Viseu

Having seen quite enough cathedrals in the last few places we’ve visited, our next destination is the famous countryside of the Douro Valley for a change of scenery. The Douro region is a UNESCO World Heritage site, for it being the oldest demarcated (i.e. defined by strict boundaries) wine region in the whole world. And, of course, because it’s insanely beautiful! At the time of our visit there aren’t any grapes growing yet as the vines are just coming to life in early spring. Only small buds of green can be seen bursting from the branches. Thanks to the olive trees and blossoming cherry and almond trees there is plenty of other green in the environment and it is a beautiful sight regardless.

We follow a few specific roads along the Douro river that lends its name to the region, and make a first night stop at the town of Lamego. As it turns out, we can’t escape cathedrals here either: the town is home to another magnificent church with another impressive 686 steps well decorated leading to it. While being there to see it anyway, we do admit it is quite spectacular. Not one cathedral is the same! At first we count ourselves lucky as the campground we are staying at is at level with the church, so we are saved from the climb to reach it. However, then we are brave (or stupid?) enough to also want to see a bit of the town below - a cute place, but maybe not entirely worth the climb that follows back to our green pod.. ah well. It counts for daily steps!

The next day we move on in our van, following the river once more. Where river and road part we pause for an one hour boat tour and take all of the scenery in. The boat comes with an audio tour (one of those recorded ones) but unfortunately we can’t make much of what’s being said; we are accompanied by a bunch of loud Americans on the boat who are clearly not on the ride for the informative side of it. Any annoyance we have towards these people being loud turns into wonder after about 20 minutes when one American lady yells from one side of the boat to the other: “Ben? Is that you, Ben?! Oh my god it is!”. Next thing we know we witness a reunion of two ex-colleagues, both from America and on a holiday in Portugal, who apparently haven’t seen each other for ten years. It’s a small world…!

This time, our stop for the night is at another beautiful and special place: we are staying at an actual vineyard and we are staying there FOR FREE! The Dutch in us do get excited over this, furthermore when we discover a tour being included for the next morning without cost too. I can’t help but ask the owner why he’s letting people stay there for free (while providing a nice spot + facilities). He laughs and tells us that the main business they run is the vineyard / wine production and they enjoy having people around. Sometimes guests are helping out on the land and hopefully they are enjoying their wine and spreading the word. The extra pair of hands is no luxury we learn the next day, as the town has shrunk from about 20.000 people to 5.000 people in less than forty years. The depopulation of the area is a real problem here, like in many other countryside areas around the world. I hope there will be enough wine loving people around locally to continue producing these wines, and that it will not be taken over by big investors who aren’t in it for the love of wine. The vineyard we stay at is a family business and currently handled by the second generation. When we ask the owner how they see their vineyard business continue after the current generation of people, he laughs once again at our apparently business minded questions. His son and nephews, now all still very young, have three choices in about 20 years, he says cheerfully: (1) they can continue the business as per the family tradition; (2) they can decide to sell it and have good money for it; or (3) they can throw a big party finish the thousands of bottles with great aged wine at once. “That is why,” he continues, “you should keep an eye out on our social media channels. You don’t want to miss this great party in 20 years time!”.

The highlight of our stay in the Douro is the tour we get at this particular vineyard. The quality and wealth of information we get here is in no comparison to what we learned from the tour *cough* sales pitch *cough* at the wine cellars of Porto and it’s brought to us with so much passion and expertise. Just alone hearing the guy talk like that is a joy! To illustrate what kind of learnings we had during this tour:
- The Douro region grows its grapes on terraces of a specific type of metamorphic rock, that protects the grapes from too much heat during the day by absorbing the warmth of the sun and keeping it consistently warm at night by radiating it back up. Now we know why all the vines in Douro grow so low to the ground! We were wondering about this in the past few days. Hills with other stone like granite can not be used for wine to quantify as Douro wines.
- Seeing olive trees scattered in some of the vineyards signifies that they are old (100+ years) vineyards: when people did not have weather forecasts available to them the olive trees were of great help to protect the grapes from unexpected heavy wind and/or rain. Newer vineyards don’t need these anymore.
- The rose bushes seen at most vineyards have a similar function: when the area is plagued by fungi, rose bushes are the first to get sick hence the farmers would know they should immediately take action to protect the vines.
- The taste of the same type of grapes can differ a lot depending on many factors, such as at what direction the slope is facing the sun.
- Only red wines (vs whites and roses) ages in oak barrels for the best possible flavours, others get bottled immediately after fermentation or else they would be too strong.

All of that being most interesting, it should not be needed to be said that the most fun part of the tour is the tasting. More fun for me than for Tim as he still needs to drive and therefore needs to spit most of the wine out (like a pro), while I just drink anything I want (like a… well whatever!). We get to taste a delicious extra vierge olive oil, local cheese, a white wine, a rose, three red wines and… we may or may not have tasted of a port that may or may not have been there in an unlabelled and secret bottle. The short story: wine becomes port when before the aging process kicks in the fermentation of the wine is stopped at a certain sugar vs alcohol level, this is done by adding in strong spirits (brandy), in 2000 the Portuguese government made local production of brandy illegal as they wanted farmers to sell the grapes for central brandy production and then buy the product back at much higher cost for more tax income, however since port takes its sweet time to age in barrels there are - in theory, that is - still bottles that were produced and put in barrels before the year 2000 and are just coming of age nicely around the current time of living. If they were there, and I emphasise IF, they might have just been the best ports one could taste!

If we ever pour you a sweet strong wine from a mysterious bottle while reminiscing about the Douro, please remember not to ask any questions :-)Read more