Gandona Estate is single-minded in its approach to ensuring quality. We have custom-built a winery to control every stage of the grape growing and winemaking process. The winery was completed in 2010 and was designed to embrace the best of both old and new-world winemaking techniques.

Adopting old-world practices used by legendary Chateaus of France, concrete fermentation tanks were incorporated into the winery’s design. Wines are barrel-aged in a cave carved out of Pritchard Hill’s rocky interior, providing consistently cool temperatures and an ideal degree of humidity. Reclaimed wood and repurposed materials were used in several areas. The boulders and rocks excavated from the cave were used to create the winery’s exterior walls; the property’s old redwood water storage tank was dismantled and transformed into beautiful doors for the winery and cave; and the winery’s interior oak doors were made from trees harvested from the Pires’s former home in Connecticut.

Grapes arrive at the winery immediately after picking to be vinified in small lots. The winemaking team first-hand sorts individual clusters, selecting the finest for crushing and de-stemming. Then, the individual berries are hand-sorted, removing those with imperfections. The remaining grapes are then transferred to concrete tanks for fermentation by a bin/gravity flow process. Once fermentation is complete, the wine is pressed and placed in French oak barrels for aging in Gandona’s Estate cave.

Part of the charm of Portugal is its’ decorative street pavement (Portuguese Calcada), and we’ve included a stone paver design in the hospitality area. It features a black and white limestone floor inspired by Eusebius Furtado’s work in 1849 in Lisbon’s Rossio Square. A team of craftsmen (calceteiros) from Portugal laid the floor, hand-selecting and fitting each stone to create the famous wave pattern.

“Inspired by my grandfather’s legacy, I became single-minded in my need to work the land and more aware that farming was in my blood. I decided the life of a vintner was the right path.” 
– Manuel Pires

Images provided by Gandona Estate. All rights reserved.