ALL PHASES COUNT:
Harvest
Every care taken by our producers in handling the harvest always makes a difference.
Fermentation
Nature does its job but it is necessary to follow and monitor so that everything is perfect.
Internship
Everything has its time and the resting time must always be as desired by each of our products before reaching the final process.
Bottling
The best wine has to be well kept and protected. It’s finally ready to be a part of your life.
The picket is a moment of pause, in the middle of the morning, between the beginning of the work and the “dinner”, where you eat a “snack”, you socialize and, obviously, the word gets wet with the good wine of the Dão. It was a tradition to have a picket for olive picking and for harvesting cereals, but the most important and most joyful was always the harvest. The most famous snacks were the fried sardines accompanied by a good piece of bread, made the day before in a wood oven. However, the sardines weren’t fried anyway! First, the oil was prepared, in a large frying pan, with bay leaves and garlic cloves; it was only after the garlic was lightly browned that the sardines, previously scaled and wrapped in corn flour, were placed to make them crispy.
It was also common to have flaked cod, rojões fried in lard, roasted chorizo and black pudding, olives, Serra da Estrela cheese, all accompanied by homemade cornbread and wheat bread. Of course, there were always two demijohns, one for white and one for red. Anyone who wanted to, could sieve or blend the wine with water, but there was no piquette, as it is only ready for November, after the wine has been made. Today, a concession is already being made to juices, soft drinks and, guess what, to coca-cola, as the signs of the times cannot be ignored. However, it is grateful to recognize that the favorite drink of the vast majority continues to be Dão wine. Before the pickers went back to work, they still had time to sweeten the beak with a donut, coated in sugar and cinnamon.
The tradition was only practiced by small and medium-sized winegrowers, who took turns in the harvest of everyone, being the host’s way of thanking the neighbors for their help in the harvest. Unfortunately, there are almost no pickets. Adega de Penalva, some time ago, recreated the picket to show some customers and the youngest of the land how happy the harvest was. I hope the example bears fruit and next year there will be more wineries to recover their harvest picket. The region thanks you, because without memories the Dão wine has less charm.
Dão is a land of wine, history and contrasts. The rugged terrain, where you can always see a hill, you can see a terrace full of vines and cultivate a flat land, provides a rich and always renewed landscape. The great mountain lurks on the horizon line. The rivers and streams, with cold and transparent waters, roll more stone than sand. The air you breathe is pure and smells like pine. Dão knows how to welcome people from outside. The rugged terrain, the smallholding and the exuberant vegetation covering, with all shades of green, contribute to the almost anonymity of the vineyard in the landscape. And yet the vines are there, in numbers exceeding 75 million strains. The caterpillars carved into the granite and many traces of the Roman presence testify to the millenary tradition of wine production in the region. The strong establishment of religious orders makes it possible to attribute to the farming monks of the Middle Ages the origin of the popular knowledge with which, even today, vines are cultivated and wine made in Dão. References to vineyards and wine in the charters of almost all municipalities, in municipal postures, particularly in the municipality of Penalva do Castelo, attest to their great social, economic and religious importance throughout history. This is the portrait of the first demarcated region of pasture wines to be regulated in Portugal, in 1910.
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