Did you read the previous post? If so, you’ve noticed that we were challenging you to guess what we will do in the area in front of the winery. In the comments’ section, you can see that Andy Velebil bet on a white grapes vineyard. Well, the answer is not correct, but in other place, we are actually planting a white grapes vines. The photo show the bulldozer preparing the soil of Quinta da Trovisca, and making the traditional terraces from the Douro, “patamares” or  “sucalcos” in Portuguese. We will plant Viosinho, Rabo-de-Ovelha Rabigato and Gouveio (also known as Verdelho) in March. But that will be shown in further posts. Stay tuned!

1. To swim in the Douro river against the flow, towards its source in Duruelo de la Sierra, Spain
2. To sail in the Douro, rowing on empty barrels from Ferradosa to the outlet in Porto
3. To run the Cima-Corgo marathon from S. João da Pesqueira to Pocinho
4. To prune 100 vines with our teeth
5. To defy S. Joao da Pesqueira’s #1 dominoes player for a duel out of seven matches
6. To practice “scuba diving” in the wine bins to control the fermentation process
7. To take L’amour (our mighty dog) out for a walk in the center of Pesqueira without a muzzle
8. To plant an hectare of vines with a hoe and a spade
9. To tow the train of the 3pm from Pinhão to Alegria with two friends
10. And this one’s for you to fill…. what do you suggest?

Top 9 elaborated by Joana, António and Pedro

Some thoughts about 2009 Harvest:

• generally there was few quantity per vine
• the quality of the grapes for Port is excellent
• the quality of the grapes for Douro wines is good, but will age early
• it was necessary over 750 kilograms to make 550 liters (1 pipa) of wine
• the sugar content of the grapes was high, resulting in quite alcoholic wines
• the colors of the wines are deep and dark - some very promising Ports
• after some years focusing only on still red wines, this year we made 2.000 liters of still white wine

Now it is your turn. Do you have any questions or comments?

Oscar

Today was the first day. We are harvesting in Quinta das Olgas, in the Douro Superior, and Quinta da Alegria, in the border between Cima Corgo and Douro Superior. The grapes are very sweet, with potential alcohol around 15%. The vines have many leaves dried, resulting from a very hot weather during the four last weeks. Meanwhile, the nights started to coll off, specially in the last two days. It’s 11pm and the temperature outside is now around 16ºC (60º F).

The photo shows the first grapes arriving in 20kg plastic boxes from Quinta das Olgas, which is around 60km away from our winery.

Leave your comments!

Oscar

Roy Hersh also writes a monthly newsletter for its subscribers. One of the topics of the newsletter is “A Question for the Trade”, which, as the name says, is a question from Roy or the FTLOP fun to the Port Wine Producers. For the December edition, Roy also invited Quevedo to participate, and we are very proud for this first collaboration in Roy’s newsletter. Well, I would like to suggest you to visit the web, participate in their forum and subscribe Roy’s newsletter. Especially for Port Wine lovers, the newsletter and the forum deserve to be read.

Oscar Quevedo

This year the harvest started on the 8th of September, which was not really early when compared with last years’ dates. But as this year the ripening was quite irregular, indeed an atypical year, we decided to start the harvest with lower sugar content. As we had posted at that time, we started in Douro Superior - Quinta das Olgas with Bé of between 12,6º and 13,4º. Quinta da Alegria finished a couple of days after, on the 13th of September and 3 days later we started to harvest in Quinta Vale D’Agodinho. At that time the Bé of this vineyard was similar to those of the previous vineyards.

After we had finished the harvest in Quinta Vale D’Agodinho we stopped for 10 days. We restarted on October 6th in the vineyards located at around 620 meters above the sea level, close to S. João da Pesqueira. Also these vineyards suffered from the low temperatures of the Summer, which did not allow very high sugar concentration, Grapes arrived at the winery with around Bé of 12,0º and 12,5º. Well, the good part is that we got wines with very fruity flavours, low pH and high total acidity. In spite of all ripening difficulties, the color obtained was quite good.

We had decided to harvest the Quinta da Trovisca after all our vineyard have been harvested. This vineyard is located at around 550 meters above the sea level and as a classification of B by the IVDP. Leaving it to the end of the harvest, this is mid October is a quite risky decision because an abundant rain previous to the harvest could had harmed the grapes. In Quinta da Trovisca we have all the grapes divided by varietal (which is not traditional in Douro) - touriga nacional, touriga franca, tinta roriz and sousão. And it came up to be a good decision to leave it to mid October. We got a very good color and an unique flavour, not yet smelt during all this vintage.

Thus, I can say it was a log harvest but it was not a worn out vintage. The breaks in the reception of grapes left us some time to work on other stuff. And we can say that the quality was good. However we have to wait for the evolution of the wines to figure out if they turn up excellent.

