Quinta de Cidrô

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The road from Quinta das Carvalhas to Quinta de Cidrô winds through vine-covered hillsides. The harvest was at its peak, and the leaves were a bright yellow-green. A few white clouds dotted the sky. To us, they added to the beauty of the landscape; to farmers, they hinted at rain that could spoil the harvest.

We imagine painters once stood here in straw hats, working en plein air at their easels, but gave up, unable to fit the Douro onto small canvases.

As we climbed toward Cidrô, the Douro’s ancient terraces gradually gave way to long rows of vines planted ao alto, running straight up the slopes and disappearing into the distance.

Cidrô belonged to the Soveral family for generations. Its austere granite palace and its first vineyards date from the nineteenth century. Luís Maria Augusto Pinto de Soveral was born here in 1851. In 1900, King Carlos I made him the first and, as it turned out, only Marquis of Soveral.

He served as Minister of Foreign Affairs and, for many years, represented Portugal at the Court of St. James’s. The Marquis was close to King Carlos and Queen Amélia and a confidant of the future King Edward VII. His contemporaries were so impressed by his intelligence, elegance, and wit that they coined an adjective in his honor: soveralesco.

According to oral tradition, Queen Amélia sought seclusion at Cidrô after her husband and their son, Crown Prince Luís Filipe, were assassinated in Lisbon’s Terreiro do Paço in 1908. Two years later, the monarchy fell, and the queen went into exile. No documents confirm her stay at Cidrô, an absence in keeping with the Marquis’s reputation for discretion. The close bond between Queen Amélia and the Marquis is better documented: when he died in Paris in 1922, the queen was at his side.

Cidrô passed into the hands of the Viscount of Asseca and later, according to local tradition, to a most unlikely proprietor. Francisco Lopes, a farmhand at Cidrô, rebelled against an overbearing foreman and vowed to emigrate to Brazil, make his fortune, return to Portugal, buy Cidrô, and fire the foreman.

Nearly everything unfolded according to Lopes’ plan. He prospered in Brazil, returned to Portugal, and bought Cidrô. But his revenge eluded him: by then, the foreman had died. Lopes occupied only a small part of the palace, letting the rest of the house and the farm slowly slip into disrepair.

The Real Companhia Velha acquired Cidrô in 1973 and began restoring the palace, the grounds, and the vineyards. The estate has since become one of the Douro’s leading centers for viticultural experimentation, with almost 140 hectares of vines planted in a continuous sweep across its high, gently undulating slopes.

Pedro Silva Reis tells us that Cidrô is particularly well suited to white wines. Portuguese varieties such as Alvarinho, Arinto, Samarrinho, and Gouveio share the land with foreign guests, including Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, and Gewürztraminer. The Marquis would surely have approved of this international gathering.

The palace windows frame views of the garden, the Douro River and the rugged schist mountains. Inside, Portuguese tiles with floral motifs decorate the rooms with restrained elegance.

We tasted Douro almonds with a bright Gewürztraminer. Its rose and lychee aromas suggest sweetness, yet it is dry on the palate.

In the dining room, we were served Marquis Branco, a pure Sauvignon Blanc created in homage to the diplomat. Intense and precise, with a saline edge, it is an international variety speaking with an unmistakably Douro accent.

Finally, came a Pinot Noir so elegant and charming that it deserved to be called soveralesco. Like the Marquis himself, it is at home both in the Douro and in the world.

Click here for information on how to arrange a visit to Quinta de Cidrô.

Portugal’s most famous palace

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Casa de Mateus, near Vila Real, may be Portugal’s most famous palace. Millions of people around the world have seen its elegant façade on the label of Mateus Rosé.

Fernando van Zeller Guedes created the wine in 1942 and presented it in a distinctive flask-shaped bottle inspired by soldiers’ canteens.  As the horrors of the Second World War receded, Mateus Rosé offered the perfect way to celebrate. Jimi Hendrix and other stars were photographed drinking it. Frank Borman, commander of Apollo 8, remarked: “I only regret that, when I was flying around the Moon, I had no Mateus wine to delight me.”

