The year of the vineyard

Vineyard Diary

What happens in the vineyard throughout the year — from pruning to flowering, from harvesting to bottling. Written by those who have been working this vineyard since 1997.

Maturation

August: the berry gains colour and sugar

We are in the heart of summer and the vineyard is experiencing its most generous moment. After the spring flowering, the bunches grew and now enter maturity — the "painter", as they say here, when the berry changes colour and begins to accumulate sugar.

There are weeks of sunshine and cool nights. It is this difference between the hot day and the cold night, which Minho offers, that gives vinho verde the aromas and acidity that make it so easy to bring to the table. We spend our days tasting berries, measuring, waiting for the right point.

The most anticipated moment of the year is just around the corner. When sugar and acidity balance each other, the harvest arrives — and the estate is filled with people and the smell of must.

Flowering

The vine in bloom

In May, the vine blooms. They are discreet, almost invisible flowers — but it is from them that the bunches are born, and that is why they are one of the most important and most fragile days of the year.

If the weather helps, with mild days and no extra rain, flowering goes well and the vine "thrives": each fertilised flower becomes a berry. An untimely thunderstorm or a cold wind can, in a few hours, take away part of the harvest. At this point, we look at the sky with another attention.

The Atlantic climate of Minho, cool and humid, is what gives Vinho Verde the lively acidity and lightness that distinguish it. Here, in the flower, the character of the wine begins, which is only tasted a year later.

Bottling

The new wine goes into the bottle

While the vineyard outside still sleeps, the winery takes the final step of the previous cycle: bottling. The Vinho Verde from the last harvest, stabilised over the winter, is ready for the bottle.

Vinho Verde is, by nature, a wine to drink young — fresh, aromatic, namely the year in which it was born. That's why we don't let it age in wood: we bottle it early, so it arrives at the table with all the fruit and liveliness intact.

Each bottle he fills is the end of a whole year of work, from the pruning of twelve months ago to this moment. And as soon as it ends, the vineyard outside is already preparing to start again.

Pruning

Pruning: shaping the year to come

In the silence of winter, when the vineyard sleeps and the sap has descended to the roots, the work that decides the next harvest begins: pruning. We go through our vineyards in Gominhães stick by stick, choosing which shoots stay and which ones are cut.

Pruning is not cleaning — it is choosing. Each cut defines how many bunches the vine will carry and how much strength it will have to ripen them. On a vinho verde estate like ours, in granitic soils, a balanced pruning is the difference between a tense and lively grape and a tired grape.

It is a work of hands and patience, done in the cold, long before anyone thinks about harvesting. But it is here, in February, that the wine of the next autumn begins to be made.

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