The ripanço method in wine making

Just like many Portuguese I am a wine lover and am lucky to be in a place where they have so many different varieties of wines... The famous port, the sweet Muscatel dessert wine, the fresh vinho verde, the bubbly espumantes of Bairrada and we could go on and on. Today I would like to present to you more of a wine making method rather than a wine variety. It has been around since Roman times at least and it's called ripanço in Portuguese.

The method of ripanço generally involves getting both your hands and feet dirty by doing most of the job manually just like the Romans did. If any of you are familiar with tea rolling/sorting processes of China then you might find there are some similarities in both methods since the whole point is to avoid too much release of bitter tannins from the stems into the final liquid. The goal is to have the smoothest possible wine trying to avoid the parts that make it more bitter and rough. This was even more important before, since the Romans didn't have modern wine making methods or facilities the wine tended to become more rough and vinegar-like than what we are used to with today's wines. In the YouTube link you can watch how one of the biggest wine producers in Portugal do it for one of their popular wines.


The technique is traditionally from the south of Portugal, where you use a special made table for the purpose to disengage the grapes from the stems, which are the main culprits in turning the wine sour and bitter. First you need to mush up the grapes by traditional old foot pressing, those enzymes are great for younger looking skin so do not shy away! The next stage is to use the mushy grapes and stem on the table, you press and squeeze away the grapes from the stems who are left in your hands and tadaa! A grape juice liquid is extracted from these pressed grapes and can be bottled to create a very smooth wine. Sometimes the extra love and care we put into things are really noticed in the end product. Cheers to those Romans, they really knew what they were doing.

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