Douro Valley unfortified wines. Where do you think global awareness of Douro table wines is now and do you feel there’s more work to be done to overall showcase the varieties and all wines of the region?

There is no comparison to how the Douro was 30 or 40 years ago. Port was the thing everyone knew and basically little else. People now know there is table wine worth paying attention to but I still think we need to educate more about the uniqueness of the old traditions while looking to the future. On the viticultural side, we can always do better. At Niepoort we work with 200 different grape growers, and I think we should try to give them more of a voice, as they are they are part of the Douro. Port, for example, without the influence of the varied grape growers would just not be the same.

Niepoort has (in past and present) been involved in the acquisition of and partnership with truly unique properties like Quinta da Lomba and your vineyards in the Azores, plus the production of unusual offerings like Garrafeira, the limited-edition tawny aged in 19^th century demijohns for decades. What drives you and your father in your choices for new projects? Is there a unifying theme?

It’s often just focusing on special places and showcasing old vineyards, but sometimes it’s people-driven. Of course we’re selective, as it’s a challenge for the logistical team, for the marketing team and for the customer if there are too many things we are trying to produce and explain. But the theme for my father was actually to give Portugal as a whole a voice because we were always less famous than countries like Spain or Germany and we have so much diversity. Our choices are driven by promoting and protecting the heritage of Portugal because it’s very unique to have so many old vineyards. It’s hard work to manage them, with smaller yields. And these unique varieties can be overwhelming in a market not used to them. Anyway, I feel it’s not about the varieties on their own; it’s actually about the blend. These are some focuses of ours. Portugal has to be proud of these things and not afraid to stand behind them.

As a sixth-generation van der Niepoort working with a father who was instrumental in putting the Douro and Portugal on the modern wine map, do you feel pressure to continue the house’s history for pushing boundaries? How do you establish yourself apart from your father and the long line of van der Niepoorts that preceded you?

There is obviously a lot of pressure, but you pressure yourself.  I know my brother Marco and sister Anna (who also work in the business) feel that, too. But we also grew up in the family, in the business. From a young age, we learned that there’s no room for two Dirk Niepoorts in this world, so we have to be ourselves. It’s a long history and it’s not stopping on the sixth generation, so while it can be serious to take on that legacy, we also have amazing opportunities to make great things with purpose. And yes, there are a lot of people who watch us and are guided by what we do, so we better do something good.

Niepoort’s sustainable practices were established long before it became favored or buzzworthy to do so. Can you talk about some of the current sustainable approaches at Niepoort that you feel are particularly important?

It becomes complicated because there are a lot of different perspectives on what is sustainable. A lot of black-and-white thinking. We try to be a little bit in the middle. But for one, we are starting to change our approach to pruning. We need our vineyards to survive for a long time and to produce great fruit as sustainably as possible, to adapt. We’ve brought animals back to manage the vineyards. We work organically and biodynamically and while we’re still far from being perfect in everything we do, we want to leave the land in a better place than how we found it.

So sometimes looking forward means looking back again.

It’s amazing what some of our grape growers can do, in using the old hands-on practices. I feel like we live in a time where we see people as a problem and feel we have to find a machine solution. If we could just teach the younger generation that maybe agriculture and viticulture is something cool – hard work, yes, but also meaningful – we could manage caring for the land better. Instead, we take out all the old vineyards and plant them new, and mechanize them. Machines can be great, but we need to learn to think logically beyond that. For example, when you bring animals, they will eat the grass, they will fertilize your land, and they will clean your land. And then beyond that logic is the value that having animals on your vineyards brings. It’s a living being. There’s something really nice about that.

On that note, let’s talk about climate change in Douro and in Portugal. How do these increasingly warmer temperatures impact your house style of freshness and acidity and a lighter style of wine?

It’s not just getting hotter, it’s getting more extreme. When it rains, it rains a lot. I think with good viticulture we can manage it. We are now planting a lot of trees that are Douro species and others and that will help. We need to think beyond obvious solutions like where the vineyards are facing and going to higher altitudes.  You pick earlier. And when you we have good pruning approaches and healthy viticulture and soil, the vine itself is going to be way more resistant and produce more. It’s going to ripen slower and, have a really nice balance. In the cellar, we have a great team who respect what was done in the vineyards. We approach winemaking delicately.  Let’s not destroy what we what we did in the field or the grape grower did in the field. There are many ways to obtain a fresher style.

Can you talk about the Dao region and why it’s on the radar right now, sometimes being compared to Burgundy?

I really love this lesser-known region. For me it's like a little bit like [Spain’s] Sierra de Gredos, but in Portugal. It has amazing granite soils and is a bit further away from everything. Less tourism, fewer people go there. It’s the mountain region of Portugal, and in the Serra da Estrela,  there is a lot of cheese production, a lot of animals and a limited amount of vineyards spread around the area, so it’s much less of a monoculture. So we are we are trying to find our way there and I’m really excited.

What are your goals for your Nat’Cool movement? Do you think it’s most resonant with younger wine drinkers and why?

The wine world sometimes can be just too serious and too expensive. It’s really nice to have premium, expensive and traditional wine and I love that as well. But it also doesn’t have to be so serious. A lot of young people think it’s too complicated, and maybe we don't really need that in our life. And then they just go and drink a beer. The idea of Nat’Cool was to make wine really easygoing. It's bottled in a liter bottle. It shouldn't be too expensive, but it also can’t be a really shitty wine from a 100-hectare monoculture machine harvest environment. It’s low extraction, low alcohol. It’s a great way to find producers who have a similar approach while at the same time giving wine drinkers something fun to enjoy.

What’s the future of wine in Portugal among all of this negative news in wine? Are you optimistic about where things are going?

I mentioned before, one of the biggest challenges is how we can motivate the next generation of growers to do the job their parents are doing now. They were always telling their kids, “Don't do this; agriculture brings little money and it's not very appreciated in in society.” I don’t know the exact answer. But in general, I think Portugal is in a good place. For a long time we were not really seen. A lot of Americans visit now and are appreciating the uniqueness of the country and what we do, seeing how nice these wines are. It’s cool to see that. We try our best when people visit Portugal to receive them well and leave them with the best impression, and hospitality is already part of our culture. So wine tourism is something I’m excited about as well.

– Susan Kostrzewa