60 | Viking Explorer Society News
Portugal: Where history and
FLAVOUR MEET
Every bend of the Douro River brings another flavour, every meal
another loosening of the belt, writes Catherine Marshall.
Y
ou will never go hungry on the
Douro River in Portugal's far north.
Here, nourishment assumes biblical
proportions: bread is broken, fish
are multiplied, rainwater and sunshine and
vines are miraculously turned into wine. If my
10-day Portugal's River of Gold itinerary were a
menu, the first course would be the port wine
for which this UNESCO World Heritage Site is
fabled. Before setting sail from Vila Nova da
Gaia at the mouth of the river, I visit Graham's
winery, where for generations port made at
quintas upriver has been aged in the maritime-
cooled cellar. In the tasting room, tawnies and
rubies and vintage ports pool in their glasses
like liquid gemstones. Harvested from a slip of
terrain spilling towards the river in the world's
oldest demarcated wine region, Douro DOC,
this heavenly nectar is forged at the very gates
of Hades.
"We have nine months of winter and three
months of hell," says Regina Duarte, a guide at
Graham's.
It's spring now, and shasta daisies will soon
paint purple stripes between the vineyards.
Those seasonal extremes have been quenching
and nourishing vines here for 2,000 years. This
fruit—and the landscape unspooling beside me
as the Viking Helgrim glides towards Portugal's
border with Spain—is distilled into my glass at
mealtimes: Vinho Verde, a delicately fizzy
early-harvest "green wine" from the western
Douro; reds and whites showcasing indigenous
grape varieties; white port mixed with tonic for
spritzers; and the moscatel which grows sweet
on lavish sunshine around the Douro Valley's
highest point, Favaios.
Centuries ago, millers would cart flour from the
dock at Pinhão to the village, which is revered
for its Favaois Trigo (butterfly-shaped loaves of
bread). Custodians of the tradition still ply their
trade here - among them Dona Rosalia Araujo,
who famously worked as dictator Antonio de
Oliveira Salazar's last maid. After his death in
1970, she returned to her village from Lisbon
and resumed the craft she'd learned at her
grandmother's knee. Early each morning she
kneads the dough, shapes around 300 loaves,
and slides them into a 117-year-old wood-fired
oven.
Dona Rosalia's fragrant bread accompanies the
regional specialities served at that night's
dinner by Viking Executive Chef, Cesar Mata:
piri piri chicken, quindim de coco com ananas
(caramelised coconut and pineapple cake) and
toast topped with my personal favourite, grilled
sardines.
Back down at the river mouth, I learn that this
Portuguese staple is also defined by tradition:
for over a century, women have been hand-
sorting and hand-packaging the day's sardine
haul at Pinhais & Co in Matosinhos, near Porto.
A sardine-shaped staircase coils through the
lobby of the original Art Deco factory building;
in the modern factory behind it, hair-netted
women snip off the fishes' tails with scissors and
tuck them into pickle-lined tins spinning around
a conveyor belt. Snug on their vegetal
mattresses and doused in olive oil and spicy
tomato sauce, these tiny fishes, like their biblical
counterparts, will be sent into the world to feed
the multitudes.
Atlantic
Ocean
PORTUGAL
SPAIN
Porto
Régua
Lamego
Pinhão
Barca d'Alva
Vega de Terrón
Salamanca
Coimbra
Lisbon
Madrid
DOURO RIVER
–
C r ui s e
•• •• •• •• •• •• •• ••
M o to r C o ach
••
O ve r night in Po r t
VIEW
VOYAGE
GETTING THERE: Consider our 10 -day
Portugal's River of Gold journey,
from Lisbon to Porto.
Douro River, Sunset, Porto
