From the vast holdings of absentee landlords to communist cooperatives, the Alentejo is rich again with wine estates created by once-banished owners and entrepreneurial ex-pats. I first tried Alentejo wines in the bright new regional wine headquarters located on Évora’s Joaquim António de Aguiar Square. They were an acquired taste.
“Wait an hour. At the end of the meal, it will be a different wine,’’ said Reis, suggesting a red Cartuxa for our lunch table. Sure enough, by dessert, the aroma was gone and the flavor became very nearly worthy of the $44 bottle. My personal pick was a $29 bottle of 2008 red Navagante made by Adega Cooperative.
A few miles outside Évora, we visited the Hieronymite monastery Convento Do Espinheiro, founded on a shepherd’s vision of a thorn bush that was on fire but didn’t burn, containing the Virgin Mary within. Royals and nobles visiting in the 1400s used to stay in the hostel here. Today the site has been restored by the Camacho family and discreetly integrated with a luxury hotel. In the church, which is used by everyone, the tile panels and paintings are so refreshed that the colors are almost shockingly bright. It was written of Frei Carlos, the best loved of the monastery’s painters, that his luminous images were drawn from this local landscape of “sweet austerity and intense lyricism.’’
From here we went for a drink in the hotel’s piano bar, a cozy space in the monks’ former kitchen. Then outside on the open plain, where the air smelled deeply of rosemary from the kitchen garden and dogs barked into the dusk, we started back. There was no need for directions. The brightest star, Évora, twinkled on its hill.
Patricia Borns can be reached at patriciaborns@comcast.net.
