On our 3rd day in Portugal we took a trip to a winery out on the countryside. We got a chance to learn about how the harvesting of grapes and the production of wine has changed throughout the years due to the introduction of mechanization.
Wasting some time while we waited for our tour
Left - Our cameraman Josh playing with one of the dogs living at the Winery
Right - Three of our students relax outside
The first part of our tour was an explanation of the modern winemaking process, followed by a tasting of their wines. Some of the wines offerend had been award winners at wine tasting competitions around the world!
This little girl was the granddaughter of the owner of the winery and kept peeking through the bushes at us!
The next step was to head out into the sunshine to pick some grapes!
Left - Me picking my first bunch of grapes of the day!
Center - I had never seen (or tasted!) grapes straight off the vine
Right - One of our participant leaders, Dana, helping out with the harvest
This is about half of all of the grapes we picked. We ended up with about 12-15 buckets overflowing with bunches of the most delicious grapes many of us had ever had!
Then we dumped about 12 giant buckets of grapes into a huge stainless steel containment area and hopped in for some fun! It was slippery, mushy, cold, and AMAZING!
Apparently there is enough juice in 12 buckets of grapes to make at least 70 liters of juice! And for those of you who swear by Juicy Juice or Welches Grape Juice, they simply cannot compare to the freshly stomped grape juice straight off the vine!
The day ended in a feast of homemade bread, cheese, butter, and wine, all of which were made at the winery. Being able to step back in time and experiece something that was, for generations, almost a festival of community living, was incredible. Today a machine can harvest the same amount of grapes in one hour that it would take 12 employees to do by hand in a day. But nothing could possibly compare to spending time in the sun with friends picking, eating, and stomping the day away.
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