Now is time to reflect, to reorganize and come back to the routine. The Christmas is coming and as the tradition says, in the Christmas Eve we must all have a bottle of Port to celebrate the birth of Jesus. It is time to send our bottles to those who want to celebrate with Quevedo!

Come back soon,

Claúdia Quevedo

1. When the grape truck breaks down on a rainy day

2. The cigarette smoke from a winery worker while unloading grapes

3. Finding the scissors stuck in the gears of the destemmer after being hidden in the box of harvested grapes

4. Cell phone falling into the fermentation vat

5. Someone diving into the lagar

6. A little hole in a barrel

7. Ridiculously small glasses to taste wine

8. Cork vendors

9. Capping the bottle without a cork

10. Men and woman wearing strong perfume at a wine tasting

What you would add?

Quinta das Olgas - old vines

Five days later than in 2007, we have started harvesting in Quinta da Alegria and Quinta das Olgas, in the regions of Cima-Corgo and Douro Superior. The yield has been higher compared to last years’ production and our estimate for the other vineyards is a productivity of almost 3.5 tns/hectare.

The Bé is 13.8º in Quinta da Alegria and 13.4º in Quinta das Olgas, lower than last year due not only to the higher yield but also to the rain of the last week. Yesterday we started harvesting the younger vines of Quinta das Olgas and we got a Bé. of 12.9º in the Touriga Nacional varietal. 

The weather is quite uncertain and rain is expected for Thurdsay. If this forecast doesn’t come true, we should finish the harvest of these two vineyards on September 11th.

Cheers,

Óscar Quevedo

Ripening Control

The vintage is close and ripening control is very important to define the date of the harvest and to define the order that different fields should be harvest within the same vineyard.

We were carrying out ripening controls in Quinta da Alegria (up Cima-Corgo) on August 29th and in Quinta das Olgas (Douro Superior) on September 2nd. On the top of Quinta da Alegria the grapes were with 11,5º Bé; the bottom part was with 12,1º Bé. Last year on August 23rd we got 12,5º Bé in the upper side and 12,8º Bé in the bottom part. In Quinta das Olgas we carried out the ripening control on September 2nd. The field Vale do Nedo was with 13,0º Bé, Barroso 13,2º Bé and Olgas with 11,7º Bé. On 2007 the control was done on August 30th and Vale do Nedo was with 12,4º Bé, Barroso with 13,1º Bé and Olgas with 12,0º Bé.

Last year ripening was pretty much advanced in Quinta da Alegria. This year weather is quite irregular and even yesterday rained a bit in S. João da Pesqueira and the forecast for the next two days is also rain. We have to hold on and keep doing ripening control to define a more accurate date for the beginning of the harvest.

In 2007 we started the harvest in Quinta das Olgas and Quinta da Alegria on September 3rd. We collected both at the same time because ripening were quite similar in both and we also had a lot of employees available as we were at the beginning of September and almost no one was harvesting. Grapes came to the winery with good sugar content and good acidity, so we could get balanced must. Grapes from Quinta das Olgas was between 13,5º Bé and 14º Bé and grapes from Quinta da Alegria between 13,0º Bé and 13,8º Bé.

This year is different, lets wait 3 or 4 more days, keep doing ripening controls and pray for better weather!

I will keep you up-to-date.

Cláudia Quevedo

Color Changing in Quinta Vale D'Agodinho

Hello, I am Cláudia Quevedo and I want to talk to you about the color change of the grapes. This phase is a beautiful moment for both, vines and farmers. The vineyards become all coloured- from the green of the leaves to the blackish of the grapes- and farmers feel closer the hustle and bustle of the harvest. Therefore, all the preparations must be done so that when the magic moment arrives, all is ready.

Here in  the Quevedo vines, the color change arrived a couple of weeks ago to the following vineyards: Vale D’Agodinho, Alegria and Olgas. Quinta da Trovisca, which is a little bit higher than the others is starting to get colour, especially the castes Touriga Franca and Touriga Nacional. The Tinta Roriz is a little bit delayed and the Sousão, which is always late, starts to show its first coloured berries.

Regarding the upper vineyards, close to the winery in S. João da Pesqueira, the colour change it is starting to show up.

This year, in general the maturation process is a little bit delayed. Our prevision is to start the harvest the first days of September, depending on the temperatures in the vineyards near the Douro river. Anyway, we will start this week to check the maturation levels of the berries, that will end with the harvest.

In the winery we are already preparing the equipment for the great moment: now we are washing and disinfecting the cubes, vats, tanks, pumps, mix pumps, the crusher, de-stemmer, press, filters, etc. Everything must shine and work perfectly for the harvest so next week we are going to check every single machine in the winery.

While we are getting everything ready to receive the little princesses of the Douro, the vines are also preparing themselves to give excellent wines. For now, the weather is on our side and we hope it stays like this until the great moment.

Cláudia Quevedo