Herdade Aldeia de Cima
Wine is like a watch: you have to listen to the noise it makes.
António Cavalheiro is the estate's vigneron (winemaker) and likens his work to that of a watchmaker: to produce certain wines, you have to know how and when to bottle them.
Travelling.
I could never give it up.
Because only through travel can I learn things I would otherwise be unaware of.
Every suitcase I’ve packed has taught me that, in setting off for the unknown, what matters most isn't what I take with me, but what I leave at home: all the convictions and certainties I think I hold dear.
However, it is not so much an escape from routine that I seek, but more a yearning for different lights, for encounters, for connections. I won't indulge in clichés about the journey being more important than arriving, but I will say that nothing thrills me more than the people I meet along the way.
So why all these reflections?
Because throughout the 50 kilometre drive from Evora to our destination in the parish of Santana, a country hamlet outside Portel, Alto Alentejo, Simona barely utters a word. Busily engrossed in working on her new hat, I entertain myself with philosophising.
Meanwhile, south-eastern Portugal unfolds before us. That part of the country stretching up towards the Spanish border, it is a landscape of uninhabited countryside, rather relaxing in its minimalist beauty
It is a great pity the weather is against us today. Whilst the calendar would lead one to expect milder temperatures, the reality is that they are unseasonably bad. The damp penetrates our very bones and, as we huddle our shoulders against the cold wind, a fine, steady drizzle seeps into our jacket collars.
Like a mirage or hallucination, Herdade Aldeia de Cima suddenly emerges to the left of the road. Its crisp whitewashed walls are in stark contrast to the surrounding gloom and two imposing silos guard the entrance.
First impression: this Herdade has the hallowed air of a church and the austerity of a museum.
Nelson Coelho and António Cavalheiro are Aldeia de Cima's sales manager and vigneron (winemaker), respectively. However, as it is they who are there to greet us and provide us with the warmth the weather has robbed us of, I prefer to think of them as its custodians and the ambassadors of its enlightening vision. Welcomed by their easy smiles, we quickly fall under the spell of this magical place as the two set about illustrating its innermost workings.
Clearly in love with his work, it is Nelson who takes the floor and thereafter never relinquishes it. His eyes alight with enthusiasm, he speaks with the passion someone who feels 100% involved in a project. And, as I will shortly discover, the project here is nothing less than the art of painting, crop after crop, an endless portrait of ancient wisdom.
Once owned by the Portuguese royal family, Herdade Aldeia de Cima was bought in 1994 by the Amorim family (the same family that heads the world's most important cork products company) who then set about renovating it.
From an early age, Luisa Amorim, daughter of Américo Amorim and current owner of the Herdade, breathed the air of these lands and forged an indissoluble relationship with the Alentejo region. Wine became one of her greatest passions, so much so that she contacted the oenologist Jorge Alves and asked him to think of a wine that would embody the unique taste of Alentejo in every single bottle.
"This place is special because of the people involved in it." I had intended it to be a question, but it came out as an affirmation. "That's right, it's the vision we share with the ownership that makes it that way," Nelson promptly responds.
"We work organically and are guided by a philosophy of deep respect for natural resources, conserving less productive soils and integrating their diverse crops in an ecological way. The sustainability of the project and the mission of Luisa and her family both share the same goals: respect for the land, respect for history, and respect for traditions. With a unique and special objective: to embody the taste of Alentejo in a bottle.”
We are only at the beginning of our visit, yet this is already the second time this expression has cropped up.
I am intrigued.
António, the vigneron, seems to read my mind: "Our wines are thought out in the vineyard. In the vineyard we study the diversity and mineral qualities of the soils, it is there we seek natural balance, unique conditions and ancient knowledge."
We find ourselves in a kind of art gallery displaying small earthenware tinajas and amphorae. It is touching: when António speaks of respect for the past, his hand rests protectively on an amphora, and when he says he looks to the future, his gaze rests proudly on a stainless-steel tank.