Some of the grapes used to make the wine came from the estate surrounding the palace. Guedes believed that the Baroque façade would give his creation an unmistakably Portuguese identity, so he approached the Count of Mangualde, husband of the heiress to the House of Mateus, for permission to use the family name and an image of the house.

According to a frequently told story, the Count was initially offered half an escudo for every bottle sold. Doubting that a pink wine would sell well, he soon exchanged the royalty for a single payment—an unfortunate decision, given that Mateus Rosé would go on to sell hundreds of millions of bottles.

The palace itself was built during the first half of the eighteenth century by António José Botelho Mourão, the third Morgado de Mateus. Its Baroque design is attributed to Nicolau Nasoni, the Italian architect who also designed the Clérigos Tower and the Freixo Palace in Porto.

Granite palaces are often austere, but at Mateus, Nasoni created lightness out of stone. Staircases climb playfully toward the first floor, competing for our attention with statues, balustrades and ornamental pinnacles. The reflecting pool added much later heightens the visual enchantment, uniting the façade, sky and water in a single composition.

In many palaces, the chapel is concealed within the house. At Mateus, the temporal and the sacred stand apart. Heavy wooden doors guard the palace entrance. Stepping inside feels like entering a private world the family might return to at any moment. The cool austerity of granite gives way to the warmth of wood, while the grandeur of the exterior yields to intimate rooms framed by graceful vaulted ceilings.

There are family portraits, antique furniture and religious objects, as well as an impressive library. Among its treasures is the monumental edition of Os Lusíadas, by the poet Luís Vaz de Camões, published in Paris in 1817 by José Maria de Sousa Botelho Mourão, the fifth Morgado de Mateus.

Behind the palace lies a garden that welcomes visitors with its serene geometry and restful silence. One expects Baroque music to pour from the palace windows at any moment. And music remains part of life at Mateus. In 1970, D. Francisco de Sousa Botelho de Albuquerque, a descendant of the Morgados de Mateus, established the Casa de Mateus Foundation to preserve the house and open it to the wider world. The foundation now organizes concerts, exhibitions and other cultural events, ensuring that Mateus remains not merely a monument to the past, but a living cultural institution.

Spending a few hours at Mateus offers a glimpse into the aristocratic life of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Many of the comforts we now take for granted are absent, but in their place, we find a serenity that has become rare.

Casa de Mateus is 4 km from the centre of Vila Real on National Road 322. Click here to visit the House of Mateus Foundation website.

Meia Casca

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Visitors to Praia da Areia Branca often speed along the main avenue, eager to reach the sand and the sea. In their haste, they can easily miss Meia Casca, a small restaurant tucked into a two-story building.

The restaurant’s owner, Rui Fernandes, was born in Alpiarça, a Ribatejo town famous for its melons. He fell in love with Micaela, who comes from Seixal, a village near Areia Branca, and moved to the coast. There, he opened Meia Casca—half shell—a name that evokes the bivalves that star on the menu. Rui persuaded his longtime collaborator, chef Hugo Batista, to take charge of the kitchen and assembled a talented team of young cooks and servers.

Meia Casca showcases the region’s products. Peniche is renowned for its fish market, but many of the sardines and other fish sold there come from the waters off Areia Branca. The bivalves come from Foz do Arelho, another nearby coastal village.

Rui wants Meia Casca to serve the local community. Its food, rooted in the region’s cooking, evokes familiar flavors and cherished culinary memories. Hugo’s technical skill is never deployed for show. Instead, he uses it to refine tradition, adding subtle touches that bring freshness, precision, and delight.

Portuguese turnovers known as pastéis de massa tenra are a litmus test for any Portuguese kitchen. They are difficult to make and can’t wait: they are best served as soon as they are cooked. Meia Casca’s delightful rendition arrived piping hot, crisp on the outside and filled with tiny cockles called berbigão in place of the traditional meat filling.

The same cockles accompanied pork in a reinterpretation of the classic Alentejo dish of pork and clams. The richly marbled meat came from a thin cut known as secretos (secrets) because it comes from a hidden area between the shoulder and loin of the Iberian black pig.

