Happy Harvest

Well, I am simply exhausted! It’s been quite the week. 6 days of nearly 12 hours at work takes it out of you!

We spent the first half of the week bottling, which consists of doing the same motion over and over and over for the whole day! I got in quite a workout between the half curl/shoulder shrug with wine bottles and an oblique twist to hand them off or a little deadlift to set them in a crate, then repeating that 2500 times or so. We were sore the next day.

We officially started harvest on Thursday! Which is pretty much sorting grapes, cleaning, analyzing grapes, cleaning, inoculating yeasts, cleaning, and then cleaning some more. If you told me as a kid (or even as a 20 year old) that my dream job would wine up consisting of yard work, chemistry, and cleaning, I would have laughed in your face. But here we are!! And I’m loving it!

On Saturday after work, Sam and I decided we’d die if we didn’t find a steak to eat that night, so we convinced Teresa to drive us 30 minutes to a steakhouse. It was only €23 for all you can eat meat to be brought to your table! We all had to unbutton our jeans by the time we left the restaurant.

Sunday we slept until 11, ate chocolate cake for breakfast, then headed to the beach! Comporta is about a 2 hour drive from here, but it was the least windy beach in Portugal yesterday (the wind here is insane, by the way) so it was worth the trek. It was probably the most beautiful beach I’ve been to. Soft, white sand and waves perfect for body surfing… it was out of a dream.

After we got out full of sun and salt water, we went into town. We were blasting middle school throwbacks with the windows rolled down, and while Teresa was parallel parking, we were singing along to “Apologize” by OneRepublic. A group of boys walked by laughing and got into the car we parked behind, then as we got out of our car they rolled down their windows and started blasting the same song. It was one of the funniest moments I’ve ever experienced. We walked around a small market, had dinner at a beautiful rooftop bar, and sang the whole ride home.

I feel like the past few weeks have been a little slice of heaven (except for our shower doesn’t get warm). The pool, the views, the time with friends, the food… even work have all been amazing. I’ve been loving it. Tomorrow though I’ll be leaving the gals and moving up to Duoro to work at the family’s other winery. I’m excited to experience the famous Duoro Valley, and I’m stoked about making Port wine, but the first words from Teresa’s aunt when she told me I’d be moving up there were “Welcome to hell”. Duoro is an oven, you see. But the weather doesn’t look too bad this week at least, so I’m hoping for the best!

I’ll keep you all posted as I can!

Cheers :)