Situated on the central West of Portugal, part of Beiras appellation d’origine, Quinta dos Cozinheiros persist on the idea of keeping its viticulture tradition. The age of the vineyards and the age of the winery, nowadays modernised and equipped with the ultimate technological solutions, is the demonstration that this tradition will survive. In fact, for more than 250 years we make wine in this Quinta!
Geographically it’s situated on the left bank of Mondego River, at a level of 100 meters above sea and at a distance of 8 kilometres to the Atlantic Ocean. The vineyards are planted on the sunrise slope of Pranto River basin, and their geology is characterised by soft slope clay soils of Miocene and sandy argyle on the plateau from the Pliocene.
Due to this situation it benefits of a cool climate, very soft and without excesses, which allows the preservation of a natural acidity of the grapes and gives a complex nature to their wines.
The vineyards have an excellent solar exposition because of their highness, and due to a strict skill hand viticulture practice they obtain an optimal relation of leaf surface/production.
In fact, in Quinta dos Cozinheiros, we believe that the machine, although necessary in certain works, is still not able to chose the best branch, eliminate the useless shoot, separate the grape that will not mature in good conditions, basically it’s not able to optimise the harvest in quality and sanity. That’s why we struggle to keep the rationality of Man commanding tasks, the knowledge and strength of men to drive and educate the vine, and the care and softness of women to select the best fruit, because we believe that it is on the vineyard that we start to do the best wine.
On the winery we can see several vinification processes. Side by side live traditional and vanguard techniques of making wine. The “lagares”, modernised and equipped with modern temperature control devices, are still used, but stainless steel and fine grain French oak barriques took the right place on a winery that has as main objective to do the best.
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