The octopus was tender, juicy, and flavorful, delicately seasoned with harissa, a North African paste made from red chilies, garlic, olive oil, and spices such as cumin, coriander, and caraway.

In winter, Rui adds rustic dishes especially dear to local diners, including salt-cod cheeks and barrel-cured salted tuna.

The wine list includes nearby producers such as Quinta do Rol, Quinta de São Francisco, and Adega Mãe, alongside a carefully chosen selection from farther afield. These include Monte da Raposinha in the Alentejo, MOB, Quinta de Saes in the Dão, and Arvad in the Algarve.

If you visit Praia da Areia Branca, slow down and stop at Meia Casca. You’ll find food prepared with quiet expertise and deep respect for local ingredients and culinary traditions.

Meia Casca is located at Av. António José do Vale 36, Praia da Areia Branca. Click here for their Instagram.

A Pet Nat from Serenada

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Serenada is a beautiful estate in the Alentejo that has been in winemaker Jacinta Sobral’s family for more than three centuries. Her father planted the first vines in 1961, the year Jacinta was born, so she affectionately calls them her sisters.

Driven by an adventurous spirit, Jacinta is constantly experimenting with new ways to create truly distinctive wines. Her wines aged 15 meters below the surface of the sea have attracted considerable attention, but Serenada’s portfolio offers many other treasures waiting to be discovered.

Among them is a seductive Pet Nat made from Touriga Nacional. The grapes are gently pressed, much as they would be for a rosé, but the wine is bottled before fermentation is complete. Fermentation then continues inside the bottle, trapping the carbon dioxide it naturally produces and giving the wine its delicate sparkle. Hence the name pétillant naturel, French for naturally sparkling, affectionately shortened to Pet Nat.

This style is probably close to how the earliest sparkling wines were made, before the development of the méthode champenoise, in which a finished dry wine undergoes a second fermentation in the bottle after the addition of yeast and sugar.

Making a consistently pleasurable Pet Nat requires considerable precision. Jacinta experimented with bottling at different densities, which indicate how much fermentable sugar remains, until she found precisely the balance she wanted.

To preserve the wine’s natural character, Jacinta adds no sulfites and does not disgorge it—a process in which the yeast sediment is collected in the neck of the bottle, frozen and expelled. As a result, the wine contains some yeast sediment, as well as harmless tartrate crystals: tiny crystalline deposits sometimes known as “wine diamonds.”

The wine comes in a bottle adorned with a whimsical label designed by Catarina Fuschini. Its pale rosé color is alluring, while the palate is fresh, lively and playful. “It is like a ballet for the palate,” says Jacinta. We call it a party in a bottle.

Having mastered the art of Pet Nat, she is already moving on to her next experiment: fermenting the wine in amphora, bottling it before fermentation is complete, and then aging it in the ocean. We can’t wait to taste the result!

Serenada is located near Grândola in Alentejo. Click here for their website. 

The Cheesemaker of Vale do Barco

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This summer, some dear friends gave us a mysterious goat cheese. It had no label; it offered no clue about its provenance. Heavy and dense, it demanded our sharpest knife. Its flavor was so intense that we soon learned to cut it into the thinnest of slices, so we could appreciate its complexity without overwhelming our palates. The story behind it proved every bit as extraordinary as the cheese itself.

It was made by Manfred Markl, who left Bavaria in 1984 with his wife and child to settle in Vale do Barco, a small village near Pedrógão Grande. There, they had a second child and built a life around organic, self-sufficient farming. The family produces much of what it consumes and sells cheese and other products to buy what it cannot make. It is a way of life once common across rural Europe, but now largely forgotten.

Manfred rises at dawn to milk his goats and then spends several hours leading them through the surrounding countryside. Along the way, they graze on brambles, olive branches, and wild vegetation, clearing the undergrowth and helping to reduce the risk of forest fires.

Once Manfred has collected one hundred liters of milk, which may take only a day in summer but several days in winter, he makes a new batch of cheese. He works with meticulous care, patiently crafting and aging each cheese before taking it to market in Pedrógão Grande.

