Mateus and Port

Remember the round/flat bottle, remember how cool we were when we started drinking Mateus--Well, to day we went to its home!
The Palais of Mateus!  A bus ride up the narrow roads to the Palais of Mateus.  The winery is no longer owned by the Count but he and his family still live in the back part of the Palais. They opened the front part for tourists, I am sure to help maintain the grounds and the buildings.  The grounds are lovely!  Very formal with low and high privets in complex patterns.  The requirements of the patterns are so particular, according to our guide that only one person is allowed to trim the hedges.  Within each of the patterns are plants of all types including lots and lots of roses.  One of the big attractions in the garden is a tunnel of sycamore trees.  Again according to the guide it is so high and curved that they have to have special ladders in order to keep it trimmed.  The best line of the trip so far came from our guide as she showed us some of the religious relics collected by the family, She said “ 85% of the Portuguese are  Catholic, the other 15% are bad Catholics”.

Back on the bus and to the Sandeman Quinta for you guessed it a Port tasting.  This Quinta is high up on the steep hills, there were places where I am sure the bus wheels were right on the edge of the road.  The views were fascinating.  The sides of the mountains are almost entirely carved with terraces for vineyards.  Some, the oldest, have granite walls supporting the terraces, these all run horizontal to the side of the hill.  Some, areas, are really not terraced at all just graded and here the lines of vines are vertical to the side of the hill.  And finally there are some that were machine graded, these make the sides of the hills look like the pit mine walls in Bisbee and Globe.  The guides explained that they do not use irrigation and must rely on the rains and the ability of the vines to find water.  This is partly why the granite is so good for wine grape growing The granite runs vertical which allows the roots to dig deep into the rock, the rock holds the heat and or cold to keep the vines at a constant temperature and it also holds water so the roots can find water.

Back to the ship, this evening we had local musicians and singers joins us after dinner they sang traditional songs including Fado, as they ended the performance they walked around the room and we all joined in behind, we even formed arm bridges for everyone to go under.