While Portugal is known for its port wine, of course, it also produces many other types of wine. The Douro River Valley is the heart of their wine production and was (particularly with an oenophile like Kimberley along on the trip) an obvious must-see. While I created the overall agenda and booked hotels for the trip, she mentioned an interesting place in the valley that had some interesting accommodations. I checked it out and we were able to book one of them for two nights, so off we set.
We took the train from Porto to Regua. Since it was only a two hour ride and it was an intercity train, we didn't bother to pay extra for first class. Second class was generally fine, but was packed with other tourists also going to the wine valley, including one group of guys who were (at 9 AM already clearly imbibing something that wasn't coffee and with a steady stream of food being pulled out of a picnic basket blocking much of the aisle).
We were lucky to (eventually) get seats together, not to mention on the side that overlooked, toward the end, the gorgeous river and valley. At one point the train kind of turned a bit and boom -- there was this absolutely stunning view. I was trying to take photos, but you know how it is with a fast-moving train, poles and power lines getting in the way and viewed through a dirty window.
We were lucky to (eventually) get seats together, not to mention on the side that overlooked, toward the end, the gorgeous river and valley. At one point the train kind of turned a bit and boom -- there was this absolutely stunning view. I was trying to take photos, but you know how it is with a fast-moving train, poles and power lines getting in the way and viewed through a dirty window.
We grabbed a quick taxi on arrival to our destination -- Quinta da Pacheca. It is a functioning vineyard and produces -- as we learned on the wine tour later -- about 700,000 bottles per year of white, red, and port wines. But what had lured us in were their wine barrels. Not those filled with wine, but cabins that you sleep in that are shaped to look like a gigantic wine barrel. Super cool. While compact inside, it feels spacious with the round shape (and a round sunlight overhead) and with a large round door at the back that opens onto your own deck where you can relax and look over the vineyards. Really unique and peaceful. We spent much of the afternoon there yesterday just reading and watching the swallows and other birds maneuver around the vineyards.
The wine tour and tasting was interesting. Nutshell, the winery has been in existence over 100 years. While the region has well over 100 varieties of grapes, Pacheca uses a relatively small subset of something like 20 in their various products. They still stomp grapes with their feet as they believe it better releases tannins and colors without the risk of the incorporating sourness of seeds that might occur with a machine pressing the grapes. Each of the concrete areas pictured here holds over 200 kg of grapes and the stompers, working arm in arm, take over 30 minutes to stomp from one side to the next.
We also got to see their old cave, though most of their production is off-site. One interesting thing I learned is that while wine can be placed into new barrels, port must be placed only in used barrels/containers. The large containers shown here can be used for over 100 years. Also, the difference between a tawny port and a ruby port is whether or not they are oxidized. A tawny port receives oxygen throughout the process, so it doesn't oxidize as quickly upon opening and can last a year. A ruby port, on the other hand, is more like "regular" wine in that it is not exposed to as much oxygen and thus, like a bottle of red wine, must be consumed within three days or it will become oxidized. (At least I think that's what I heard.)
Another interesting point I learned about making wine in Portugal relates to usage of water. The soil here is in the river valley is not good and one quickly hits rocks, so the grape vines are no more than 15-18 inches deep. They are allowed to water vines in their first five years, but not after that. So how, when summer months are often well into the 90s, do the vines not die? As you might imagine, it's a microclimate. So while it is toasty during the day, it drops down quite a bit at night. This rapid change creates some humidity that then provides moisture for the vines. Because of the climate, their cave also gets a bit too warm. They control this by watering the pebble flooring of the cave which helps cool things.
During the wine tasting, we had another random chat with interesting people -- a mother and daughter. The mother is originally from India, but settled long ago in the US -- first Rochester, NY and then Minneapolis, MN. I can only imagine the shock of winter coming from India. Their family has done a lot of travel throughout the years and the daughter who was with her on this trip studied in Brazil and Peru and picked up Portuguese. While she studied neuroscience in university, she felt a little burned out and not sure she wanted to proceed directly to medical school. So she took a few years off to volunteer for the Peace Corps in Mozambique, which is a former Portuguese colony (if that's the right word) so her Portuguese from her time in Brazil was directly applicable. She is training local teachers on how to teach science, and has spent a lot of time traveling in the area. She said that Mozambique is very safe and her primary mode of transportation is hitchhiking -- yes, as someone who doesn't look like she's from Mozambique and as a single female. Amazing. Just had a lovely time chatting with both of them and now Mozambique may be on my list for future travel.
We had an amazing dinner at the restaurant here with some of their own wine, and headed off to bed, looking at the stars through the porthole (no pun intended) in our wine barrel roof. Just magical.
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