Favaios and Moscatel, Dinner at Quinta da Avessada a UNESCO site 12/20/2013

FAVAIOS  MOSCATEL BREAD AND AVESSADA

 

The ship left Vega de Terron for Pinhao. 

Here are a couple tiles I caught with my camera.  This one shows the river.

This one some of the dress.


In the afternoon we bused to the small village of Favaios, where Moscatel was invented and still is bottled and where a famous bread is baked.   It was a highlight of the trip.






The village was dedicated to producing wine and everyone had some role in growing the special grapes, making the wine, and bottling or in baking the bread that goes with it so well.

In fact, this is the only place that it can be officially made.

Moscatel happened because in 1940 a ruling came down that no grapes grown above 400 meters could be used in port.  These wines are grown at 600 meters.  So they either had to simply make table wine or invent something new.  The answer was Muscatel.  It results really from a process like Port Wine, but depends on one particular sort of grape and so it is unique. 

The entire town works to make this happen, and I can see it is a great deal of hard work at certain times of the year.

Favaios sets on a plateau on top of a mountain.  It is the highest flat area in the Douro valley. 1500 people live there and they put out 30 million bottles of Muscatel every year.  To be fair some of these “bottles” contain just about one large glass of wine, but it is still a great feat.

Very little of this gets to the United States.  About ninety percent is consumed in Portugal markets.

 We twisted and turned along the roads to get there.  At times we were just inches from the edge of the road and along a cliff that with any miscalculation would be our death.

Our host would tell a joke about this winding road.

In the joke the boss was English and his workmen Portuguese and neither spoke the other's language, so they did not communicate very well.

The Portuguese workers in Portuguese asked how the boss wanted them to build the road.  The boss thought they asked  if  he wanted them to make the road. 

The boss answered, “Yes, yes, yes” and so the roads were all built in the shape of the letter S.

Riding along this road was very beautiful, grand, and much like being in an airplane.  There were terraced mountainous hills and a few buildings for as far as could be seen, rolling hill after rolling hill.

On the way up we saw these strawberry trees with ripe fruit.  It is not usually eaten, but used to make another drink called Medronho

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medronho

images for Medronho

The grape for Moscatel may be the first fruit cultivated by man
http://www.ecoagricultores.es/Moscatel-Grape

It has not always been easy to grow the golden grape for Moscatel.  At one time phylloxera, a disease attacked any of the vines that grew in the ground and threatened the potential of the whole crop.  American vines are immune to the disease so one solution was to grow American vines and graft in the muscatel.

The schist rocks again help to keep the vines growing as they do for Port, cooling them in the summer and warming them in winter.  Because these are natural rocks deep in the ground, they do not have to put rocks around the vines as we saw them do for winter in France.  I managed to bring one home to use as a card protector.  Nice and free souvenir.

Part of the reason for the success of this wine is that the entire town works together with great spirit and determination and pride toward success.  That was clear.

We were hosted by the son of one of the major grape estate families.  He was very funny.  He took us to the museum and on the way, he stopped at the barbershop and told us that the barber would cut hair for 6 euoros  unless a fellow had very little hair.  Then it would cost 7 euros, due to the added work of finding the hair to cut it.

Here was a great building on the way to the museum and we met in front of the chapel.

 

Our guide, the son of a local vineyard owner, briefed us

The museum was interesting but not very full of much of anything.  We did learn again the process for making the wine, but it was one of these museums that have more posters than actually museum pieces.  We did see a small video made by the local school kids with some English signs welcoming us. It was very cute and funny and an interesting way to include the young in the process of welcoming tourists.

There were some interesting wall sayings.  One poem by Antonio Cabra, "Aqui, O Homen" from Poemas Durienes.

ANTONIO CABRAL AND THE TEXT OF THIS POEM

And I loved this one:

“Men are like wine.  Some turn to vinegar, but the best improve with age.”  Cicero

There was this representation of the famous bread.

I loved the look of this old book from 1514 depicting the charter of the Town.

And yes I was there photographing any interesting paperwork I might encounter



In the room where we saw the welcoming video made by the children of the town as a way of welcoming us by marching about and holding up signs in English.  Some of it was done around this fountain so an older kid had to stop there on the way out of town.



In the room of the video there were a few paintings that clashed with the quaint nature of the place.  I'm not sure why they were there, but here was the most interesting.  Oops, I now notice I was not supposed to photograph it.

From the back of the museum we could see the beauty of the wine fields. 







Here the host told us that if the rain came from one direction or over behind the chapel, everyone would run and hide in their houses because it was coming from Spain.  The worst weather comes from Spain. 
This was one of the few actual times I got pieces of the negative feelings between the Portuguese and the Spanish.

Here also we saw gardens that had growing Kale of a couple varieties.  I wish more had been served on the ship.

At the factory that processes the grapes we saw a huge operation that was mostly stainless steel.  It all cost about ten million dollars, especially since they only bought parts from Portugal, helping the economy of the country.

