PHILOSOPHY

The family project came about as a way of restoring the traditional farming system. A system where Man lives from Nature and with Nature, in subsistence farming, poor in resources but perfectly integrated into the landscape and the balance of the ecosystem.

The project also came from the belief that this desire to go back and ecological respect for origins, can be multiplied indefinitely all over the world, reducing the pressure of humankind on the ecosystems. Only by understanding and protecting nature can we be intelligent.


A VITICULTURE FREE OF CHEMICALS AND SOMEWHAT DREAMLIKE

Our viticulture is free of chemicals and is part of a family project to restore the traditional farming system.

We decided not to pull up a single century-old grapevine , but rather to restore the vineyard through layering and through replacing the dead vines using plants exactly the same as the existing ones.

So, we planted the old Rupestris du Lot gcadminstock, later grafted to the old pruned grapevines in order to get a new grapevine the same as the existing one. It’s expensive, somewhat bold and risky, but that’s the only way to fully restore the vineyard that makes the wines we love so much.

We still have lots of varieties, all mixtures, even though there are blends where reds dominate and others that are for whites. Variety is the spice of life.


BIODYNAMICS

In addition to not using chemicals, we are more ambitious and we want to have biodynamic wine production that strengthens our soil and our plants. This means of farming, created in 1924 by Rudolf Steiner, unites cosmic and earthly forces, and in it, man is at the head of the immense orchestra of nature. He must know all of the vegetable and non-vegetable inhabitants of his farm and understand how they can intensify local life.

By understanding our estate, following Maria Thun’s lunar calendar and applying biodynamic preparations in homeopathic doses, we believe that we will have even more genuine and intense wines.


THE REASONS

Old grapevines allied with mixed varieties. Why?
Organic/Biodynamic Farming. Why?
Minimalist winemaking. Why?

Historically, Reguengo (near Portalegre) is an important winegrowing centre in the south of the country. Portalegre once had seven convents. And the clergy, the liturgies and the people needed wine.
The winemaking tradition was maintained down through the centuries. In the 1960s, there were hundreds of small wine cellars in the region. They all produced wine in clay amphorae, for sale and for their own and their neighbours’ use. The majority of existing amphorae date from the 19th century.

Many small pilgrimages were made by bicycle to the mountain (São Mamede) to taste the new wine from countless producers.

At the moment, a significant part of the existing grapevines are old ones. Many of them were planted at the beginning of 1900. The bush vine system was used, without wires, using archaic training, “crawling” and not well cared for.
Curiously, the old grapevines were planted using a right-angled cane triangle (half of a square). The gcadminstock (at the time, Rupestris du Lot, Aramon or Corriola) was planted successively, by hoe, on the vertices of the triangle (a one-metre ditch, one metre deep). A year or two later, the grapevines were grafted. Animals were used to till the soil and the vineyards were cleared by hoe. In Reguengo, a parish with a lot of vineyards, the people were known as “Diggers”.

 

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