For The Love Of Port

End of May through beginning of June was relentlessly lovely, I hated to brag, but day after day the temperatures were comfortable low mid 20's with lots of warm sunshine, pleasant breezes. There was an odd shower or two but nothing of significance.

We got our usual mid-summer heat spike a bit early - from 12 to 16 June it was over 30ºC here in Gaia, blazingly sunny and really uncomfortable. It dropped a bit beginning the Monday afternoon 16th, and by the end of last week I had the lightweight duvet back on the bed at nights. We had some showers one or two afternoons and even yesterday a rumble of thunder yesterday afternoon, but it was clear and dry for the fireworks all night long last night.

The barco rabelo race is due to start at 13:00 today. It has been overcast all morning and it has been showering gently for the past 20 minutes or so, and there is not much wind - light and variable and maddening no doubt to those on the boats.

Just spoke with a viticulturist friend, who confirmed they too had the heat spike in the Douro weekend before last, temperatures close to 40ºC in some areas, but luckily little to no problem with queima - sunburn - on the grapes.

He also said they had a strong thunderstorm sweep through last night, fairly localised, one quinta in Douro Superior had 20 mm of rain, but another a few km downriver had only 7mm.