Second Summer
A week which turned from wine into water
Our path of life is a little treacherous – steep and with lots of places to slip and fall – but the further we go down it, the smaller the drop becomes and the less chance we have of plunging to our deaths.
The recent rain has slid in some complications – as I wrote about last week – but the route is still navigable and we’re confident that reaching the destination is worth the difficult journey.
And thanks to St Martin, this week we took this metaphor literally, packed a picnic and scrambled a tricky track down the cliffs to the beach to enjoy some warm weather and a dip in the ocean before colder weather comes along.
Verão de São Martinho – St Martin’s Summer – arrives in mid-November and is fast becoming one of our favourite times of year.
It’s when the talha amphorae are opened and the first new wines of the year begin to trickle out, when chestnuts are ready to be roasted, and when temperatures in the mid-20s give us the chance to gloat (just a little) about where we live and why we’re doing all this.
I’ve written before about St Martin’s progression from plain old Hungarian Martin, to patron saint of the poor, of tailors, winemakers and curiously both soldiers and conscientious objectors. Oh, and of France.
There’s a Portuguese saying “esta é a minha praia” – meaning that’s my beach, but also “that’s my thing” – and this is definitely our beach.
We call it “The Birthday Beach,” and it’s one of the most beautiful spots along this wonderfully wild coast – if not always the easiest to access.
Ana dusted off her summer sandwich making skills, Daniel threw in some hot tamales and after a sip of beer and a glass of wine we dived into the waves and all agreed the water really wasn’t cold...although we didn’t linger too long.
For the dogs it was the end of an excellent week as Simon celebrated his 12th birthday and Garfunkel enjoyed their joint celebration through meats, treats, some dried chicken and a lot of fussing.
And it was also a great week for us that began in Vila de Frades with a feast of wine tastings, fabulous food, music and friends...and ended with water...coming out of a tap...at the bottom of the valley.
We love inland Alentejo and it was only the coastal climate and of course the beaches that kept us from moving to the winelands when we first drew a line around Alentejo to choose our new home.
We’d been planning the two-hour trip to the November 11th opening of the talhas wine weekend since November 12th last year and this time managed to persuade our friends Niels and Sybille to join us.
Talha wine has its own official classification in Portugal and to qualify it has to stay in its fermenting clay pots until St Martin’s Day.
That’s when the celebrations begin – the taps are hammered in, the songs are sung, the chestnuts (and the pigs) are roasted and the wines are sampled.
And boy were they sampled.
Thanks to the amazing Mauro Azóia and Rita – and the generosity of Hamilton Reis, the guys from XXVI Talhas and the ROCIM Amphora Day we had the most wonderful weekend.
There’s an amazing energy among Portugal’s winemakers and we were lucky to dip into it for a weekend and meet many of the industry’s powerhouses like Hugo Mendes, Gonçalo Patraquim, Mariana Siqueira and many more from Portugal the US, UK and beyond.
Niels showcased his Syrah to the delight of visiting American wine journalists and somehow we both managed to get interviewed for Portuguese telly.
But our adventure to Cuba, Vila de Frades, Vidigueira and Vila Alva began by visiting a weaving mill to choose the oversized headboards for the new lodge bedrooms.
We’ve been to Fabricaal a few times to watch the traditional looms in action, ponder what to order, and also to record for the podcast, but this was the “now we know what we want” pressure trip.
Ana’s eye for colour and style took the lead and I think we have chosen well.
We book-ended the weekend with an amazing late lunch at Quinta de Quetzal and then dipped into Justino Damas Winery where we stumbled across some traditional Cante Alentejano singing last year.
The guys seemed to be winding down after a hectic weekend, but when Ana played them the video she’d filmed last year, they sparked straight up into song again...next thing passers-by were joining in and it was a proper song-off.
I even joined in...albeit a little timidly...
But it’s not been all fine wines and song this week...we also used the good weather to get in amongst it and push a couple of neglected parts of our project.
Not surprisingly there was no sign of the polished concrete floor guys who’d abandoned ship over a labour dispute, but we are reliably informed they will be back in another week to finish the job and clean up the concrete poop/art installation.
Whilst awaiting their return we focussed on water.
With 6km of plastic pipes delivered from the factory Christiano Santos and his brother Eduardo, turned up to lay a couple of kilometres from the irrigation canal to the bottom of the valley where gravity just about provides it.
They wanted to run pipes along the river, but I thought the bank would be a better option, so got up nice and early to strim down some brambles and make a path for them to run routes for both us and our neighbour Daniel.
It all happened a bit quicker than we expected...and a bit too quickly for us to give timely heads up to the neighbours who were gracious about our lack of communication.
There’s something wonderfully reassuring about having a pipe at the bottom of the valley with a tap to turn on water...one small step for Christiano, but one huge leap for our kind.
Our “dilution over treatment” approach to turning mineral-salted water into drinking water involves two 200,000 litre pillow tanks – one for the canal water and the other for rainwater which we’ll collect.
That involves levelling two 180m2 areas and laying 10cm of sand on top before the pillow tanks can be installed...it also involves putting in other tanks for collecting and pumping the water up the hill.
Enter Charles Days (aka Carlos Dias) with his digger and levelling laser...and apart from being excellently distracted working wonders on Daniel’s land, everything is just about ready.
An expensive week of paying for tanks and pipes pushed me to go through the finances again to make sure all is well.
Surprisingly things are still broadly on track and on budget...barring the occasional surprise from the builder to give us something to argue about this week.
St Martin’s Summer has dried the building site up nicely – let’s hope the concrete guys can come back before the forecast changes.
But the path is still slippy and treacherous in places...and no doubt there are plenty of potholes a little further down the road, but we’re still heading broadly in the right direction.
Life in Portugal is definitely our beach. Especially when we’re on our beach.
You're starting to think like a Portuguese 😀👏
Love your beach! Thanks for the great writing.