THE WINERY
The Adega do Cantor is a 200 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 system. 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.
OUR CELLAR
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.
Our cellars have a capacity of 150 barrels and will be used mainly for barrel and bottle maturing our Reserve wines.
Our cellar door and tasting bar is designed to offer the ideal relaxed environment in which to taste and purchase our wines.
