— Quinta dos Vales is now making dreams come true with its unique winemaking project. The ambitious Quinta dos Vales team has created The Winemaker Experience as the perfect solution for wine enthusiasts, inspired by the personal story of the founder and owner of the winery, Karl Heinz Stock.
Situated in the heart of the sunny Algarve, Quinta dos Vales has been synonymous with high-quality, award-winning wines and luxury accommodations for a long time now, and now the team wants to share their experiences with other wine lovers by allowing them to rent or purchase a plot of vineyard on their estate.
The idea behind the project is simple: you don’t need to be a wine expert to be able to produce wine from your own vineyard. The team of this well-established winery will lend their knowledge and guidance to the participants, allowing them to choose how much they want to involve themselves in the winemaking process each year - the high quality of the end product will always be guaranteed.
“We offer our participants the chance to buy a plot which will produce approximately one barrel of wine per year, resulting in 288 bottles. Why exactly this size? Filling the barrel means that the private wine can be produced separately from the remaining production”, says a spokesperson for Quinta dos Vales.
The winery currently has 180.000m2 of vineyard plantation, where grape varieties unique to Portugal, such as Touriga Nacional, flourish alongside international varieties. A little more than 8.000m2 of this plantation is dedicated to The Winemaker Experience. This portion of land is either rented or owned by private winemakers, and Quinta dos Vales plans to devote more plantation to The Winemaker Experience every year.
“For each step along the winemaking journey, we give our participants technical information, explain all the available processes and options and give our expert recommendations. Whether the step in question is when to harvest the grapes, how to blend the wines or any other factor which will influence the profile of their desired wine, we provide this information. Most of our participants cannot wait to come back and get their hands dirty in the vineyard again. This experience proved to us that even remote-production is possible, as we have found a way to keep them well-informed with regular updates in the form of photos, videos, emails or even occasional samples sent to wherever in the world they are”, says Karl Heinz Stock.
In addition to owning a vineyard, Quinta dos Vales also offers the opportunity to purchase a holiday home overlooking these vineyards. The Vines development is made up of 32 modern villa-suites, which can either be used as full-time residences or as holiday homes with a rental return. This combination allows wine-lovers to fully immerse themselves in the wine-maker lifestyle.
Karl Heinz Stock, the founder and owner of Quinta dos Vales and the creator of The Winemaker Experience project, based this project on his own experience of leaving his oil and real estate business in Moscow and starting a winery in Portugal. Starting simply with a desire to own a vineyard, he soon realised that the way to the dream is not as easy as anticipated, with no smaller-scale solutions being available at the time. Instead of getting a chance to build a closer connection with the wine itself, he had to venture into building up a winery business from scratch, which turned into a big undertaking. That is why he made sure that the focus of The Winemaker Experience stays on the right course.
“Back in 2006, when I decided to turn my dream into reality, such an option, unfortunately, did not exist. So, when I worked on creating The Winemaker Experience, I thought of the positive as well as the negative experiences of my journey. I aimed to create the perfect experience for the 2006-version of myself”, says the owner of Quinta dos Vales, Karl Heinz Stock.
His goal through this project is to encourage aspiring winemakers to become the architects of their own wine, as there is nothing quite like the feeling of pride you have when you get to hold the wine that you have personally created in your hands.
For more information, please visit: https://estate.quintadosvales.pt/the-winemaker-experience/.
Contact Info:
Name: Karl Heinz Stock
Email: Send Email
Organization: Quinta dos Vales - Agricultura e Turismo, Lda
Address: Sítio dos Vales, Caixa Postal 112, 8400-031 Estômbar, Lagoa (Algarve), Portugal
Website: https://estate.quintadosvales.pt/the-winemaker-experience/
Release ID: 89021377