Herdade · Serpa · Alentejo
The Land
Three scales to place the estate: the town, the hills and the valley.
Serpa
Serpa is a municipal seat in the district of Beja, on the left bank of the Guadiana. It is the land of cante alentejano, inscribed by UNESCO in 2014 on the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity list, and of Queijo Serpa PDO cheese. The municipality is part of the Dark Sky Alqueva destination, and part of its territory lies within the Guadiana Valley Natural Park.
The hills of Serpa and Santa Iria
South of the town, the land rolls into schist hills covered with holm oak and cork oak woodland, a system built by generations of farmers who kept the trees standing among the grazing land. The estate sits in this landscape, by the Santa Iria road.
The Mata Frades valley and the Limas stream
The Mata Frades valley runs down to the Limas stream, a tributary of the Guadiana that forms the northern boundary of the estate and lies within the Guadiana Special Area of Conservation, part of the Natura 2000 network. Through the middle of the land runs the stream channel, the corga, that gives Corga da Fonte its name.
Together with Bezerra Doida, also in Serpa and only a few kilometres away, and Entre as Águas, in Moura, the estate is part of the Monte Ardila ecosystem: a circuit between the Ardila and the Guadiana in which each estate has its own identity.