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António moves deftly from ovoid barrels to amphorae, from concrete tanks to oak vats, drawing their contents, one by one, for us to taste. Firstly, we first taste a wine made from Arinto grapes, whose mineral character and hints of acidity and freshness are immediately apparent.
Hardly have we finished it, when he pours an Alvarinho into our glasses. With its heady, floral aromas, it is less acidic, more tropical and more sophisticated. We are then told to leave some in the glass to mix with the Arinto from the previous tasting, and which is duly poured out again.
We are bowled over by the resulting blend; however, once again we are told not to finish it because they want to add an Antão Vaz from grapes originating in Vidigueira. The evolution is impressive.
Nelson welcomes my enthusiasm: "This is what we do. Ours is a contemplative winemaking process, that is, with minimal human intervention, because what must remain is nature and the multifaceted character of the terrains, soils and grape varieties.
"We don't want quantity, we want particularity and uniqueness.”
If this is their aim, they are succeeding big time.
We go outside where I almost expect António to say, "Welcome to Jurassic Park!" Three identical pickup trucks are waiting to take us to visit the only terraced vineyards in all of Alentejo.
Overnight deluges have made some of the roads through the property dangerous and almost impassable, however Nelson and António are not the kind of men to be deterred. We drive for more than an hour in incessant rain, in the mud of winding paths that climb the Serra do Mendro, famous for being located in the oldest geomorphological zone of the whole Iberian Peninsula. It was Luisa Amorim who sensed the "dormant" potential of this unique geological heritage and wanted to plant the first traditional terraced vineyard in the Alentejo here.
António rattles off impressive data, including the following:
36 natural micro terrains in 22 hectares of vineyard.
We finally reach the summit and the view is quite breath-taking. Reminiscent of the Douro vineyards, the sinuous shapes of the terraces meander down the hillside below us. António, who evidently appreciated my joke earlier, begins to hum the theme from Jurassic Park prompting us all to break into laughter.
We stroll along the ridge of the vineyard until Nelson asks us to climb back into the pickups so we can all have a bite to eat together. We reach a secluded house and, as soon as we cross the threshold, are welcomed by a table overflowing with delicacies: cheeses, olive oils, cured meats and sausages, all made in Alentejo, of course. The hospitality of the Amorim family certainly lives up to its reputation.
Whilst won over by all the wines copiously poured that day, it is a white that truly enraptures me and won't release me: indeed, the hold Garrafeira exerts over me is like a fatal attraction. "Garrafeira" is a very old Portuguese term, a term which nowadays is reserved solely for quality wines left to age in the bottle at least 6 months if they are whites, and at least 12 months if they are reds.
António describes it to me as follows, "Our work here is like that of the watchmaker. Take Garrafeira, for example. Such a wine is like a watch: you have to listen to the noise it makes. If we didn't listen to the sounds of fermentation in the wooden vats we wouldn't be able to make it, we wouldn't know how and when it needs to be bottled.”
If Garrafeira held a fatal attraction, no less irresistible are Reserva Branco and Reserva Tinto, and there are those* who rave about Myndru and Alyantiju Tinto. They all come from Herdade Aldeia de Cima and you can find them here in our archive.
*Simona
If time flies by, it is because there is little of a traditional tasting in our gathering; indeed, the mood is much more like a lunch among friends where, like consummate theatre actors, Nelson and António regale us with their accounts. Gesticulating as they stride round the table, they tell us about the scepticism with which Herdade was initially greeted. However, if once they were called fools by other local producers, today they are held up as paragons. It's as if we are sitting in the marketplace of Babylon: voices overlap, laughter erupts, pats on the back rain down, smiles grow wider and wider, and mouths only taste, swallow, and begin once again in earnest.
At Herdade Aldeia de Cima, they know exactly what they are talking about: they know about wine and they really know about hospitality.
The hugs with Simona and I give Nelson and António when we bid them farewell is our way of telling them. Embodying the taste of Alentejo in the bottle.
Now we understand what they meant.
