Why vintage wine lovers need to head to Portugal's Alentejo region

There were wines before Jesus in the Alentejo valleys. Ellen Himelfarb savours the terroir
Walk the vine: a plantation in Alentejo
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Ellen Himelfarb18 October 2019

Every hour is cocktail hour at Herdade do Sobroso, a stylish Portuguese wine estate 30 miles from the Spanish border.

But it’s something rather special to sip a heritage white at dusk overlooking the sparkling Guadiana river below. Staring out to the billowy silhouettes of stone pines and storks’ nests, I can just about imagine what this spot might have looked like to the Romans, who took the unrefined winemaking tradition left by the Phoenicians and established vineyards on the rocky terrain.

Winemaking is older than Jesus in Alentejo, a sun-scorched province combed with groves of olive and cork oak. The region draws from 250 indigenous grape varieties, the second-highest selection of any country worldwide. The Romans eventually shifted wine production northward. And when 18th-century oenophiles sought alternatives to French wine, Portugal made the decision to promote port from the more developed Douro Valley. Feudal Alentejo, with its boundless plantations and absentee landowners, fell behind.

Yet with 23,000 hectares of vineyard rippling over even the most parched terrain, it’s clear that Alentejo’s wine-growing landscape is thriving now. Over three decades, entrepreneurial winemakers have snapped up public financing to help double the area’s wine output. Some have opened historic homesteads as hotels, lured in Michelin-star chefs or brought in mum to run the restaurant. They work the dining room in slicked-back hair and Vilebrequin shorts, their piercing eyes saying: “Come for the wine; stay for the southern charm.”

But back to Herdade do Sobroso. I spend my morning there in a Jeep bumping over 1,600 hectares crawling with eucalyptus, wild boar and deer with impressively broad antlers. I day-drink by the infinity pool and don’t stop until the house aguardente appears at midnight. The garlanded local chef serves a single, seasonal main to the entire dining room that evening: arroz de pato, a duck rice pilaf that, like much Alentejo cooking, looks like a dog’s breakfast but tastes lighter and more complex than I thought possible. Then again, I’m hardly “sobroso” enough at Sobroso to judge.

The Alentejo Wine Route covers eight official sub-regions, extending north to Portalegre and south to Moura, named after the Moors who built its Almohad tower. In the remarkably green valley beyond, my mates and I call on Herdade da Malhadinha Nova, an estate owned by two brothers whose photogenic families ride albino Lusitano horses round the impeccable grounds. We slosh past the vats and cellars, inhaling the sweet, yeasty air, then install ourselves in the glassed-in restaurant for porco preto (black pork), thick as ribeye – plus enough fruity white to drown in.

The area hosts whitewashed medieval villages such as Alegrete
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Only a handful of Malhadinha’s wines sell in the UK and only at the high end, but guzzling them in situ, at about a third the imported price, makes luxury affordable. In fact, Alentejo’s wine route turns up deals behind every wrought-iron gate. Like at Herdade do Esporão, an all-organic mass-producer near serpentine Alqueva Lake. Nosing around the shop, we dive for a €5 bottle of white that, we later discover, costs £12 back home. Our garrulous driver, Eusébio Lima of Eagle Travel Tours (a necessary extravagance when partaking in the typical three-hour wine-soaked lunches), collects us, stumbling, from a boozy feast at João Portugal Ramos, where the dining terrace looks out to vines in all directions. He drops us at the “white city” of Estremoz to climb the marble streets, part of one of the Portuguese branches of the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route.

Then, finally to the historic city of Evora, where we drain bottles of 2017 Cartuxa white (€14: equivalent to Britain’s off-licence price) and tear at a black-pork “pillow” — a savoury pie wrapped in light pastry like a birthday present. We follow gangs of students from Evora University along medieval streets, marvelling at the burnt-yellow borders painted with razor precision around every door and window.

Nature’s gifts: some dishes of the Alentejo region
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All roads lead to Evora’s Roman temple, a mini-Parthenon lit dramatically from below. In its presence I contemplate a time before medieval streets, before the baroque cathedral or the town’s Chapel of Bones festooned with human skulls. Only these Corinthian columns can boast having survived long enough to see it all. And the wine, of course. The wine.

Details

TAP Air Portugal flies direct from London Heathrow, Gatwick and City to Lisbon; prices start at £84 return including all taxes and surcharges; flytap.com

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