“Herculean work” Miguel Torga called the production of wine. Twelve hours seven days a week. The writer knew it well, he had one of the great consciences (and love) for nature, and he was born in the province of Trás-os-Montes, in the Alto Duero, a privileged microclimate for the cultivation of vineyards. “Insatiable Geophagus” he wrote of himself in Diario, devourer of horizons and kilometers across the province, a defense of mountain spaces that accompanied him for life. It was like granite, António José Saraiva wrote about it, it had the same roughness and ductility, the preferred stone for sparkling wines to grow, compared to slate, the best for Port wines.

Delicate and complex

Torga, literary name of Adolfo Correia da Rocha (1907-1995), was born in São Martinho de Anta. At the age of 13 he was sent to work in Minas Gerais, Brazil, with relatives. Since then, he considered himself an emigrant, a way of seeing and feeling that he said he would never abandon. With that soul, he would travel to Europe, and visit Spain several times, which he described in diary,

The Creation of the World

,

A Bug's Life

,

Portugal and Tales from the Mountain

. A convinced Iberian, the beginning of his literary relationship with the country is dramatic. In 1939 he published The Fourth Day, from the cycle The Creation of the World, his impressions of the trip to Spain at the end of the Civil War, in which he criticized Franco. Nicolás Franco, ambassador to Portugal and brother of the dictator, denounced him to the other dictator, Salazar. Torga was arrested at his medical office and imprisoned in Lisbon. The book was confiscated and was not republished until 1971. “It caused him great sadness not to practice his profession as a doctor,” says the director of the space Miguel Torga in his hometown, and also remembers his admiration for Unamuno and his religious sense, intuition of the sacred and mythical, of the writings. Torga was an herb eradicated from Trás-os-Montes, the wonderful kingdom, as he himself defined it.

More information

Eight great experiences in the center of Portugal to enjoy a territory still unknown

We walked through the building dedicated to him, open-plan, almost glass, built by Eduardo Souto de Moura (another reason to make the trip) and followed the 27 panels with his life and work. The vineyards are visible through huge windows and I remember the new adjectives that I learned regarding wine on this trip through Portugal. His birthplace is nearby. He inherited it after the death of her parents and with Andrée Crabbé Rocha, her wife, they whitewashed and landscaped it to make it a vacation home. I take a photo with a copy of Bugs among the Wisteria: I still can't imagine how I'm going to be surprised by the way in which Torga identifies with animals in 1940.

Rustic, dry and 'embodied'

The road that leads to the Casa de Tormes in the parish of Santa Cruz de Duero, in the Baião City Hall, is winding, steep and a pleasure to see. The vineyards order the landscape and the valleys are sweetened between chestnut and oak trees. There is the Quinta de Vila Nova, the property inherited by Emília de Castro, the wife of José Maria Eça de Queiroz, today the writer's foundation. The diplomat did not live here, but his visit in 1892 led him to see the mountains and make the house the subject of some texts.

Wine cellar at the Quinta da Pacheca winery, in Villa Real (Portugal). Horacio Villalobos (Corbis / Getty Images)

To the author of the realistic novels

El primo Basilio

and

The crime of Father Amaro

, the house seemed very ugly, but the place, very beautiful. Only her daughter Maria finally lived there; The current belongings are those that the writer had in Paris when he served as consul. Queiroz wrote standing up, like Hemingway, and there is his high, upright table, and a curious piece of furniture with drawers. Inside it he left his reflections, and then elaborated them for his books, as if it were a Japanese pillow box. In the library is the Chinese tunic in which he appears dressed in a photograph. Maybe he brought back memories of his stay in the country. Author of

The Mandarin

, he attempted to shape the East within the Japanizing context of the time. The windows in the living room face south, they have two stone benches on the sides to enjoy the intertwined greens of the glasses. Beyond, and not visible, are the Tormes vineyards, and thirty kilometers away the Quinta da Pacheca winery. There they tell me about the astringency and balanced finishes of the wines. And in the Douro Museum, in Peso da Régua, that the women were made to sing during the harvest so that they would not eat the grapes and that the wine was sent to age in Vila Nova de Gaia, since in Régua there are “nine months of winter and three of hell”, optimal for them to grow, but in Gaia there is a more temperate climate and they age better.

Fruity and versatile

Love of Perdition

is one of the most beloved novels by the Portuguese. Its author is Camilo Castelo Branco. He wrote it while he was imprisoned in what is now the Porto Photography Museum, the city's former prison. On the second floor, intended for the nobles, he was locked up for his adultery with Ana Plácido, whom he would later marry and live for almost 30 years in São Miguel de Seide. In prison he wrote the love story of his uncle, Simão Botelho, imprisoned for killing a rival in a love relationship.

One of the rooms of the Porto Photography Museum, a former prison where the author Camilo Castelo Branco was imprisoned.Steven May (Alamy / CORDON PRESS)

In Porto you can take the opportunity to see the emporium created by the Lello bookstore, tour the Jewish quarter and finish with a chocolate and port tasting at the Chocolatería Equador (with that name because the Equator line passes through Santo Tomé, a former Portuguese colony). and cocoa producer). The first years that Castelo lived in his now House Museum in Seide, he wrote 22 novels, including Baleful Stars and Auspicious Stars, titles representative of his voice, a realistic writing of whom he did not stop being romantic. With a huge heart and passionate life, his life, remembers the director of his house, was a book whose episodes were himself. Opposite is the Camilian Studies Center, a building by architect Álvaro Siza. But I'm not going to see him, I prefer to stay looking at Mount Córdoba (the subject of a Camillian novel) from his bedroom window. I think of the three writers. In a meeting between Torga, Queiroz and Castelo talking and walking through the mountains that they loved so much, and the words of the sommelier from the Quinta Nova de la Señora del Carmen come to mind: the best wines are those that are capable of retaining the climax of its flavor and aroma for longer.

Patricia Almarcegui

is a writer, her latest novel is

The Lives I Didn't Live

(Candaya publishing house). 

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