When we were children, we were captivated by The Swiss Family Robinson, Johann David Wyss’s novel about a Swiss family shipwrecked on a remote tropical island who, through ingenuity and practical skill, create a comfortable, self-sufficient life.

Imagine our astonishment at discovering a real-life German Family Robinson in rural Portugal–living off the land and making extraordinary cheese.

You can watch a video about Manfred Markl’s project here and buy his cheese at the market in Pedrógão Grande.

Álvaro Moreira da Fonseca, the agronomist who shaped the Douro Valley

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This twelfth lecture in our series with viticulturist António Magalhães is a tribute to Álvaro Moreira da Fonseca, the agronomist who helped shape the destiny of the Douro by devising the method used to allocate the benefício—the authorization to produce Port wine.

The consequences of his method were profound. By tying the benefício to the vineyard rather than to an individual or company, Moreira da Fonseca helped preserve a place for the Douro’s small growers. Their labor, knowledge, and stewardship remain essential to the character of the region.

Moreira da Fonseca was born in Porto on August 25, 1902, into a family with deep roots in the Douro. He studied agronomy in Lisbon, where he met his future wife, Constança Maria. They married there in 1926 and later returned north with their growing family.

His first serious academic work was not about wine but about the pollination and varieties of fig trees. He later taught in Lamego and at the agricultural school in Alcobaça, where his gifts as a teacher soon became apparent. His first publication, The ABC of Winemaking, foreshadowed the subjects that would occupy him for the rest of his life: viticulture and winemaking.

Cover of The ABC of Winemaking by Álvaro Moreira da Fonseca

Moreira da Fonseca spent most of his career at the Port Wine Institute, the regulator of the Port trade. He worked there from 1935 until his retirement in 1970, apart from 1946 to 1949, when he served first as vice-president and then as president of Casa do Douro, the compulsory association representing the region’s growers. At Casa do Douro, he devised the point system used to allocate the benefício and sought to correct an imbalance at the Institute, where the wine trade held three votes and growers only two.

Moreira da Fonseca believed that the Douro could not be governed wisely without first understanding its history. He approached historical research with the same rigor he applied to agronomy, carefully transcribing primary sources and combining archival work at the Torre do Tombo with an intimate knowledge of the region’s historic estates.

Granite markers and cover of Moreira da Fonseca book on the subject

One episode reveals his remarkable curiosity and persistence. After encountering granite pillars erected under the Marquis of Pombal, prime minister to King José I, to mark the boundaries of the wine region, he became determined to reconstruct the Douro’s earliest demarcations. When searches at the Torre do Tombo archives failed to uncover the original maps, he travelled through the region in 1944 and 1945, matching eighteenth-century descriptions to the contours of the land. By 1949, he had identified 103 surviving Pombaline markers and reconstructed the demarcations of 1757, 1758, and 1761.

Map of historical Douro demarcations by Álvaro Moreira da Fonseca

His interests ranged from preserving the Douro’s past to embracing the latest scientific advances. Long before the creation of the Douro Museum in Peso da Régua, he helped assemble a collection of tools and objects. In 1959, he secured funding for a cathode-ray polarograph, which enabled the Port Wine Institute’s laboratory to detect minute quantities of substances in Port, including trace metals such as lead.

António Magalhães recently discovered an unexpected way to compare Moreira da Fonseca’s ideas with his actual practice: the viticultural registers of Quinta das Lages, his family estate.

By the time António visited the estate, its older vineyards had been replaced with newer plantings. Working with Moreira da Fonseca’s daughter, Maria José, now eighty-eight, he reconstructed their history from successive vineyard registers preserved in the archives of Casa do Douro.

Quinta das Lages had belonged to Moreira da Fonseca’s maternal grandfather, Baltazar Augusto Ribeiro. The estate later passed to his mother, Lúcia Ribeiro, and her sisters, Beatriz and Ambrosina. Following his mother’s death in 1961, Moreira da Fonseca assumed responsibility for the estate and managed it until his own death in 1980.

