Home / The thirty days / Galicia and Asturias / The albarino harvest at Cambados
Granite posts, wire overhead, and fruit cut standing up
Vines run overhead on granite posts, and you reserve a harvest day in the vineyards at Cambados to pick under them
From $180 per person, 08:00 to 16:00, and this one needs eight people before it runs, which makes it the hardest date on the site to fill: give us a fortnight's range rather than a single day. It sits in Galicia and Asturias, on the ria coast where the vines are trained on granite above head height and nobody bends to pick.
| Starts from | Cambados, Spain |
|---|---|
| Hours | 08:00 to 16:00 |
| Runs when | needs eight |
| One person pays | from $180 |
| Part of | Galicia and Asturias |
Eight in the morning, boxes and shears
Eight o'clock start, because the fruit is cut cool and because the family wants the load in before the afternoon warms it. You are given shears, a crate and a row, and shown the two things that matter: how to cut so the bunch comes away whole, and what goes on the ground rather than into the crate. Then it is rows, for most of the morning, with full crates carried out to the track and swapped for empties. Around one there is food, sitting down, in the middle of the vines. The last stretch of the afternoon happens at the press house, watching the day's picking weighed and tipped, which is the only part where you stand still.
Arms up, all day, in the wet
The whole point of training vines this high is that you pick with your arms above your head, which sounds easier than bending and is not. Shoulders and necks are what ache the next morning. Eight hours, mostly upright, on ground that is often muddy, in a region where September rain arrives sideways with no warning at all. Bring a light waterproof, a hat, and gloves if your hands mark easily; the shears are sharp and the family will show you how to hold them, but nobody is watching your fingers all day. Anyone who wants to sit out a row sits out a row. Nobody counts your crates against anyone else's.
Money, food and the drive out
From $180 per person. The figure holds the eight hours, the shears and crates, the drive out from the town and back, and the meal eaten in the vines, which is a proper cooked lunch rather than a sandwich. It does not hold your beds, your travel into Galicia, or anything you buy at the press house. No alcohol is included and this office sells none, so what happens at the end of the table is between you and the family. Nothing is paid here and no card details are taken here: the estate bills you itself, under its own name, and the share this office earns reaches it from the estate weeks after you have gone home.
Awkward things people ask about this day
- Why does this one need eight people?
- Because a picking day with three visitors is not a picking day, it is a walk through a vineyard. The family gives up a working morning to have you in the rows, and eight pairs of hands make that worth doing for them. If eight do not gather we tell you at least ten days before, nothing is owed, and we will offer you a different day in the same region on the same dates.
- Can we lock a fixed date in August?
- No, and not because of the number. Picking starts when the fruit is ready, which in most years falls somewhere in the second half of September, and the family will not name a day in July for a job the weather decides. We hold a window and confirm the date about five days out. If you need something locked months ahead, this is the wrong day and we will say so at the time.
- Is there a tasting at the end?
- The day ends at the press house with the load weighed and tipped, and whatever the family opens at their own table is their affair. We do not build the day around drinking, we do not describe how anything tastes, and this office sells no alcohol at any point. If a sit down comparison of wines is what you are after, this is a working harvest and it will disappoint you.
The other five days near this one
Two days that look close on a map are not always joinable in one week, and the office will say so plainly instead of selling you the pair anyway.
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from $154 per person needs four -
from $214 per person private only -
from $122 per person runs whatever the numbers -
from $192 per person needs eight -
from $134 per person runs whatever the numbers
Hold this day and add others to it
Booking a day here means the office holds your place with whoever runs that day on the ground, and their invoice reaches you directly once the dates stop moving.