Which true wine-lover hasn’t dreamt of making their own wine?
The Winemaker Experience is a hands-on project, which aims to turn wine-lovers into genuine wine-makers, each with a privately owned vineyard. Basically, what we offer is to guide participants through the full wine-production process, offering them our winery and consultancy, but encouraging them to make their very own wine, to their own preferences. This ensures that our private winemakers take their decisions based on the same information as we do, the only differences being volume and the fact that they can do so completely care-free.
You choose the variety, you choose when to harvest, you choose the blend, basically, you choose everything.
Purchasing a vineyard parcel which is integrated into an award-winning winery is definitely a creative solution, you get a dual benefit; full control of your own wine production to whichever extent you desire, but without the responsibility of having to run a winery. The vineyard parcels are adjusted in size so that the average annual grape yield corresponds to a barrel of wine, 225 litres. This volume is the crucial point in the project, as it allows the experience to be completely care-free, as participants do not need to worry about having to sell their wine, while also being authentic.
We have all been taught that you can’t have your cake and eat it too, but we offer an opportunity where exactly this is possible. On-site we have a small resort of holiday-homes available for purchase named The Vines, available with a turnkey buy-to-let solution. If you invest in both, you have the opportunity to sit on your own terrace overlooking your privately owned vineyard, drink your own wine which is more than paid for from your rental returns. For details please contact us.
Just reading this already puts you one step closer to becoming a winemaker yourself. We would like to invite you to join our amazing group of private winemakers in turning the dream of winemaking into a reality. These private winemakers are found all over the world, from the snowy Swiss Alps to South Beach, Florida, but what they all have in common is the fact that they get to produce their own unique wine in the Algarve!
Our team will be there to guide you on each and every step of the way, both now as well as in the future. We do this to ensure that you get the maximum enjoyment out of your new venture, and simultaneously learn more about winemaking every single year. You will have full access to all the expertise of our experienced staff, both in the vineyard (viticulture) and in the winery (viniculture). At each step you are free to decide how much you want to be involved personally. You can be part of all facets that go into making your private wine or simply delegate the more mundane tasks to us.
Participating in The Winemaker Experience can even be handled remotely. Whenever you cannot be on-site personally, our team will ensure that you are fully informed and in control, whether it is with photos, videos, WhatsApp, emails or phone calls. Even blending and tasting the wine can be done in the comfort of your own home. We bottle the wine(s) manually and send the samples to you with notes and recommendations.
If you are able to be here on-site, even better! We also offer the option to purchase a holiday-home overlooking the vineyards here at Quinta dos Vales, named The Vines.
While the initial goal was just to make the project affordable, we offer an option that can even make it profitable with The Vines. This is a small on-site resort of holiday-homes, available for purchase, which includes a turnkey buy-to-let solution. This means, that by purchasing both a vineyard and a holiday-home, wine-lovers can get the best of both worlds. Their luxury lifestyle investment can suddenly be converted into a sensible, return-generating, asset-based investment, without fear of inflation, and more profitable and fun than any bank investment available these days.
Whether you then consume the wine yourself, gift them as Christmas presents or share them with business contacts, what is more special than a wine that you produced and blended in person?
It would be our honour and pleasure to guide you through this adventure, which you can enjoy right away and later pass on to your children and grandchildren.
Instead of spending millions on buying a vineyard, you can now make your very own wine without the usual logistics headaches that come with wine production, and all for a fraction of the price.
These are all priced from 57.500€ to 90.000€. The size of the individual plots and the number of plants varies significantly, depending on the variety and the location of the plot. What counts for our purpose is simply the desired production volume which is exactly one barrel of 225L or 300 bottles of your wine. You may choose one or even different existing plots in order to have more flexibility in blending different varieties.
These 300 bottles per year of your privately blended and labelled wine, is plenty to never have to worry about Christmas presents for family and friends ever again. When buying multiple plots you can take on the challenge of turning it into a business, by starting to sell your wine and build a small brand. For more details take a look at the brochure or contact us.
For those of you who first want to dip their toes into the winemaking lifestyle before diving right in, we have a solution which allows you to get a taste of winemaking without a long commitment. What we offer is for you to lease one of our established vineyard plots for a single harvest, and make one vintage out of the resulting grapes.
You would follow the full process until the end, resulting in a production of approximately 300 bottles. You would see with your own eyes the growth of the grapes, take part in the exciting harvest period and follow the wine every step of the way in the winery.
After the vintage is completed, you will be able to understand whether you have fallen in love with winemaking the way that we have. If that is the case, you will surely want your own vineyard parcel to really make it your own! For more details take a look at the brochure.
Prices: starting at 9.600,00€. For pricing details please contact us.
For those who like the idea but don’t want to wait years until you have your own wine in the bottle, we have the Barrel Blending Experience. This allows you to skip the viticulture (field) phase of the wine production cycle and take a shortcut straight to the viniculture (winery) work.
What we do is present samples of the existing unblended wines in our production, at which point you can choose whichever varieties you prefer, and make 300 bottles of your preferred blend with these wines.
After that you are in control of all the steps leading to the final wine. The most important one is choosing the origin and age of the barrel and how long your blend will then age in it. For more details take a look at the brochure.
Prices: starting at 5.700,00€. For pricing details please contact us.
Making one’s own wine is a big dream, and one that needs to be tackled in stages. Most of our private wine-makers started with our Bottle Blending Workshop, a 3-hour experience during which we introduce the participants to the science as well as the art behind blending different varieties. You leave this workshop with a bottle of your own blended wine and a taste of how winemaking works.
Book nowThe perfect refuge for our Private Winemakers to work on their own wine production from start to finish. We have turned part of our cellar into a Private Winemaker Room, completely separate from the Quinta dos Vales wine production.
The room is equipped with stainless steel tanks and oak barrels exactly the right size to accommodate to each winemaker’s chosen volume of produced wine, be it one or several barrels of end product.
If at the end of the winemaking process our participants choose to store some of the bottles at our wine estate, rather than send them to their home, they can do so in the wine storage room, constructed in a way that would keep the wine at a stable temperature until it is ready to be enjoyed by the owners.
The wine tasting area is very close by, so that the way from the barrels and bottles to the place where you can comfortably enjoy the wine does not become an inconvenience.
Open BrochureAuthenticity is the most important part of this project, we recommend that our private winemakers take each and every wine-related decision themselves. Our team will execute the work, and our resident winemaker will provide education and consultancy throughout.