The registers reveal a striking detail: his scoring system penalized his family’s estate. Moreira da Fonseca favored wider planting distances, believing they encouraged root development, improved sunlight exposure, and strengthened resistance to drought. Yet in 1944, Quinta das Lages averaged just 1.2 square meters per vine, placing it squarely in the category his method marked down—a strong indication that the system was not designed to favor his own family.

Over time, the vineyard moved closer to his ideal. The average area per vine rose to 1.5 square meters in 1957 and 1.96 in 1975 as successive sections were replanted. The shift probably reflected both his influence and the mechanization of viticulture, which required wider rows for tractors.

Vine spacing is the one point on which António Magalhães disagrees with Moreira da Fonseca. Under Moreira da Fonseca’s scoring system, vineyards with more than 1.74 square meters per vine received the highest score, with no upper limit beyond which wider spacing was penalized. Studying the same vineyards decades later, António argues that there is no universally optimal spacing. He generally favors greater planting density, but believes that the appropriate spacing must be adapted to each vineyard’s soil, climate, and the configuration of the terrain, especially its slope.

António has an advantage over Moreira da Fonseca: he can draw on decades of accumulated evidence. Many vines planted during the Douro’s long recovery from phylloxera—some now nearly a century old—were still young when Moreira da Fonseca developed his ideas. He could not yet know what their maturity would reveal about their ability to withstand the region’s long, hot, dry summers. Moreira da Fonseca’s preference for lower planting density was therefore understandable given the evidence available to him.

The registers also open a window onto a Douro that has largely disappeared. Today, four grape varieties form the backbone of most vineyards: Touriga Nacional, Touriga Francesa, Tinta Roriz, and Tinta Barroca. In 1938 Quinta das Lages was planted with a very different mix. Touriga Francesa and Rufete—the latter widely grown around the village of Sarzedinho, where Quinta das Lages is located—together accounted for 30 percent of the vineyard. Cornifesto, Malvasia Preta, and Castelã—the latter now in danger of disappearing from the Douro—made up another 20 percent.

Touriga Nacional was not among the leading varieties. Dominant in the Douro before phylloxera and described by Baron Forrester as “the finest,” it declined after the crisis. Its place was increasingly taken by Touriga Francesa, a cross between Touriga Nacional and Mourisco Tinto, a variety noted for its resistance to phylloxera.

The 1938 viticultural register of Quinta das Lages contains the earliest reference to Touriga Francesa that António has found. It raises an intriguing question: when and how did the name first appear? António suspects that the answer lies somewhere in the archives of Casa do Douro, together with many other secrets waiting to be uncovered.

These archives are more than a collection of administrative records: they tell the history of the Douro through its estates, families, and vines. Organizing and safeguarding them would be a fitting tribute to Moreira da Fonseca, whose own work reminds us that the future of the Douro depends in part on preserving its memory.

Three Arintos at Quinta de Chocapalha

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Arinto is one of Portugal’s great historic white grapes. Its name appears in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century documents drawing on now-lost medieval records from the Monastery of Alcobaça and the variety is later mentioned by Vicêncio Alarte in his 1712 treatise, Agricultura das Vinhas.

Although now grown throughout Portugal, Arinto is most closely associated with Bucelas, a small region north of Lisbon—hence its traditional name, Arinto de Bucelas. Its naturally firm acidity produces fresh, precise white wines with remarkable aging potential.

Bucelas enjoyed an extraordinary reputation in nineteenth-century Britain, where its wines were known as “Portuguese Hock,” a reference to the white wines of Germany’s Rhine region. During the Peninsular War, the Duke of Wellington commanded the Anglo-Portuguese forces fighting Napoleon’s invading armies. In 1810, the French advance toward Lisbon was halted at the Lines of Torres Vedras, a vast system of fortifications extending through the countryside around Bucelas. Legend has it that Wellington developed a taste for the local wine during the campaign and later introduced it to British society.

