The story of the Stressed out Grape
A story about Wine
As designers of exclusive experiences, tours and tailor-made trips, we give to stories a central role. Knowing everything that is behind a product, a designer dress, a perfume or an interesting person. Unforgettable and emotional experiences are largely built by a story and the overwhelming personality of the person who tells it.
Today, we want to tell you the story of “The Stressed Out Grape”.
Let’s value having a good wine by sharing it with our loved ones, let’s live in the present by savoring every sip, noticing its color, its aroma and its hidden landscapes. Enjoy the good conversation and good times with our people around the table or outside.
Our main grape grows in a clayey and rocky soil. In an almost sterile terrain where it has to make a titanic effort to grow and survive. There is almost no water and the soil in which it is planted cracks more and more with the heat of the sun and although it clings to life, it lives with the constant feeling that it will perish at any moment; it lives in constant stress; hence its name: the stressed out grape.
Out of a conservation instinct, it concentrates all its flavour and characteristics in the seed in the hope that a bird with its beak will take it out of that rocky landscape. Sometimes it daydreams that it flies to other lands, dreams that it falls on fertile and safe ground, with water and sunshine… That it can finally be calm and stop being thirsty, stop feeling stress. Our grape is a dreaming grape and it is called “Amelie”.
Day after day, Amelie strives to stay alive and smiling; and to engrave in her seed all its essence and history. How else would she tell her children and grandchildren, the pleasure of the sun’s caresses every morning, the feeling of the gentle breeze, the aroma of the multitude of plants and flowers growing around her, the heat of summer when July and August arrive, and also the attack of some insects or the phylloxera?
In the same scenario, hundreds of people work around the vineyard throughout the year. Some of them prune (to limit the number of clusters on each plant and to ensure that the remaining clusters concentrate all their nutrients and maximum flavour), other people measure the humidity of the soil and air, and others fumigate.
Near the end of the summer, everyone works during the harvest and collects the grapes in baskets. The winemaker and the whole family who own the vineyard, follow the tradition of their ancestors for centuries.
This happens at the end of August, when the oenologist monitors the concentration of sugars in the “stressed grape”. When the grapes reach the indicated sugar level, the oenologist instructs them to start harvesting carefully so as not to bruise them; they then destemm them and begin the winemaking process.
These are intense days of work. They work reclining or kneeling in the vineyard day and night. Amelie has finally met her destiny: to become a wine and cheer up palates, tables and talks, provoke laughter and also be the culprit of many romantic nights and unforgettable moments. She doesn’t know it yet, but her sacrifice will be worth it. She will make many people happy. What is more important than this?
It is interesting to stop and think what is behind a wine and all that has had to happen for us to enjoy it.
To the stressed out grape and its sacrifice: Thank you.
To mother earth: Thank you.
To the hundreds of people who have devoted their lives to the vineyard and wine production: Thank you.
Through our VIP wine tours in the Ribera del Duero and our wine tours in the Rioja, Ribera del Duero and other designations of origin in Spain you will discover unique wines, old and modern wineries with peculiar histories and different ways of producing wine.
Contact us HERE or at:
info@madrid-experience.com – 0034 9154 17099
