So I’m staying for 2 days at a working winery. Lots to see (and taste!) As I was checking in, I saw a familiar face in front of me. I couldn’t quite place him, but I knew his face. I thought perhaps I’d met him on one of my Caminos. He turned out to be Alun Armstrong, one of the actors in the long running TV series New Tricks.
The rooms are high above the river, so it’s a different perspective from Vintage House. The vines cling to the slopes in neat rows, each plant cared for, meticulously pruned and prized. I went for a late walk up to the Vale do Inferno, where the incredibly steep terrain makes you wonder how any plants could thrive. The vines are espaliered and only the bottom third are allowed to bear grapes. I only saw black ones, small, sweet and full of pips.
I had dinner in the restaurant at 8.00 pm. Not a big meal, just slow cooked rice with seafood (a cross between paella and bouillabaisse), followed by a pot of oolong tea. There was a glass of local white wine, Passagem Reserva Blanco, not to my taste after my usual tipple of NZ Sauvignon Blanc at home.
Then came the evening “entertainment” ie grape treading! This is done between 8.00 pm and 11.00 pm throughout September. We are in the middle of the Vintage now. Two groups of 4 stomp around up to their thighs in big vats. At 9.30 pm, tourists can join in on payment of €25, for which they also receive a souvenir tee shirt. In the photos below, the regular treaders wear green shirts and the tourists white. A young Brazilian couple tried to persuade me to do it, but it all looked too messy and too tiring for me! They also played rousing traditional music to rally the troops.
My bedroom with an antique ox yoke as a bedhead
Dinner
Tea menu
Treading the grapes
Tourists joining in
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