But the English connection may be much older. In Shakespeare’s Henry VI, written at the end of the sixteenth century, a character offers “a cup of charneco,” a wine thought to have been produced in Charneca, a village near Bucelas.

Three expressions of Arinto

One of the best places to understand Arinto’s versatility and potential is Quinta de Chocapalha, an estate close to Bucelas that belongs to the Tavares da Silva family.  Enologist Sandra Tavares da Silva makes the wines, and her sister Andrea (pictured in the photo) leads the project.

We visited Chocapalha on the first day of harvest. Andrea marked the occasion by photographing the talented group of young winemakers who had come from around the world to work at the estate, drawn by its distinctive terroir and by Andrea and Sandra’s uncompromising commitment to making great wine.

The team was finishing the day’s work, cleaning the equipment and scrubbing the floors until the winery was as pristine as a laboratory. A small speaker perched on a stainless-steel tank pumped out energetic music, helping everyone keep their spirits up at the end of a long day.

The sun was still shining generously when Andrea led us through the rolling hills covered in vineyards, speaking passionately about Arinto. Back at the winery, she showed us how three wines reveal different dimensions of the same grape.

The Quinta de Chocapalha Arinto shows the grape in its most direct and transparent expression. There is little between the grape and the glass. Fermented in stainless steel and aged for several months on its fine lees, it is pure and precise, with citrus and saline notes and a lovely sense of tension.

The CH Branco has a Burgundian character: elegant and structured, yet still unmistakably Arinto. Fermented in French oak and aged for nine months with bâtonnage, it retains the grape’s citrus freshness and firm acidity while gaining richness, texture, and volume on the palate. 

Arinto Antigo explores an ancestral approach in which white grapes are vinified much like reds, with skin contact. The skins give the wine tannins, but they are remarkably fine. Produced from old, north-facing vines, it is aged for two years in neutral barriques. The result is greater salinity, tension, structure, and depth. This wine is both powerful and restrained. It is textured without heaviness, structured without losing freshness. It is the most complex of the three and perhaps the most striking demonstration of all that Arinto can be. 

Few grapes can take on such different expressions while preserving such a clear identity. And few wineries can express those qualities with such grace.

Chocapalha is located at Aldeia Galega da Merceana, 50 km from Lisbon. You can schedule a wine tasting by emailing visitas@chocapalha.com. Click here for their website.

Quinta das Carvalhas

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As you approach Pinhão, just before crossing the elegant iron bridge that spans the Douro river, a tall green gate quietly comes into view. It marks the entrance to Quinta das Carvalhas, one of the Douro Valley’s most remarkable estates.

Carvalhas belongs to Real Companhia Velha, founded in 1756 by the Marquis of Pombal, the powerful prime minister of King José I, to regulate the Port wine trade. In 1852, the government brought the company’s regulatory mandate to an end. Since 1960, Real Companhia Velha has been under the stewardship of the Silva Reis family. Today, Pedro Silva Reis leads the company alongside his sons, Tiago, who oversees its commercial activities, and Pedro Jr., an enologist.

The estate rises from the riverbank to an altitude of almost 500 meters. This variation in elevation allows both red and white grapes to thrive on the same property, something unusual in the Douro. Old vines cling to slopes facing every direction and at every altitude, creating a remarkable mosaic that offers the winemakers an exceptionally rich palette with which to work.

As we follow the winding road towards the summit, we find ourselves surrounded by an extraordinary abundance of life. The vines grow alongside olive trees, orange groves and wild vegetation. Carvalhas is far from a vineyard monoculture: biodiversity is deliberately nurtured and protected.

At the summit stands a round house. From there, the valley unfolds in a 360-degree panorama, offering the kind of view one imagines might be reserved for angels.

The estate’s resident viticulturist, Álvaro Martinho, takes us on a tour. He explains that temperatures can soar to 42°C in summer and fall to –3°C in winter. The soil contains little organic matter, yet life flourishes everywhere. The secret lies in the schist: fractured, porous and permeable, it allows water and oxygen to travel deep beneath the surface, sustaining microorganisms and encouraging the vines to send their roots several meters into the earth in search of nourishment.

