The vineyards look like nothing I've seen before. The plants grow in little corrals of maybe 5-10 m wide (locally called currais). They grow low, their brances are not supported and the grapes are small. There are 3 main varieties, all of them whites.
The volcanic rock (basalt) walls separate them from one another, there is some 80 000 km of stone walls on the island. Once you see it you believe it, they are really everywhere!!
The walls were built to protect the thousands of small, contiguous, rectangular plots (currais) from wind and seawater.
The quote is from Unesco's website as the vineyards are protected world heritage sites as an outstanding example of the adaptation of farming practices to a remote and challenging environment. I love how the humans can be innovative :) The picture shows a path going through one of the most famous vineyards around the village of Criação Velha.
On Pico, there seems to be many small winemakers (this is of course a new phenomena), a few of which we got to taste, and two big ones: Azores Co-op and Azores Wine company. The co-op includes more than 250 small producers, whereas the latter is a bit more fancy.
As it happens, I got to taste some of the local goodies :) I don't have any tasting notes and I list below the bottles I was able to get my hands on. Only so few? you might say! The rarer ones were not readily available and many of them were quite expensive, even 20-30e at the store.
Azores Wine company, Pico:
Azores Co-op, Pico:
- Frei Gigante
- Terras de Lava (white)
- Terras de Lava (rose)
- Rola Pipa, Pico, company (my favourite, I had it for my birthday!)
- A Mar from Pochino Bay, Pico, small producer, see press (my second favourite, we had it in this super cute place
- Pedras brancas, Graciosa, news report from the winery
- Quinta da Jardinete Chardonnay, San Miguel
- ERUPTIO Blend
Reds were nothing to write home about, sorry Azores!! Actually in many restaurants they had reds from the mainland, many from Alentejo, Dao, Douro.
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