Kindness of Strangers

Today we set out to explore the vineyards, or quintas, of Portugal’s rural Alto Douro. But where to start? We received a map of the area quintas from the local turismo, located in the train station across from our pension; we decided to start with Quinta do Panascal, one of the three top properties owned by Fonseca, a name you might be familiar with from your local grocery or liquor store. In fact, it’s the only port wine brand I was familiar with.We took the free audio tour, which gave us a basic overview of the history, growing, production, and distribution of port wine. After a brief tasting, we decided to move onto some smaller quintas. Our guidebook suggested we move 12 kilometers north of Pinhao to Favaios, where a little-known muscatel wine is produced, one of only two in Portugal. Now knowing a little about port and absolutely nothing about muscatel, we decided to take the plunge.

The woman at the turismo had suggested we visit Quinta da Avessada, housing a wine museum and tasting room. On the way, we decided to stop in at Cascal de Loivos. We wound our way through vineyards, the stone-stacked terraces creating graduated steps up the hillside. (The amount of stones needed to create these age-old barriers throughout Portugal equals more than twice the amount of stones used to build The Great Wall of China!) At the crest, we reached a two-story stone house, which looked very closed. We rang the bell; no answer. Just as we were getting ready to leave, a black Fiesta trundled up the cobblestone street, slowing down as it approached. I figured it was someone else looking for the quinta. The woman in the driver’s seat rolled down her window. “Ah, hello. You no speak Portuguese?” “No,” we said, “only English and Spanish.” “My husband, he not at home?”

Before we knew it, she was out of her car, opening the front door to the quinta, which turned out to be her house, and calling her husband on the phone. A young boy in a Spongebob Squarepants T-shirt bounded of the car, leaving us with an older woman, who was stylishly dressed in a navy and white-striped sweater and Armani sunglasses. We gave her our stock introduction: “Disculpe, nao falo mucho Portuguese.” This made no difference. She chatted on, talking about the many products their family farm produced, including olive oil and honey. She asked us if we were from England, and when we told her we were from the US, she got excited. “I’ve been to Florida, Philadelphia, and New Jersey!” she exclaimed.

The other woman returned with a scrap of paper. “Okay, I got my husband on the phone, and he give price list.” She opened the garage door, which was a mini-warehouse stacked with box after box of wine. The older woman said, “This is not usually open to the public.” Clearly, there would be no tastings today. She walked us through the products, which ranged from 2 Euro bottles of rose to 10 Euro bottles of their reserva red table wine. The older woman prompted the younger woman to tell us about the label on the bottles, which displayed a gallery of aging black and white photos. “She wants me to tell you that this is her family. Her mother and father and grandparents. She’s very proud.” We hadn’t planned on buying any bottles, but after all the trouble they had gone to open their home to us, how could we refuse? After some confusion as to the amount of wine we’d be purchasing, we chose a middle of the road red wine; the older woman encouraged us to consider a bottle of olive oil as a gift.

Before leaving, we gave each other kisses on the cheek and were wished countless bom viagems. Could this day get any better?
We went in search of the wine museum, which took us down twisting lanes lined with shale rock walls towering on each side. When we arrived, everything appeared to be closed, the two large, stone buildings locked and the property abandoned, save for two lazy dogs who basked in the sun. Were we even in the right place? We started down the road, and then turned around, noticing a red truck that hadn’t been there before parked in front of the neighboring property. Maikael parked the car. “I’m going to see if they know about the museum.”

I stayed in the car, and heard him talking through the fence. I looked in the rear-view mirror and Maikael was smiling, motioning me to come over. “Is this the museum?” I asked. “No, but he’s going to give us a glass of wine.” We walked through the front yard, which was really the entrance to a small vineyard, where a man was smoking and talking on his cell phone. “He’s calling the guy at the museum,” Maikael said. The one-sided conversation sounded like he was ribbing the person at the other end of the line: “Hey, where are you? There’s some people waiting!”

We walked into a darkened shed, where two other men sat drinking red wine, the glass looking like something you might sip a strawberry daiquiri from. We were clearly interrupting their afternoon wine klatch. After exchanging “boa tardes,” we were each offered a glass of wine. “Moscatel o vino tinto?” Having never tried moscatel, we went for the former. He drew us generous glasses from a rubber hose attached to a metal cylindrical tub, the deep amber liquid filling the pilsner-style glasses. This was no tasting; this was a full-fledged glass of wine. We sniffed the glass, filling our noses with oranges, honey, and clover, as if it had been poured straight from the field.

In our collective Portuguese, English, and Spanish, we covered a variety of topics, from the production of wine in the Douro Valley to the war in Iraq. When asked what differentiated moscatel from port, Jose Manuel led us to the vines outside the shed’s door, pointing to a still-green bunch of grapes. “Drink of the gods,” he said. After we finished the moscatel, he uncorked a dark, unmarked bottle of wine, lying in a dusty pyramid on the floor. “You want?” he asked. He poured a long draw into another beer glass; the other two men were already well ahead of us, washing their glasses in a soapy tub on the floor. We leaned against a tractor and took a drink; it was delicious. He made a stomping motion with his feet, explaining that the wine tasted so good because it was crushed by humans, not by a machine. “Vinho maduro,” he said. I had read that this wine was famous in the region; red table wine that had aged at least a year.

We asked if they had lived their whole lives in this city. “Not a city,” he said, “a village.” Yes, they had all lived their whole lives in Favaios, except for the two men who had lived in Mozambique. It shouldn’t have been surprising, given that Mozambique was a Portuguese colony until 1977, but it seemed worlds away from where we stood now, propped up against farm equipment. The conversation flowed surprising well, given the barriers in language, culture, and age. Jose Manuel took two bottles and wiped the dust with a rag. “Here,” he said, handing each of use a bottle, “a memory. A gift.”

We were astonished by this pure act of kindness from a total stranger.

This is the kind of experience you pray will happen when you travel, but never seems to. You wish nothing more than to stumble into some real-life scene, to become a part of the culture, if only for an hour. You could never plan this sort of thing, and when it finally happens, it feels like a dream.