For many, the idea of owning their own vineyard and making their own wine may be a distant dream however, the team at Quinta dos Vales has put together a package that allows winemaking to become accessible through the innovative programmes of renting or owning a vineyard.
Located in Estombar in Lagoa, Algarve, Quinta dos Vales has long been synonymous with award winning wines but this new offer is now opening up this opportunity to others.
Quinta dos Vales spans across 450.000m2 of undulating hills, where grape varieties unique to Portugal, including Touriga Nacional, flourish alongside international varieties. The selection and development of the wines is supervised by the local winemaker Marta Rosa and top oenologists Dorina Lindemann and Paulo Laureano, who work alongside the vineyard owners every step of the way.
Karl Heinz Stock told The Portugal News: “Nobody in the world is doing this quite like we are”. He explained that there are other options around the world to buy into vineyards but usually at a level that requires considerably more financial investment and time commitment.
“We offer the chance to buy a plot which will annually produce approximately one barrel of wine, resulting in 288 bottles. Why do we offer this size? Filling the barrel means the wine can be produced completely separately from the remaining production, while the volume of 288 bottles is a reasonable amount for a couple to get through in a year. Part of which they will obviously consume themselves, but still allows enough bottles so that they never have to worry about finding personal Christmas presents ever again.”

The Winemaker Experience - Turning Winelovers into Winemakers!

You don’t have to be a wine expert to be able to own a vineyard through this programme and each year the private wine-makers are able to choose to be involved as little or as much as they like.

“We give advice on the grape varieties, when to harvest, how to blend, and so forth. A client can create their own unique wine without ever having to come here if they choose so, as we can send samples to them directly wherever they are in the world. Alternatively participants can visit us every two months to see the development of the wine for themselves.”
Karl Heinz Stock understands the needs of the private wine-makers primarily because he too began with the desire to have his own vineyard: “I started out with 20.000m2 initially but found that this was too small for a commercial production, which is why I later increased to over 200,000m2 with Quinta dos Vales”, he said.
“Whereas with this project I wanted to create a care-free experience for people to be able to enjoy winemaking in an authentic but accessible way.”

The Winemaker Experience - Turning Wine lovers into Wine makers!

It has taken two years for the Quinta dos Vales team to fine-tune the interaction and guidance of private wine-makers, but they now know how to ensure that every client is able to get the best from their vineyard with unique blends, with involvement in the harvesting, bottling and labelling of bottles. This allows every client to be able to genuinely say that this is “my wine”.
Already The Winemaker Experience is attracting interest from Korea, the USA and from various clients across Europe, with them all keen to develop a personal wine. There is also the option to buy a property on the site as part of The Vines development of 32 villa-suites, combining a holiday-home with a vineyard.
As part of The Winemaker Experience there are also simpler options for wine-lovers who want to first take a smaller step into the world of winemaking before taking the plunge and becoming a fully-fledged vineyard owner. Quinta dos Vales offers Bottle Blending Workshops, which in 2019 saw over 1,000 people participate in these specialist workshops. The three hour experience allows participants to blend a wine to their exact preference while being guided by the team of experts on hand. This workshop results in each person being able to bottle their wine, label it and seal it with a cork themselves.
On a larger scale you can instead choose to take on the Barrel Blending Experience, where you can blend your own barrel, which then produces 288 bottles to share with family and friends.
The world of wine does not have to be for the few and at Quinta dos Vales the team have used innovative new ideas and experiences to bring wine-lovers closer to the wines that they love.
For further information on The Winemaker Experience please visit www.docs.quintadosvales.pt/twe_more.html