Our final day of visits took us to the Redondo region, closer still to Évora, and the estate of Herdade do São Miguel, which is owned by Casa Relvas. Close to Évora we saw the modern Casa Relvas estate, but we bumped down a very long track to the original herdade, bought by the Relvas family bought in 1997 as a vacation house. When a neighbour suggested the schisty clay soils were good for wine, they decided to plant some vines as well as cork trees. Their first vintage was in 2003, with the winery built just in time to make 20,000 bottles. Today Casa Relvas makes 8 million bottles a year, with estates across the Alentejo, and brands we will see in many independent wine merchants in the UK.
The old family estate is situated among rolling vineyards, and our first activity of the day (after some coffee, donning of t-shirts and hats, and a safety briefing) was to head up into the vineyards with buckets and secateurs/snips to harvest some Castelão grapes. Ana was team leader, and she explained that they have not finished harvest yet as thanks to spring frosts the grapes are not yet fully ripened. We tasted some and they seemed jolly nice, and the pips were turning brown which means they are getting ripe, but with the help of a refractometer in the vineyard and a hydrometer in the winery the potential alcohol level of the grapes we were picking was confirmed as only 12.3%! So the ones we didn’t pick will be left on the vine for a few more days to get closer to the usual Alentejo levels!
Once our buckets were full we returned to the winery for phase two of our harvest adventures, a dip in the foot stomping tank. This was filled with Aragonés grapes, which are luckily rather plump and burst easily. Those of us who had shorts (and not much self respect) clambered up the ladders into the tank, and enjoyed a few minutes of grape treading – a not unpleasant experience. Luckily none of us slipped over (it was a bit slimy), and it was interesting to feel the unburst grapes and pips under foot.
We certainly felt we had earned lunch, and scoffed down the bread, cheese and ham laid out alongside the incredible selection of wines (at least 16) we were given to taste. Ana explained each one, and they were a great reminder of many grape varieties we had already encountered, though it was great to try both Arinto and Trincadeira as single varietals rather than in blends, and to meet Rambo de Ovelha for the first time – a particular favourite of mine!
Lunch proper was cauliflower soup, pork cheeks with rice and salad, and a delicious chocolatey pudding. Once we had finished we enjoyed an amazing vertical tasting of 5 vintages of the Herdade de São Miguel Reserva wines, which can clearly age and evolve beautifully – even the oldest vintage, 2010, was bright, elegant and a joy to drink.
We thanked Ana and her team (including canine members Bacco and Ernesto) profusely, and felt sad to be leaving, though we definitely needed some time to get our appetites for dinner!