These vines do not live amid abundance, but they find enough to flourish. Their yields are modest, yet their grapes possess remarkable intensity. This frugal existence also contributes to their longevity: some of the vines at Carvalhas are more than a century old.

In 2007, the estate stopped using insecticides and synthetic fungicides, replacing them with organic alternatives. The transformation was remarkable: leaves that had once appeared greyish green took on a vibrant hue.

Carvalhas is dotted with viewpoints from which visitors can pause and contemplate the magnificent landscape. But as the sun began to set, we gathered inside the round house for dinner.

Pedro Silva Reis invited two distinguished enologists to join us: Carlos Agrellos of Quinta do Noval and Jorge Moreira, head enologist at Carvalhas. Jorge spent the first seven years of his career at Carvalhas before leaving to focus on Poeira, his acclaimed family project. Seven years later, Pedro Silva Reis persuaded him to return to Carvalhas, where he now works while continuing to produce Poeira.

The delicious dinner, prepared with local produce, was accompanied by wines from Quinta das Carvalhas, alongside celebrated bottles from France and Italy. All were exceptional, but the Carvalhas wines linger in the memory like poems we long to know by heart.

The 2016 Reserva is a seductive wine of structure, depth and complexity. It blends grapes from vineyards with different sun exposures, including a very old north-facing parcel.

The Vinhas Velhas 2011 is elegant and slender, almost Burgundian in its restraint. When Jorge returned to Carvalhas, he recognized the potential of three north-facing parcels planted with vines nearly a century old. From them, he created this singular wine, foot-treading the grapes in granite lagares. It is intense yet astonishingly fresh, reflecting the vineyards’ cool northern exposure.

Then came Íncola, a wine born from a dream of Pedro Silva Reis Jr. Its name derives from the Latin word for “local inhabitant.” With haunting aromas, extraordinary tension and remarkable complexity, it comes from very old, south-facing vines and includes rare grape varieties such as Tinta Bastardinha and Rufete.

The meal concluded with a final revelation: the Quinta das Carvalhas 50-Year-Old Tawny. Layered, unctuous, and almost meditative, it is the perfect combination of age and youth. The blend, which includes wines from 1927, 1967, and 1978, can never be replicated; it is a once-in-a-lifetime composition.

We remained at the table, talking about wine and life until the candles burned low. The following morning, we awoke to find the valley dressed in soft light, with mist rising gently from the river. Still half-dreaming, we looked through the window and asked the only reasonable question: are we in heaven?

Tasca da Ti’ Augusta

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Winemakers always seem to know the best places to eat. So, when Afonso and Teresa Marques, from the wonderful Vale da Capucha winery, recommended Tasca da Ti’ Augusta, a rustic restaurant perched on the sand at Porto Dinheiro beach, we added it to our list.

The tasca dates to the 1940s, when Augusta began serving food to the fishermen of Porto Dinheiro before they went to sea and buying their freshly caught fish when they returned.

Her cooking gradually turned the modest beachside tavern into a local institution. After her death, the restaurant passed to her children, Alice and Fausto, who took turns running it during the summers, and later to another Maria Augusta, a talented cook who had long helped Alice. Today, the restaurant is run by her daughter Alexandra Fanha and the extended family. It opens only from June to September.

When we called to reserve a table, we were asked to choose in advance between the two main dishes: monkfish rice (arroz de tamboril) and fish stew (caldeirada). Naturally, we ordered both.

The restaurant is only a few meters from the ocean, wedged between two massive sandstone rocks dating from the late Jurassic period. The space between them has been enclosed with bits of brickwork, canvas and fishing nets. An old wooden door bears the scars of countless winters, when the sea washes over the place. The floor is made of cement, and a corrugated roof provides protection from sun and rain. The decoration consists mostly of nets, buoys and other remnants of fishing life.

There is something wonderfully improvised about the angular architecture. It reminded us, perhaps absurdly, of Frank Gehry’s house in Santa Monica. We wondered what Gehry would make of Ti’ Augusta.

