132 Port anD the Douro
is such that each cycle takes just ten or fifteen minutes to complete. By the time that the
fermenting must is ready to be run off and fortified, the floating cap of grape solids has
been thoroughly washed by the must at least twenty or thirty times. No external power
source is required.
Some of the earliest autovinifiers were built at Royal Oporto’s Quinta das Carvalhas
and Dow’s Quinta do Bomfim in 1963 to 1964 and are still in use. The Symington family
(owners of Dow, Graham and Warre) have long been fans of autovinification. Peter
Symington (retired winemaker) believes that because the system incorporates a certain
amount of air, it produces structured wines that are not dissimilar in style to those made
in a lagar. But there are also detractors. Cockburn and Sandeman were advocates of a
system called the movimosto. This entailed the building up the sides of a traditional lagar
and installing a pump to spray the floating cap of grape skins. The movimosto was a cheap
and reasonably successful for the production of relatively lightweight rubies and tawnies,
but provided completely inadequate extraction for high-quality Port. Sandeman installed
the movimosto at Quinta de la Rosa, an A-grade property that supplied Robertson’s
Rebello Valente vintage Port. By their own admission, the quality of the wine deteriorated
sharply and when La Rosa’s owner Tim Bergqvist decided to make his own wine in 1987
he scrapped the movimosto and returned to foot treading. By the late 1980s, the ill-fated
movimosto had generally been abandoned.
Cockburn subsequently addressed the problem of extraction their own way by
building a central winery at Vila Nova de Foz Côa which used thermo-vinification. This
has now been closed by the new owners but it is worth recording the process nonetheless.
Euphemistically known as the ‘jam factory’, the must was heated to 70 to 75°C for an
average of fifteen minutes prior to pressing and inoculation with selected dried yeast
cultures. In this way the extraction process is completed before fermentation, which takes
place off the skins in any suitable vat equipped with temperature control. Jim Reader,
former Production Director at Cockburn, declared himself happy with the overall quality
of the wine but other shippers did not adopt this process. Both Cockburn and Noval also
tried adding alcohol to the must in traditional lagares in the hope of slowing fermentation
and extracting more colour and fruit from the skins prior to fortification but found this
to be of limited benefit. Some shippers have tried using natural pectolytic enzymes to aid
extraction and enhance colour and aroma. Enzymes help to soften grape skins, but only
tend to be used in an under-ripe year.
At Croft’s Quinta da Roêda the concrete autovinifiers (similar to those at neighbouring
Quinta do Bomfim) were modified to accommodate a mechanical device known as a
remontador by which the must is drawn mechanically from the centre of the vat and
sprayed over the cap, the entire operation being programmable. This has subsequently
been replaced the new owners. Sandeman continue to work with a device known
as a turbo-pigeur which does much the same as the remontador. One shipper briefly
experimented with paddles to stir the fermenting must but found that they turned the
manta into a thick unmanageable porridge. In the 1990s, Taylor’s installed a closed rotary
fermentation vat known as a rotovat or Vinimatic at Quinta de Vargellas. Although this