Winemaking : Dão tradition with a french luggage.

To explain our practices in the winery let us first introduce our building :

At the highest point in the building, a 300 years old granit lagar, or what I like to describe as a horizontal tank, as opposed to a vertical one, meaning that we have a lot of surface area, with very little depth in the tank.
Another one, younger at it’s side. Both are equipped with wonderful hydraulic presses cemented at their center.

These lagars have been the preferred maceration vessels in the region for at least 2000 years, as we still have vestiges of them all over the region. They are shallow for easy foot treading, great extraction during a short maceration. 

This is where the claretes are made. staying here for up to 72h

Foot trodden as is the traditional way, for perfect extraction. 

The level below in the winery is full of tanks, cement and a few stainless steel, not all in use, but being renovated one by one. Here most wines only pass through between pressing and racking, and then back up from the barrels before bottling.
Red wines stay for longer in tanks, fermenting here in open top tanks. 

No destemmer, no temperature control, we have pumps, but do not need them that much, as gravity can do most of the work here, everything is build intelligently. 

Finally, below the old house is the 400 years old cellar, filled with barrels.

Claretes come in barely starting fermentation, and will age on their lees, while the reds come a little bit later.
Anyways, every barrel is cared for to the best of our abilities, and will be emptied only during the next month of september, to be filled again as soon as possible. 

The barrels are used and new. 

We are still in the process of trying out a few different barrel makers, looking for the right one for us, but one thing is certain, we always look for very high quality wood selection. 

No ferment has ever been added since we took over, and the winery had not been used in 30 to 40 years before. 

Sulfur use is very limited, and usually done before bottling, for a total sulfur in the finished wine of about 30 to 40 mg/L.

No fining or filtration is done either.