Visiting vineyards and olive groves in Portugal
As soon as we got out of a car, dizzy from the mountain road shifts and turns, and humbled by the sunset-painted Douro river valley, we were greeted by an enthusiastic four month old puppy named Amendoa. Portuguese for an almond. The place we arrived at was named Amendoeira. Portuguese for an almond tree. And this place greeted us with just as much enthusiasm.
We wanted to celebrate autumn by visiting a vineyard with active wine-making traditions. It was run by a big family, that opened their space to guests, putting a homemade pomegranate cake on the table and opening a sixty year old bottle of porto to celebrate the day. It turned out we crashed a birthday party, so we sang an eternally awkward happy birthday. The birthday lady cried. Another year passed, for her, for us, for the bottle of porto.
Next day we kayaked stormy waters - against the stream, ships passing, us rowing, sweat mixing with splashes of river water and bouts of spontaneous rain. I kept turning to songs, because that's what you do when the going gets hard. We picked and cracked almonds straight off the trees, tasted tiny drying grapes and watched rain drops drip and drop from plump ripe olives. We kept reminding ourselves to ask winemaking questions at dinner. But dinners had their own current, trays of fish quickly exchanged by games, white wine exchanged by red. The only constant of the night was an eight year old girl drawing me one love letter after another, complete with rivers, rainbows, and our first name initials - M - falling from the sky like raindrops. I promised her to put the drawers on the fridge back home. I keep my promises.
The sounds of frogs let us into the night and the sounds of sheep led us into the day. The sheep greeted me. I recreated their orchestrated rendition of celebrating the day. The Douro river flowed quietly, and it was time to go home. The train tracks ran along the river, sunshine reflecting in its waters and flooding our tired eyes. We left the vineyard having learned little more about wine, but more about rivers, art and the language of sheep. Which is worth a celebration in itself.
A month later we were stepping onto the sunny grounds of olive groves, where we picked olives - from the tiniest Portuguese ones, to fat Greek ones, stretching nets under the trees, some of which were a few hundred years old and still bearing olives - fewer but sweeter, our guide said. The metaphor of the day. We shook the branches, we picked the olives rotted by relentless rains, we carried them to the basket, half green, half ripe, as the latter are more oily, and the former carry more antioxidants. We kept asking questions about types of olives and types of oil, as we watched the process of their metamorphosis, which led us to the tasting session. We gulped down shots of oil, feeling some tingling in our throat, which, our guide explained, was oxidation. Fruity and sweet.
We walked the grounds, encouraged to pick oranges and tangerines from the trees - what is the difference between mandarines and tangerines again? - and got introduced to a cork tree, an oak tree cousin, that used to be sacred in Celtic mythology, and still may be in some ways. It definitely looked sacred. And as it absorbs and holds warmth, our guide shared the stories of sheep and goats cuddling up next to it at night. Either in attempt to warm up, or to be blessed with some of that tree-sacredness. Not sure which one is more likely. We left this sanctuary with fresh olive oil bottles in our hands, heading down the dirt road lined by maple and eucalyptus trees. In the days that followed, we poured way too much olive oil onto everything. Appropriately so.
It is the time when wine grapes turn into wine, olives turn into oil, sunflowers turn into seeds, and our hearts turn into a more mature rendition of whichever the state they started the year with. Harvest time requires work, dealing with abundance requires work, but soon the bottles of wine and olive oil are stored away, the peak of busy craze quiets down, and time for reflection presents itself - for a moment or a month - inviting yet further transformation. Olive oil to dinners. Wine to holiday celebrations. Constant metamorphosis of matter into body, constant celebration of the work it took for us to taste the wine, for us to taste the outcomes of the whole year's work. Constant change. Constant harvest. Constant celebration.
