HOW TO MAKE RED WINE - OUR HOMESTEAD LIFE CENTRAL PORTUGAL

Hi there! I am Joseph. I have been an immigrant / expat living in central Portugal along with my beautiful girlfriend Mariana for eight years now. Together Mariana, my father Clinton and myself, would like to show you a bit of the daily goings on around our Portuguese farm / homestead / smallholding and all of the work we are doing whilst renovating, starting building projects, working with our livestock, DIY and trying to grow our little families own food! In this episode we welcome you to join us in late summertime as we go about our daily goings on around our farm and the local surroundings, here in central Portugal. We begin this week at the very front of our farmhouse here in Fundao. It is late September, and we need to harvest our grapes, Mariana and I start by harvesting the grapes on our pergola at the front of the house, my lovely neighbour turns up to help and her and my father both head up to the vineyard, a true family vindima filled with lots of laughter and fun in the sun. We jump straight into the work and throughout the morning we managed to pick enough grapes to fill our containers with 950ltrs worth of grapes, once crushed they of course have less air space between them, so this goes down a bit but regardless it was still plenty for our own supply of red wine. The rest will all go to the cooperativa. We lift our crusher and destemmer on top of the dornas, primary fermenters, and turn her on. We throw grapes in, and she crushed them down and removes the stems. The grapes will do 70% of their fermentation here in these primary fermenters and the other 30% will be done in the stainless-steel secondary fermenters that can be seen in the background. After all that hard work Mariana and I scrub up and head to Sortelha, a medieval castle town, because there is a medieval festival. We were of course very tired from all the work during the day but we still had enough energy to enjoy ourselves for the night. It was a beautiful festival with lots of food, drink, dancing and traditional music. The next day I show you the progress of the wine, I begin by punching the cap, which is a process in where the seeds and skins of the grapes float to the surface during the fermentation, they will continuously do this and stop the wine from breathing properly, ending fermentation, so it is very necessary to keep punching this cap down numerous times daily. This also adds to the flavour and depth of the wine as the tannins and flavours are inside the skins and seeds still. I hope you enjoyed the episode and I hope you all have an amazing week ahead. If anyone has any questions about wine making in the traditional Portuguese way, please ask away! Thank you, see you in the next one! See our journey to self-sufficiency / permaculture / organic farming living in Portugal, trying to produce as much of our own food planting vegetables, growing fruit trees as well as looking after all our animals, such as our chickens, turkeys, geese, ducks, quail, rabbits and sheep - Shortly pigs too! - Growing vegetables, raising meat and foraging on our cherry farm in Portugal’s Beira baixa, Fundão Follow us on Instagram @farmerforfun IF YOU ARE PORTUGUESE OR TRYING TO LEARN PORTUGUESE PERHAPS CONSIDER TURNING ON SUBTITLES FOR THIS VIDEO, MARIANA & I HAVE CREATED SUBTITLES IN PORTUGUESE, MAYBE THEY MIGHT COME IN HANDY WITH LEARNING A WORD OR TWO! CLICK THE ’CLOSED CAPTIONS’ BUTTON ON THE VIDEO AND THE SUBTITLE OPTIONS WILL APPEAR. PLEASE HELP US TO CONTINUE CREATING THIS CONTENT BY CONTRIBUTING TO US ON PATREON