Harvest time

Joining in on the wine harvest is an opportunity to experience Portugal from the ground up — working alongside professionals, learning traditional practices, and enjoying the food and culture connected to them.

Sounds of shouting and honking are cutting through the silence of the small mountain town of Folgosa, deep in the Douro Valley. The pickup bed of an open jeep is filled with dusty, happy harvesters, ready for a cold beer at the local bar after a long day in the fields. We are around 30 people —friends, family, employees, and me—helping out with the final stretch of the grape harvest for Casa da Réssa, a small, terroir-focused Douro producer aiming to showcase old vines and the traditional character of the region. Founded by Alexandre Dias, with winemaking led by Paulo Nunes, this ‘garage wine’ is made from around 25 hectares of former abandoned vineyards in the terraced slopes of the Douro.

And it became an experience I will not soon forget. To me, food and culture are intrinsically linked, and one of the best ways to immerse yourself in a country is to learn about its kitchen and produce. Portugal has an extremely long history of wine cultivation, stretching back well over 2,000 years, and possibly much further. Archaeological evidence shows grapevine remains in Portugal as early as the Chalcolithic period (c. 3350–2250 BC).

However, that doesn’t necessarily mean wine was being made then. Clear evidence of wine production appears around the 7th century BC, associated with Phoenician settlements around places such as Lisbon/Almada and the Tagus and Sado valleys.

The last day of the harvest

The day begins under the sun, with dry grass under our feet, rows of vine stretching out below us. In the distance, the Douro River is carving out a blue line between a massive patchwork of fields. Up here, Dias has bought some of the most precious parcels of the valley, with some vines being up to 120 years old. We are so high up from the river that the area has its own microclimate: it’s hotter here, and the grapes and weather conditions are monitored intensely.

We cut plumb, dark purple clusters of grapes from 50-year-old vines — too big to fit in our hands, and ever alluring in the intense heat. The grapes are gathered in heavy baskets and quickly fill up the jeeps. “The first and the last day of the harvest is the best,” Dias says, looking out over the land.

Harvest time, or ‘vindimas’, as it is called in Portuguese, is not only the agricultural season, but it’s also a social tradition and a celebration of the relationship between people, land and wine. It represents the culmination of a year’s work in the vineyard. Traditionally, the harvest takes place from late summer into early autumn, although the exact timing changes every year according to grape variety, weather, and ripeness.

In the Douro, for example, harvesting generally runs from August through October. Here, the terrain is incredibly steep, so grapes historically had to be carried out of the vineyards, and the harvest was a huge communal undertaking. Families, neighbours and seasonal workers would gather in the vineyards to help, and this is still an important part of the tradition, particularly in difficult terrain such as the Douro. In addition, the harvest needs to happen quickly once the grapes are ready, emphasising the need for many hands on deck.

A harvest feast

After picking, we follow the grapes to the adega, the winery, where we separate the good ones from any bad ones, small twigs or the like on a small conveyor belt.

The mood is high, and the talk is lively. Everyone is helping, and the big open tank is slowly filling up with grapes.

At dinner time we feast at long tables where Dia’s wine flows freely from label-less bottles under espaliers of gnarled vines above us. The food is traditional and plentiful; meat is roasted on a big spit out front and served on brown clay platters. It’s a scene as taken out of an agricultural dream, lights over the tables and stories told across them, music and dance until the late hours. I see happy faces, not least Dias’s, who can look forward to bottling a year’s work that has amounted to 6,500 kg of grapes, soon entering the tanks, barrels and eventually, bottles.

But for now, it is time to crush the grapes that are waiting in the big tank in the winery. For this, we join arms to support each other while we stomp in unison and sing traditional songs, as our feet hit the squishiness of the thick grape porridge beneath us — all part of the tradition. This is called pisa da uva, literally ‘grape treading’. Before modern mechanical presses, foot-treading was an effective way of crushing grapes while being relatively gentle on the seeds, and it was done in lines or groups, keeping a rhythm and sometimes singing. Thus, a traditional band has shown up to support us in this, wearing folk attire and creating a vibrant atmosphere. Soon, everyone is dancing as night falls.

The grapes are now juice or ‘mosto’ and the fermentation begins: Yeasts convert the grape sugars into alcohol, eventually producing wine. This adds a symbolic quality to vindimas: the harvest is the transition between the work of the vineyard and the birth of the new wine. Therefore, vindimas are also a moment of relief and anticipation, a celebration of making it through another growing season. The harvest determines much of the year’s wine production, and therefore it had and still has real economic importance for producers, families and communities.

Many Portuguese towns have developed a formal ‘Festas das Vindimas’ around this tradition, and you should look for some in your area, as it is a wonderful experience. And I believe that, just as with food, the same is true of wine: you can taste the effort, passion, and love poured into it — and that is certainly true of the wines of Casa da Réssa.