We visited on one of those rare days with almost no wind, when the Atlantic turns a deep, saturated blue. The small beach beside the restaurant accumulates banks of seaweed, and the smell of algae, salt and iodine hangs in the air, whetting our appetite.

At the entrance, a few fishermen were drinking glasses of wine. They looked as though they had wandered out of a Marcel Pagnol film and been shipwrecked on the Portuguese coast.

Inside, the restaurant was packed with locals. Long tables held families and groups of friends, all talking loudly at once. For a moment, we wondered whether authenticity might be slightly overrated. Then huge pots were carried to the tables. The noise subsided. Suddenly everyone was enjoying the food.

The service at Ti’ Augusta is friendly but assertive. When a customer asked for salt, the waitress placed a one-kilogram bag on the table and informed him that the rice was already properly seasoned. Suitably chastened, he proceeded to eat it as served.

We watched the fishing boats coming and going from the little harbor—Porto Dinheiro, literally “Money Port,” remains a working fishing port.

An enormous serving spoon sat on our table, waiting to be used. First came the fish rice. The rice was seriously addictive, and the monkfish was perfectly cooked, swimming in an intensely flavorful tomato-and-fish broth.

The caldeirada was a revelation. The traditional version of this Portuguese fishermen’s stew is deceptively difficult to cook well. Clams are placed at the bottom of the pot, followed by layers of potatoes, onions, tomatoes, peppers and different fish. Everything cooks together. The romance of the method is undeniable, but so is the tendency for the potatoes, shellfish and at least some of the fish to be overcooked.

Not here. Everything arrived at precisely the right point: the large shrimp, the clams, the potatoes and three different fish: conger eel (safio), monkfish, and skate. We suspect that the different components were cooked separately and brought together at the end.

The sauce, made only with tomato, onion, and red pepper, had a glorious golden-red color. We appreciated the absence of green pepper, which so often gives the sauce an unappetizing grey cast. Alongside came a large plate piled with slices of fried bread, ready to absorb every last drop of the sauce.

The portions at Ti’ Augusta are monumental, and regulars arrive with containers for the inevitable leftovers. Seeing that we were novices, the restaurant supplied one. The next day, our leftovers became a magnificent fish soup.

The temperature by the sea was so pleasant that nobody seemed in any hurry to leave. Around us, people lingered over slices of melon, small pots of chocolate mousse, and plates of egg pudding scented with lemon.

The only stars at Tasca da Ti’ Augusta are the ones in the night sky over Porto Dinheiro beach. But the food shines.

Tasca da Ti’ Augusta is located in the Porto Dinheiro beach. You can call 919200397 to make reservations.

On the way to Sintra

~ saltofportugal ~ Leave a comment

Sintra, the summer retreat of the Portuguese monarchy, is a fairy-tale village with its enchanting palaces, lush gardens, and Moorish castle. But beauty is only part of its appeal. Sintra has long been a destination for travelers with a sweet tooth.

There are the famous queijadas, cheese tartlets whose history stretches back to the Middle Ages, and Travesseiros, the sweet “pillows” created by Piriquita. And then there are the Fofos de Belas, made just a few kilometers away in the small village of Belas.

Casa dos Fofos de Belas traces its origins to 1840, when it produced pão de ló and other sweets to sell at fairs and religious festivals around Sintra. In 1850, the house began to specialize in the little cakes that became known as Fofos de Belas.

Fofos are small cylinders of pão de ló, a wonderfully light Portuguese sponge cake made with eggs, sugar, and flour. Their lightness inspired the name fofos, the Portuguese word for “fluffy.” They are baked in a wood-fired oven heated with eucalyptus wood, then sliced open and filled with a rich pastry cream made from eggs, sugar, and starch.

Airy, creamy, and faintly perfumed by the wood-fired oven, they are dangerously easy to eat. They go beautifully with coffee or tea, are perfect for celebrations, and may even help soothe a heartache. No wonder Belas became a popular stop on the way to Sintra.

Casa dos Fofos de Belas is located at Rua Dr. Malheiros 18, 2605-038 Belas. Click here for their website.