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The Adega do Cantor is
a 100 tonne boutique winery built to a bespoke design in collaboration
with Castle Rock Logistics, a company specialising in winery design
and project management and based in Western Australia. It took
18 months to design on computer and 10 months to build. The winery
is modular in design in order to be easily expandable to its capacity
of 300 tonnes.
The whole philosophy of the winery revolved around three distinct
ideas.
Firstly, the design had to allow for gentle handling of the fruit,
which gives the winemaker more options in winemaking style. This
is consistent with the gentle nature in which we pick and process
our fruit. The winery features a combination of static tank-style
fermenters and open fermenters. All our fermenters and storage
vats are made from food grade stainless steel and each of them
has their temperature controlled by computer. We were the first
winery outside of Australia to install Castle Rock Logistic's
patented mechanical plunger which is considered to be excellent
for gentle extraction of fruit flavours without over-extraction
of some of the more bitter elements of the grape. Where possible
we use gravity to move the grapes around the winery and this again
allows us to treat the grapes with the utmost care.
Secondly, we wanted to combine new technology and traditional
winemaking techniques, hence the use of open fermenter and cap
plunging which effectively copies the traditional winemaking techniques
that can still be seen in the Douro and Dão further north. We
also use a modern version of the traditional basket press, and
although much slower than more modern designs, it is still considered
to be one of the gentlest ways to press grapes.
The third element that was important to us, was an ability to
show people what we were doing. So every part of the winery can
easily be accessed when we guide people through the process of
winemaking.
Our cellars have a capacity of 150 barrels and will be used mainly
for barrel and bottle maturing our Reserve wines. The barrel cellars
are also temperature controlled.
Our cellar door and tasting bar is designed to offer the ideal
relaxed environment in which to taste and purchase our wines.
You’ll be pleased to know that this is also temperature controlled.
Hours of Operation
Open Monday to Friday 10am to 5pm (closed for lunch from 1-2pm)
Closed Weekends and Public Holidays
Closed December 24th to January 2nd |
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