Inhospitable Soil

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Don’t drive. When we told people we would be traveling in Portugal, it is the advice we heard. People drive crazy in Portugal. Don’t drive. Such advice only serves as permission to enjoy my little rental Renault as a Formula One car. Today we follow the River Douro, toward a luncheon at Quinta Panscal.
The banks or hillsides rise from the river, in some places over 3000 feet. The landscape austere, rugged and non-boastful, a vista for water color. . .an understated elegance. A world where time stands still. Grape vines grow on narrow terraces cut into the slopes, in soil filled with schist stone. This is soil, the winemaker tells me, where very little grows. A most inhospitable soil, he says.
And yet. From the inhospitable can come life’s treasures. From this region we find the world’s finest Port Wines, nectar of the gods. We sip our port from a small farm terrace, the leaves of the vine, now sienna and ruby, a kind of calligraphy etched into the slopes above the Douro, to the gift of life. Wherever we can find it.