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NIT: Texture: award-winning wines born in an old burel factory in Serra da Estrela
April 26, 2025
The brand created by two Brazilians has reached some of the country’s top restaurants and features a label that pays tribute to a grandmother “with a Portuguese soul.”
Quitting a lucrative career in the investment world to dedicate oneself to wine might sound crazy, but that's exactly what Marcelo Villela de Araújo did. In 2018, he left financial markets for viticulture, and seven years later, he now owns a company with more than 30 hectares of vineyards and award-winning wines. The passion began early, in childhood, and led him to explore the world in search of new wine experiences. What started as a hobby became a life project — and success soon followed.
The 55-year-old investor was born in Rio de Janeiro and always had a fascination with Europe and its wines. As a teenager, he began exploring the old continent, but it was at 45 — already married and with children — that he chose Porto to start a new life with his family, “far from the insecurity of Brazil.” What he never imagined was that this city would give him the courage to leave finance and pursue winemaking.
The winemaker moved in 2015 with his wife, Patrícia Berardi, after buying a house in 2014. In the early years, he continued working in the same field and even opened an office in Porto, while his wife, an environmental engineering professor, finished a post-graduate degree. However, he soon realized that this change was the opportunity to finally explore the field he was passionate about: winemaking. He left his company and started studying at the School of Oenology.
“I've always been passionate about wine. I started by tasting nearby references during my youth — Chilean and Argentine wines — and later moved on to the French and Italian classics. But ever since I tried wine around age 25, I’ve always been interested in understanding the origin, the grape varieties, and learning more about each label,” Marcelo tells NiT. Luckily, he found a partner who shared and encouraged this hobby, joining him on several trips across Europe with the goal of tasting different wines.
“In Brazil, we had the habit of hosting dinners with friends where we explored new bottles at each other’s homes. Wine became important for building relationships during our years living in São Paulo, far from our families,” he recalls.
Here in Portugal, the experience wasn’t much different. During his oenology course, he met several producers and winemakers, and it was through those relationships that he later launched his own business. The idea of investing in this sector started taking shape during one of the course units, which required developing a wine project. He visited several estates in Alentejo and Douro, but it was the Serra da Estrela region that won him over.
“As soon as I came here with Patrícia, we realized there was a rich historical heritage and old vines, as well as established producers and stunning landscapes. Serra da Estrela had everything we needed to start our company, despite the distance from Porto,” he says. The decision was sealed when they found an abandoned old textile factory, which became the inspiration for the project’s name: Textura Wines. It was in that century-old space that they installed the winery, tasting room, and wine tourism center — all with granite walls, cork floors, and burel decoration.
Textura Wines
The location in Gouveia shaped the rest of the project. “We ended up choosing to make terroir-driven wines, and instead of a single estate, we have vineyards in several places, divided between Penalva and Gouveia,” he adds.
In 2018, he began cultivation and production in a rented winery. The following year he purchased the property and, from the 2018 harvest, produced the first wines — which only hit the market in 2021 due to extended aging caused by the pandemic. Textura Wines stood out for their lower alcohol content and complexity, and were a success. In 2022, the 2019 Vinha Negrosa from Serra da Estrela was awarded “Wine of the Year” by Revista de Vinhos.
What might have seemed like a surprise was, for Marcelo, a confirmation of something he already suspected: he had bet on an unusual blend that worked very well. “It’s a blend of two iconic red grape varieties from the region — Jaen and Tinta Pinheira. In Portugal, we usually rely on Touriga Nacional for top-tier wines, but we wanted to do things differently and focus on the Dão’s queen variety,” he explains. “When we won the award, we were already on the wine lists of some of the country’s top restaurants,” he adds.
The uniqueness of Textura Wines lies in the region itself. With over 30 hectares of vines, Marcelo splits cultivation between mountain-adjacent areas, where the cool nights result in grapes with different ripening profiles. In Penalva, the granite soil and dense surrounding vegetation “make the wines more intense.” In both regions, he chooses low-intervention practices and uses only “a small amount of sulfites to keep the wines as healthy as possible.”
“The brand combines tradition and innovation to create wines with distinct character — balanced and sophisticated.” The portfolio includes 15 different labels: three whites, ten reds, and two rosés, each with its own identity and profile. However, the best-seller remains Textura da Estrela (€22). “We bottle 13,000 bottles of white wine per year, the same number of red, and just as many rosé — all distributed through Portuguese wine shops and restaurants like Alma and those from the Avillez Group, as well as to the US, Canada, Brazil, Norway, the UK, and Sweden,” he says. Recently, they’ve also expanded to Japan, Israel, and Poland.
The portfolio is completed by the entry-level range Pretexto (white, red, rosé, and palhete), the premium Pura range, and also Encoberta, Constructo, Vinha Negrosa, and D. Áurea — a single-varietal Bastardo that pays tribute to his grandmother Áurea. “My grandmother was the daughter of Portuguese parents and kept our national roots alive in the family. She truly had a Portuguese soul — always bringing people together at home and hosting big lunches and parties for friends and relatives,” says Marcelo. “Since the beginning of the project, I told Patrícia that if we ever made a special wine, it would be named after her. And that’s what we did. Dona Áurea was made in 2020 and in 2021 was ranked second-best in blind tastings,” he adds.
text | Catarina Simões
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