Casa Pratas

In the beginning, it was honey. Today, it’s wine and cheese. Beekeeping marked the first steps of the Casa Pratas project, launched between 2014 and 2015 by João Pratas and his wife Ana Cavaca, in Ribatejo. “Casa Pratas is located in Cartaxo, more precisely in Lapa, at the foot of Montejunto,” João explains. For profitability reasons, they later focused exclusively on wine—a family business—and goat cheese production, which remain the company’s core to this day.

Passionate about nature, they believe in the importance of the product itself, without additives. That’s why they produce natural wines—“we only use sulfur dioxide and sulfite for stabilization; everything else involves ripeness controls, vineyard management, and regenerative farming to promote biodiversity and bring the greatest potential to the cellar.” They began winemaking in 2015, and the first bottles of Do Pratas, their single-parcel wines, were bottled in 2020.

With cheese, the principle is the same: “in the cheese factory, only milk, rennet, and salt are used.” Working as naturally as possible is therefore a guiding philosophy across the entire project. To milk from Ribatejo mountain goats and Alpine goats, they add their own cultures “to make the most of the terroir,” which is what brings richness and complexity to the final product. “It’s not just the milk that makes the difference, but the addition of bacterial cultures.” Their product range includes Chiba and Chiba Cinza, “aged fresh cheeses,” and Tomme do Ribatejo, “a hard cheese inspired by the Tomme from the Pyrenees,” he adds.