Wine Tasting & visit of the museum
A late start of the day. It would be a very hot day so the walk around the Quinta Nova vineyards would be for the late afternoon. We first had breakfast with a view of the Douro valley, it could have been worse!
A little after noon we visited the winery of our Quinta, the museum and then we tasted a number of wines and a port. Very interesting! Initially the Quinta produced port wines, now they had extended it to other wines as well.
We saw how they supplied the grapes and how they were stripped of the stems. They had a machine that mimicked the temperature, the pressure and the movement of the stamping of the feet.
In the past it were the women who harvested the grapes and the men who had to carry the heavy baskets up the vineyards. Then 4 nights in a row for 4 hours in the night (for temperature reasons) grapes were pounded to the rhythm of the music. Luckily everything was now somewhat modernised. The domain had its own wine library where all wines ever made were stored (for personal use or competitions). Our favourite was actually the port wine.
Walk around the Quinta Nova Vineyards
After the siesta we did the walk of the vineyard. According to the hotel it would take at least 2.5 to 3 hours and it would involve a lot of climbing! I have to say that I really suffered due to the heat and the climbing but I persisted even though Koen often said that I would be better off returning. But I really wanted to complete the walk so I could not give up even if the pace was a bit too much for me to follow !
We finally did it in less than 2 hours (Koen was going to repeat it tomorrow morning without me, according to him it could be done in just over an hour… and that’s what he did…).
The views during the walk were fantastic! I was so happy with myself for completing the hike.
Dinner at the Quinta Nova
The food at the restaurant of the Quinta was so good. The past 2 days we had tasted different dishes and everything was wonderful! Really a pity that we had to leave. Tomorrow we were heading for the next wine estate, hopefully it would be as good as this one!
