Port anD the Douro 135subsequently dispensed with fourteen large pump-over vats at their Nogueira winery and
installed thirty piston fermenters (now called ‘Port-toes’), each with a capacity of between
eight and fourteen tons. Taylor’s Port-toes have also proved to be the solution at Croft’s
Quinta de Roêda, where the old concrete autovinification vats have been adapted to take
piston plungers.
Over a similar time frame, both Quinta do Noval and the Symington family have
faced up to the challenge of foot treading by going back to basics. In 1994 Noval’s head
winemaker, António Agrellos, modified a traditional granite lagar to take a robotic
plunger. Competitors and Noval’s own workforce viewed the original contraption with
some amusement. But having been used successfully over seven vintages (including the
declared years of 1997 and 2000 when Noval made outstanding vintage Ports), the
machine has been upgraded to a new version with ten mechanical feet compared with
the original four. Each of these ‘feet’ comprises a hinged plate that plunges the cap down
against the stone floor of the lagar. The new machine is able to tread a lagar under its
own propulsion, whereas the original version had to be moved manually. Noval’s robotic
machine can now move freely across an entire bank of traditional stone lagares. In a
development of the same system, Ferreira have built eight new granite lagares at Quinta
de Leda in the Douro Superior, each of which is equipped with a robotic plunger. Built
into the hillside like a traditional Douro adega, Ferreira’s winery works by gravity feed
with the armazém directly underneath the lagares.
The quest to mechanise the production of Port has been taken to new lengths by the
Symington family with their own ‘robotic lagar’. Developed in-house, the first prototype
was installed at their Quinta do Sol winery at the end of vintage in 1998. It takes the
form of a low sided, square stainless steel tank or lagar with a capacity of seventeen
pipes of must, similar to that of a traditional lagar (see photograph opposite page 181).
Four large rectangular blocks or ‘feet’ are suspended from a gantry which moves slowly
across the lagar once every seven minutes, under computer control. The feet, which are
able to cool or warm the ferment accordingly, sink through the must until they tread
the grapes against the stainless steel floor. Silicon pads (made from the same grade of
silicon that is used for barrel bungs) are designed to exert the same pressure as the sole of
the human foot (about 120 grams per square centimetre). The Symingtons go to some
length to point out that whereas other piston plungers (i.e. Noval’s robots and Taylor’s
Port-toes) stop inches short of reaching the floor of the lagar or vat, the robotic lagar
actually squashes the grapes against the floor like a human foot. Once the grapes have
been thoroughly trodden, the lagar can be reprogrammed to immerse the cap (so the feet
don’t touch the floor), thereby imitating the action of the traditional macaco. When the
natural sugar level in the ferment has fallen to the appropriate level the must is run off
and fortified as before. Hydraulic arms then tip the contents of the lagar straight onto an
Archimedes screw and within five minutes, at most, the remaining mass of grape skins
has reached the press. This compares with the two hours spent forking grape skins into
a press from a traditional stone lagar, during which time the skins continue fermenting.
The robotic lagar has the advantage over the traditional lagar as it can be emptied later