What is new at the quinta.

Grapes come off the hill in three passes this year rather than two, because the touriga in the upper block is running a week behind the rest. Anyone staying between the 12th and the 20th is welcome to walk the rows in the morning, before it gets hot. The winery itself is not ours anymore, but the vines around the house still are, and this is the one week a year the house genuinely smells like 1998.

The Adega’s bathroom was the last one in the house still on the original 1970s plumbing, and it has now been redone with underfloor heating and a proper shower rather than the tub nobody used. Nothing else about the room changed: same walls, same entrance, same rate.

Provesende holds its festa on the last weekend of August: a procession on the Saturday evening, a band and a bar in the square until late, and a lunch on the Sunday that anyone from the village can turn up to. Guests staying that weekend get a place at our own table on the Friday instead, since the house is otherwise empty while we go and help set up.

From the first of November to the end of March, breakfast is served at the kitchen table rather than on the balcony: the same bread, the same jam Manuela makes from whatever the trees gave up that autumn, and a wood stove instead of a view. The balcony returns in April.

Casa da Serra is closed to new guests from the 16th to the 19th of October, for a wedding that has taken the whole house. If you already hold a booking inside those dates we have written to you directly; if you are looking at those dates now, the calendar on the booking page will already show them as taken.