Duoro Valley

So we are staying at this absolutely beautiful home in the mountains/very high hills of the Duoro. Rita And her family (son, daughter-in-law and three grandchildren) are totally delightful. She prepared dinner for us last night and invited us to eat with the family. It was a treat to be with a group of English speaking folks. She prepared pork medallions stuffed with sausage and gravy, rice and cooked beans and peas. Lovely wine with the meal and the. Apple crumble with cream for dessert. Of course all this was followed with port that Antonio had made.

This is our sitting room

Entry into our side of the house

 

We are in the upper two windows on the right

 

Breakfast on the patio

Slept great! Got up to another sunny day and a super breakfast on the back porch.

Left for Pinhau where we were planning on taking the train to Pocinho. Our GPS took us to the river on yet another way and Ernie's only comment was something about "shades of New Zealand and heart attack" in the same sentence. He was holding on the the door so tight his knuckles were white. To be honest, if I was in the passenger seat looking down into the valley on narrow twisty roads with no guardrails, I would have been doing a lot more than just sitting there suffering quietly. He's really great about not back-seat driving very oftern!

The plan was to check train times and then maybe go for a tasting before taking the train. When we got to the train, we had about 20 minutes before it left, so we practice going with the flow and waited for the train. The ride was incredible. It was really great for me because I got a chance to focus on everything around and not just the roads. I will definitely bore you with the photos but it is amazing how these vineyards are planted. The ingenuity, perseverance, and amount of work these folks have to do to grow anything here is unbelievable!

Train station in Pinhau

The pictures below are of the Duoro taken from the train. Can you imagine working these vineyard?

 

 

Pretty rugged country, don't you think

See the tunnel opening on the lower right side? That's where our train went through

 

This is the type of boat they used to use to transport the wine to Porto for aging and distribution. Nowadays, they use trucks

 

These are storage vats near the river in Pinhau

See the road in this Quinta. This is the Sandemann's Quinta

 

 

This is Pinhau taken from the patio of the Sandemann's tasting room

Sandemann's tasting room

 

So on to a few more quintas tomorrow. Just finished dinner with our new family. Salad and a casserole with bacalau. Super! Followed with a dessert of strawberries, broken meringue cookies and held together with a combination of mascarpone and Greek yogurt. Of course the requisite red wine followed by Antonio's marvelous Port.

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