1880 Facts about Port and Madeira by Henry Vizetelly

Hmo Port Wine is Made.

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THE TINTAGEES' KITCHEN AT THE QHINTA DO SEIKO,

When the midday meal is over, the grapes having been aheady spread perfectly level in the lagar, a band of sixty men is told off to tread them. The casa dos lagares is a long building with a low pointed roof, lighted with square openings along one side,and containsfour lagares, in the largest of which sufficient grapes can be trodden at one time to produce thirty pipes of wine. As is universally the case in the Upper Douro, these lagares are of stone, and about three feet in depth. In front of each,and on a lower level, is a small stone reservoir, called a dorno,into which the expressed juice flows after the treading ofthe grapes is concluded, and which communicates by pipes with the huge tonels in the adega below, although not beneath the lagares, being,in fact, in face of the reservoirs, but on a level some twelve feet lower, with a long wooden staircase leading to it. In front ofthe lagares runsa narrow stone ledge, to which ascent is gained by a few steps, and here while the treading is going on the overseers post themselves, long