Living Life & Loving It: And the VINTAGE time arrived....

And the time to make the most famous wine in the world arrived, just like it arrives every year… and I am so happy that my Sister Carla, my brother in law Marcus and my cute niece Eva were able to leave mother England and spend a week helping our parents during such a difficult and very hard work. But they ended having fun after all, and even my sweet Eva got to step on the grapes while the people that were hired to help, were playing the music to make things a lot funnier…and it seems that every year someone works so hard to go, but so far we have not been able to get the whole family together in the place that my grandmother was born, and my mother and my amazing Tia Fatima were born as well... and where I want my ashes to be buried…. But hey… I am sure that it will come the day when all our family that is spread through… England, Luxembourg, Belgium, Germany, Brazil, Portugal, France…and United States of America will be able to get all together and have the times of our life all together. And those days will be the times when we will scream YAY; while he will be having a blast knowing that life is what we make of it at that moment and when those days become “NOW”… YAY, we will have so much fun like if there’s no one around, we will laugh until we cry and we’ll know always… that after all; life is what we make of it. Wait for us to be all together…Someone taught me how to dream once, and I never was able to stop after that lol. So, while I am alive my dreams are a reality just waiting to happen. But let me explain to all of you what "VIINTAGE" means in Portugal...

The vintages are the harvest of the bunches of grapes intended for wine production, when they have reached the degree of maturation indicated. The bunches are then sent to mills, where it begins to produce various types of wines. For good quality of wine is necessary to choose the exact date at which to start the harvest. The harvest takes place usually after a decision taken by the winemaker, who after analyzing samples for controlling the ripening of the grapes and the acidity, weight and color. You must find the degree of acidity as indicated in the course of time the acids are transformed into sugars, which leads to an increase of alcohol. To producers, depending on the variety, determine the relationship that best suits them depending on the type of wine they intend to produce. Subsequently, the transport must be made of clusters in the best conditions, since, due to the heat of the day itself, the crushed grapes start to ferment before time. It is also possible to predict the best time for harvesting through a popular method that consists in checking the feet when wilt of grapes and the skins of the grapes begin to contract. Marked the vintage date, every property where there is cultivation of grapes flock then dozens of seasonal workers, usually coming from the neighboring lands, and starts one of the most characteristic moments of Portuguese ethnography. Often entire families are moving to the vintage, a tradition that crosses generations: women, helped by children, cut the clusters, which are placed in wicker baskets. It is then up to the men carry these baskets to the mills. Formerly groups of men who trod the grapes, the system that was gradually being replaced by mechanical methods. In the vintage are organized in different lands or areas where there is this activity calls the Harvest Festival, a historical tradition that attracts huge tourists, such as, for example, in the Douro, the oldest demarcated wine region in the world.