It’s cold in the lagares he said despite the accordion and the
Posted in General on 21. Jul, 2010
It’s cold in the lagares, he said, despite the accordion and the dancing (thigh deep in fermenting grapes) and despite the regular swigs of brandy.With tractors replacing workers, the traditional way of life is doomed, and not a moment too soon, Cassiano implied. But the experts maintain that vintage port trodden by foot, not crushed by a machine, simply tastes and looks better.Dusty cellars housed the barrels – “pipes” and “tunnels” – some big enough to live in if you could survive the alcoholic fumes. By day grapes are picked, and by night they are trodden.Cassiano enviously described one of Cockburn’s mechanised quintas, where the caseiro simply presses a button and the grapes are churned steadily into a pulp. Here, beneath tiled scenes from the family firm’s history, grapes are still trodden by foot in granite lagares. Year after year whole villages descend on the quinta for the vintage, sleeping in dormitories and being fed on bacalhao, dried salt cod, and beans, which are cooked up on an open fire in the kitchen by Cassiano’s wife.
Cassiano, the caseiro or foreman (Fatima’s father), showed us round the barn-like adega. Water splashing in an ornamental fish pond, cool eighteenth-century rooms, a deep old bath and dodgy electrics; not grand like the chateaux of Bordeaux, but elegant.Immediately around the house lay buildings dedicated to the production of fine wines. Upstream: stripey vertical vine planting, and flurries of silvery olive groves. It was a busy view, with almost every surface worked by man and mule – or, increasingly by man and tractor.From among the terraces rose clusters of whitewashed and red-tiled buildings. I thought of Sri Lankan tea plantations, but the buildings here are less shiny and industrial-looking. NOVAL – one of the most famous quintas – was inscribed in large white letters on one wall, and TAYLORS on another.Up a drive overhung with peeling eucalyptus to our destination, the Quinta da Eira Velha, one of the oldest and most beautiful.
Downstream: steep terraces shored up with dry stone walls over 10ft high, and patamares, the new vine terracing suitable for tractors, which resembled in changing lights first ziggurat towers, then South East Asian rice paddies, then a stack of coins. But it is impossible to visit the Douro without becoming fascinated by the industry that so dominates both landscape and way of life.As we drove from Vila Real down towards the Douro, the hills thickened and the road narrowed to become increasingly twisty and perilous. My own family, who shipped port for centuries, never considered their quinta to be a place for family holidays; my cousin, one of the present owners, didn’t even know of its existence until he was 15. Even now, the larger owners do not actually live on their quintas – many of which lie far away from towns and schools – but visit only about once or twice a year, mostly for the vintage in September and October.Now they have realised that one way of keeping the buildings from tumbling into disrepair is to rent them to foreigners And to stay in them it is no longer necessary to like port Personally, I loathe the stuff. Hot baths were scarce, the bushes often served as the lavatory, and port – traditionally a man’s drink – was tasted and discussed ad nauseam. Cockburns, Symingtons, Taylors: these good old British names still dominate the trade.Port was – and is – shipped from Oporto, but the grapes are grown upstream on quintas, many of which also belong to the British. Not so much Chiantishire, as Quintashire.Until as recently as the 1970s, the Douro was considered no place for a woman Quintas were not comfortable retreats.
For this is the centre of port-making, and the British have monopolised the export of port almost since it was first made. It shares the drama of Tuscany’s terraced hills, but has the river as its focus, silver and lake-like, and unlike Tuscany it is virtually untouched by tourism. Nevertheless a new motorway took us all the way from Oporto airport into the heart of this remote region in only two hours.Like Tuscany, the Douro Valley has strong links with the British, but these have developed not through people buying up cheap farmhouses in the last 20 years, but through historic trading links going back to the eighteenth century. We had envisaged somewhere unspoilt yet easily accessible, somewhere with olives and vine-hung trellises with warm swimming pools and cold churches.
Jaded by the prospect of Tuscany with its well-known pleasures, northern Portugal seemed ideal. And at their foot, way below, the river.”Boa,” Fatima observes, though she has lived here all her life and must be used to it by now.”Sim,” I agree. “Muita boa.” Very beautiful.The river is the Douro – 92km long – which rises in the Pyrenees and crosses almost the whole of the Iberian peninsular before disgorging into the Atlantic at Oporto. We are staying on a quinta, or farm, above the Portuguese part of it, overlooking the small town of Pinhao.With one toddler and a baby on the way, we had needed a holiday. Then the train hoots, summoning us to make the journey upstream to Tua and Mirandela – but later, later, there’s plenty of time… “Limonada, senhora?”
“Oh, Fatima.” I force my eyes slowly open. “Obrigada.” Thank you.By some sixth sense our maid-cum-cook, who comes with the house, seems to know what we need before we know it ourselves.