Times Online, January 7, 2006
A patch of wine dirt worth visiting
By Jane MacQuitty
The douro in Portugal has to be the most romantic and magical of all the vineyards I have visited
Wine country can be so inaccessible, so inhospitable, so un-peopled and so jaw-breakingly dull to look at, it’s a wonder winemakers stomach the life at all. Bordeaux, with its endless flat, dusty grey-white vineyards that stretch for miles on either side of the grey-green Gironde river illustrates the point. Anyone trying to find a glass of bordeaux and company, even at 8 o’clock on a Saturday evening, in one of claret country’s main centres such as Pauillac, will find shutters down and, spookily, no one about. Burgundy, apart from the autumnal gold of the famous Côte d’Or, is much the same: fine if you have an introduction and a job to do, otherwise forget it.
So what patch of wine dirt is worth visiting and capable of generating passion for the place, the people and the wine? South Africa is an honourable runner-up, as anyone who has visited the Cape’s vineyards and been awed by some of the most beautiful wine scenery in the world will testify. New Zealand occupies second place in my heart as the scattered vineyards there are intermingled with dramatic landscapes reminiscent of Scandinavia and the Celtic fringe.
But top spot has to be the high, wild, mountainous valleys of the Douro, home to port and, increasingly, to some majestic red Portuguese table wines, yet so far away from the rest of the wine world that traditions here appear almost medieval. Fifty twisted miles upriver from the higgledy-piggledy port lodges of Vila Nova de Gaia, opposite Oporto, the Douro has to be the most romantic and magical of all the vineyards I have visited.
Not all of you will succumb to its embrace. The place is eerily quiet for most of the year, blistering hot in summer and icy cold in winter and, cut off for centuries from everyone else by the mountainous terrain, the Douro people are stubborn and deeply traditional. Yet visitors who make an effort will find charm and humour. The first big viewpoint bend of the Douro – where a volcano-shaped mountain juts straight out of the river, towering over ancient terraced vineyards and tiny whitewashed quintas, or farms, that dot the hillsides – still moves me.
Satisfyingly, the wines made here are as savagely beautiful as the scenery, with vintage port, reeking of violets and cabbage roses, needing many years in the cellar before the rough spirit it is fortified with mellows into a plummy whole. The Douro is also the last place in the world where grapes at several quintas are still trod by foot at vintage time, when teams of men, urged on by pipe, drum and accordion, methodically tramp up and down for hours in huge open granite troughs, or lagars. The red wines made from the same hefty red port grapes, care of more modern methods, now taste much less coarse and earthy than they once did and are, alas, starting to fetch high prices and wide acclaim. Ancient and modern side by side.
jane.macquitty@thetimes.co.uk
URL: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0, ... 42,00.html