It is in the quiet, pure and simple Vila de Frades, south of the Portel mountain range, in the municipality of Vidigueira, District of Beja, that the town where Honrado Vineyards has developed its latest project is located. The company intends to show the community and the world the best of what they do in carved wine, in a space recently recovered and restored to its original form, acquired to start the new project.
The new space provides visitors with a unique experience based on the empirical knowledge of the cellar master of Honrado. The desire to share some of the ancient knowledge of how to produce carved wine, using an ancestral technique, traditional tools and the spirit of the winery implicit in each of the steps in the creation of carved wine is the genesis of this project by Honrado Vineyards. Cella Vinaria Antiqua (Historic Wine Cellar), which opened on 15 September 2018, is housed in a century-old building that has always served the function of a winery.
The building where it was subject to refurbishment and restored, as far as possible, to its original form. In fact, the winery that today is presented as a visitable space, resulted from the will of Honrado to return to the community a winery faithful to the traditions of Vila de Frades – wineries for the production of carved wines, with the use of balsa (masses/wrack), practices inseparable from its cultural identity.
The project began with a small intervention in the building in order to transform what was left of an old cafe that operated on the site until 2005, into a winery, however, the first cleaning works, the removal of modern and deteriorated materials, allowed to verify that the original features of the building, as well as the materials of the primitive construction, kept the originality and could be recovered. From this point onwards the project took a different direction and the objective was to “bring back” a beautiful example of an old winery and its history.
Consulting some available documentation, it was found that in the decade of the 30’s of the XIX century, there were in Carrasco Street, the same street where today we have developed the new project, four wineries and two mills for treading grapes. One of the wineries and one of the mills owned by the Mira Franco family correspond to the place where Honrado Vineyards, recovered and gave place to Cella Vinaria Antiqua. In 20th century documentation, more precisely in a register dated 4th September 1940, we find it described and referred to as “”Adega dos Vicentes””. At this time the winery passed into the possession of the Guerra family who kept it until the early 1980s. During this period the winery also became a tavern. The production of wine by the glass would fall into disuse and the alternative to subsist was to create at the winery a place to sell wine by the glass, the tavern would complement the winery, the production and consumption in the same place guaranteed the continuity of the economy and the rituals of conviviality associated with the wine.
