Farm to Table (6 nights)

Arrival at our country house. Welcome drink.

The Monte do Serrado de Baixo is a typical Alentejo house.

It has four rooms, with toilet and central heating, decorated to a theme: the cereal, the cork tree, the olive tree and the wine.

Our dining room, where we serve delicious breakfasts and other meals, open to a perfumed orange orchard. In the living room, you find small library, some games and music. Although there is AC all over the house, nothing replaces the freshness of this room during the summer and the ambience of the fireplace which, in the long winter nights, invites for a glass of a good wine and chatting.

The garden, with grass and the swimming pool, is a leafy and sunny, but with good areas of holm oaks and big olive trees shades.

In the farm lives freely our dogs, a donkey who loves people and a small sheep herd grazing in the meadow with the small lambs, chickens, geese and turkeys. We always have fresh eggs and tasteful products from our organic green garden.

We start the day with a small walk through our farm, with a mandatory stop at our green garden and orchard to pick the seasonal products that we will cook tonight. Then we will visit a color and perfumed aromatic herbs farm, tasting its infusions among other products. After a stop for lunch, we will visit a prickly pear cactus plantation and taste some of their different products. Some more kilometers of landscape after we arrive to a cork transformation center, where we learn the process from taking the cork to the production of the handmade pretty and useful items.

Before arriving home, we still have some time to watch the miracle of old olive trees and taste their organic olive oil, an excellent appetizer for our dinner.

SEASON HIGHLIGHTS

Spring – from the fava garden… and where are the eggs for the asparagus?

Summer – night picking prickly pear and taking the cork

Autumn – picking and preparing the olives: do you want to learn and take home a small jar?

Winter – the art of pruning the centennial olive trees

In the morning, we visit Arraiolos, stopping in the castle and at the Carpets Museum. Although our delicious breakfast, it tastes good a good cup of coffee and a local cake. After, we continue our trip to Montemor-o-Novo to, in a honey storage, peek the honeycombs, learn with the experts about the organized and productive bees’ life and taste the honey. After lunch, we taste crafted chocolates and, to burn some calories, we walk through the historical center of Montemor. To end the day, we visit an estate where a delicious tasting of its cheeses, smocked sausages, jams and liquors is waiting for us.

SEASON’S HIGHLIGHTS

Spring – the traditional carpets are made point by point

Summer – honey harvest

Autumn – our marmalade recipe

Winter – pick quince fruit!

This is a day to explore Évora. With the help of our Flavors Guide, you can do it on your rhythm to know why the historical center was classified as a World Site Heritage. But also, to find the other side of the heritage: the small traditional shops, the groceries with organic products, pastries and the conventual sweets, the stores with the regional flavors with their collections of wine, olive oil, jam, honey, chocolates… What a temptation. Buy and taste all what you want but do not forget the booked lunch with tasting menu.

Walk through the market with our shopping list before come home.

To end the day, we will cook our dinner and experience a homemade meal made with seasonal products and all the seasons of Alentejo gastronomy.

SEASON’S HIGHLIGHTS

All seasons

From the farm and from the market to our kitchen, season and fresh flavors at your table!

Because this reality exists in Alentejo too, we start the day visiting a modern olive orchard with hundreds of hectare in an intensive and super intensive growth system. We will learn environmental issues of this exploration understand the new trend and taste olive oil.

Keeping our journey, we arrive to one of the most famous wine estates in Alentejo. Here, we have a wonderful couple of hours and a lunch that is a truly gastronomical adventure! In the afternoon, we climb Monsaraz, where we have time to enjoy this medieval beauty, as the majestic landscape to Alqueva, the biggest artificial lake of Europe.

On our way back home, we stop in another regional but modern place: a distillery where gin is produced, the trendy spirit in Alentejo. Visit the interpretative center doing a sensory experience connected to gin and its tasting.

SEASON’S HIGHLIGHTS

Spring – season the olive and take a jar with you

Summer – be a potter for a day

Autumn – let’s use a stick to pick the olives? And shred them?

Winter – Competition “who find and pick more wild asparagus”

Today we go north. Stop at the fortified town of Evoramonte, one of the most fantastic belvederes of Alentejo, and follow to Estremoz area to have a day completely devoted to seasonal activities of wine.

According to the season, we can include a walk through the vineyards, a pruning lesson, joining the harvest and the trodding, tasting the new wine or made a 4 grape varieties wine, since the flavors mix to the label draw. But this winery as not only excellent nectars, but also delicious meals, whatever season is we going to enter the kitchen and, with the chef help, we have a cooking class.

Maximum responsibility: the final product quality, which is our lunch, it is only in your hands! And there is no plan B…

In the end of the day we will explore the beautiful Estremoz, Queen Saint Elizabeth city, where are made the clay dolls classified as Immaterial Heritage by UNESCO.

SEASON’S HIGHLIGHTS

Spring – winemaker for a day

Summer – do you want to harvest or treading the grapes?

Autumn – Taste the young wine

Winter – The art of pruning the vine

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