Vinhos das Mercês is the Dão wine project of Norwegian former fashion designer Roar Aune — whose career included designing for Helly Hansen, with garments made in Portugal — and his German wife Petra Lohmann, who bought the Quinta das Mercês farm in the Dão in 2011 and farm 3.5 hectares of vines, making hand-harvested, foot-trodden, minimal-intervention wines from Jaen, Alfrocheiro, Touriga Nacional and Encruzado under the Aune Lohmann label. Seven Aune Lohmann wines are sold in Norway through Vinmonopolet’s Bestillingsutvalget via importer Wicked Brands AS, from the Tinto 2017 at NOK 179.90 to the Bare vin at NOK 289.90.
The estate is small by Dão standards — 3.5 hectares of vines around the Quinta das Mercês farmhouse — and is run by the owners themselves with the oenologist Virgílio Loureiro as mentor. The wines are made in a deliberately low-intervention style: hand harvest, foot treading, indigenous yeasts and long, slow fermentations, bottled under the Aune Lohmann name that combines the couple’s surnames. Norwegian wine magazine Godt Drikke profiled the project in July 2025.
The commercial route runs straight back to Norway. Vinmonopolet’s product search lists seven Aune Lohmann wines in its Bestillingsutvalget, the order-on-demand range available through any of the monopoly’s stores, priced between NOK 179.90 and NOK 289.90 and imported by Wicked Brands AS with distribution by Cuveco AS. That makes the estate one of the very few Nordic-owned Portuguese wine producers whose entire Nordic distribution can be verified line by line in a monopoly catalogue.
Nordic capital in Portuguese wine is usually institutional — the Symington and Fladgate houses aside, most foreign owners in the Douro and Alentejo are British, French or Spanish. Vinhos das Mercês is the rarer pattern NorthSouth HQ tracks on the Nordics → Portugal side: individuals from Scandinavia buying land in an inland Portuguese region, producing there, and selling the result back home through the monopoly. It sits alongside Danish and Swedish owner-operators in the Alentejo and Lisbon regions as evidence that the corridor runs on small private capital as well as listed groups.
Vinmonopolet’s catalogue showed all seven Aune Lohmann lines active in September 2026. NorthSouth HQ added the estate to the Norwegian Companies in Portugal directory on 15 September 2026.
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