I’m Stephan. The Quinta is home: land, dogs, cat, vegetables, wine, cooking, friends, visitors, mud, heat, plans, mistakes, … a lot of things I never imagined. And all of which I really love now.
Before the Quinta
Before moving here, I spent most of my adult life in London, with work taking me through Brussels, Barcelona, Bogotá, Hong Kong, the Australian outback, and Lisbon. I was a total urban guy (in fact, I always imagined that this project would be called “urban gay”).
I also spent many years researching marketing, society, ethics, communication, and the way the markt shapes what people see and believe. Some of that work looked specifically at marketing to queer communities, pinkwashing, the “pink pound” narrative, and what happens when queer life is turned into a marketplace.
That is the reason why the Quinta is deliberately non-commercial. I want this to be a queer space that can not be bought, and that is accessible. Connection can not become just another product and community can never grow in a place where you bought your seat at the table.
That is why you cannot buy a stay at the Quinta. You cannot book a place at a gathering. Coming here means coming here as a person: as a friend, a volunteer, a guest, a co-creator, or someone I feel good about welcoming into my home. People come because there is a connection, a shared curiosity, a willingness to help, and something we want to create together.
Why here
For a long time, I wanted to create a queer space away from commercial mainstream in an urban environment. But urban spaces make connection difficult. Life is fast, and people are plentiful. This changes when you are in a remote place: community starts to matter a lot more. There aren’t a hundred potential hook ups within 100m reach. This opens up a space for curiosity and taking the time to get to know people the way they are. The Quinta is my attempt to build a life based on these ideas: centred around friendship, queer community, food, natural wine, and connection to place and people.
Permaculture also matters here because of this: Social permaculture is a thing. It goes beyond asking where the water goes, which plants help each other, or what belongs close to the house. It can use permaculture principles to build social connections.
Staying here
I love welcoming people when I can be properly present. That usually means Mondays and Tuesdays, when I am not at the bar. Then there is time to cook, walk the land, talk properly, and share the place (and some work on it, if you want to chip in). Even if it is a short stay, it is a shared moment in a private home.
Wine, work, and the wider project
Alongside the Quinta, I run a wine project: a natural wine bar (with vegan food) , the vineyard, and a wine school.
Natural wine makes sense to me because it resists the polished, corrected version of wine that pleases supermarket customers. After years of writing about marketing ethics, I thought the food industry was the obvious problem… Then I discovered high-volume wine: sanitised stories, heavy correction, hundreds of additives, technical tricks, and very little transparency.
While I am now often busy with this project, the Quinta is where much of that started – and still is lived every day.
And it is the place I love to welcome people into and share with others. So, I hope to meet you sometime soon!