Once only 60 families worked in making wine.  Now 450 participate.

Here is one of our fellow travelers, from Canada, showing off the souvenir bottle of Moscatel.  She and her husband were two of the youngest travelers and they were delightful.  She is currently a house stager and he runs a metal shredding operation for recycling.
 

 These are other offerings

 The wine is processed in stainless steel or oak barrels depending on the stage of the process and what is intended as the product.  At first 60 families participated.  Now 450 families are part of the process. 
First there is some alcoholic fermentation and then skins and pigments are sprayed over the liquid for tanins and pigment.  It sits for 3 years in a stainless steel vat.  Then it is blended.  Three paddles pull skin and liquid to grapes.  This is aged in oak barrels that extract some of the flavor.  Some of it sits for 20 years in oak barrels. 
What stops the fermentation is blending in alcohol that is 77% pure, a grappa like concoction.  This kills the yeast, stops the fermentation and as a result preserves the sugar.
Skins and seeds are sent on to distilleries to make spirits like the grappa to use for this blending.

French oak barrels add a bit of vanilla flavor.  American oak adds a carmel and Portuguese oak adds spice like pepper.

80 percent of wine tasting is done by women. 

Our guide said that if you take a girl out for the first time and she orders tea or juice, then you quickly ditch her, but if she orders wine, she is worth the pursuit.

 

 

 This below was very interesting.  The skins of the grapes left after the processing are dried to a powder which then goes to cosmetic companies.


 

Along with the wine the town is famous for bread making and this video shows the head baker.  Our setting was a bit smaller, but the process is the same.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0bPNph6ZgQ

Here are photos of the woman we saw and the music that we experienced
http://www.flickr.com/photos/73515164@N00/8700728563/in/photostream/

Our guide, strangely named Me Too

claimed that the secret of the bread was the water in the nearby spring.  We were able to see it made and eat it with some good cheese and jam.  The baker was there but pretty busy.  

The bread rises twice, once for 30 minutes and then for 40 minutes and finally it spends 40 minutes in the oven.
It is shaped like an H.
We got to taste the hot just baked bread warm with some jam or butter.  It was delicious. 




Outside were the two musicians playing a huge drum, an accordion that you see in that photo. 

We did not see her dancing with a bottle on her head, but others from our ship did.

Our guide told us that it depended on the bakers mood and business if she was friendly... One group that Carl was with got to see her dance.  When we were in the bakery, she was busy pulling bread from the oven and grumpy.  

 We would see the musicians later at the restaurant


with one additional fellow playing the tambourine.  The host said he was one of the farmers.
The restaurant area was delightful.  

Here is the ceiling

And it was warm




 They served a number of courses of tastes and all seemed authentic.  This was so unlike the poor representation I Salamanca.  It felt that we were in fact in this town.
It would be fun to stay there.  It is not visited much by tourists.

Nothing here was tasteless or bland.  We sat at round tables and were served plates of a carnita like pork, turkey, mild fish patty, soup, chicken, meat loaf, potato, cabbage, and the deserts included coconut cake and cream brulee.  Red and white wine served, the white from their grades, the red from a neighbor's vineyard.

I over ate.  And I had no regrets.

Our host spoke to us again and introduced us to his mother who owned the wine estate.  He was always animated and great fun.



Here are our guides enjoying the evening.. these are our daily guides on the bus...  Very good job done by them during the entire trip; plenty of jokes, information and quiet for those like Elizabeth who needed her rest.

And this fellow is the cruise director, Carl West.  Very low key.  If he was ever agitated, and he must have been, no one of us would ever know it.



We sat with a couple from Pittsburg who were always fun.  Tom taught school and Kathy loved pickleball.
http://www.usapa.org/whatis_pball/

Then we danced to celebrate a 60 year anniversary of a couple on this trip. 


The band came out playing, “Here comes the bride” sang a few songs to them and we all did a line dance.  My arthritis was fine enough for dancing and I loved every minute.

When we left it was dark, and the effect was delightful in the back yard overlooking some fine views.

 

Finally it was time to go. 


Elizabeth and I went downstairs in the ship lounge for a few dances and to visit with the couple married 60 years.  He had not spoken much on the trip, but he told this one joke.
Three couples come to celebrate their anniversaries and each requests a song.  The couple married one year requested Now and Then.  the couple married 20 years requested the song Memories and the couple married 50 years requested, "We did if before and we can do it Again."  He was delighted telling the joke, even if he did have to use his wife's brain in remember the name of the song Memories.
The woman was a delight the entire trip.  I noticed her the first day because she had a distinctive knitted hat.  Then each day a new hat came out.  So I asked her about it and she said they had all been knitted for her by her mother who had passed away in 1995.

This was our best day!

RELATED SITES

Here is the bakery on video in June
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0bPNph6ZgQ

Some of the kind of dancing we did after the meal
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnNnHVWHQYY

Interesting speaker and conference
http://site-12.dourofilmharvest.com/en/dfhtalks_OPAOEOVINHO.aspx