The estate, which is over a hundred years old, has been massively restored in the last 30 years, and now offers Alentejo-style accommodation, a relaxed restaurant, and loads of outdoor activities including canoeing and boating on their 98-ha lake (manmade but teeming with birdlife), horse-riding and walks. We saw spotlessly maintained mountain bikes of all sizes (very good make, my cyclist husband informed me and I nodded, none the wiser). The lodges, each with its own private kitchenette and dining area, have cool terracotta floors, bathrooms lined with the blue, yellow and white Moorish azulejos tiles, and deep wooden furnishings. They open onto sunny verandas, just metres away from either of the two swimming pools. There’s a giant outdoor chess set for the aspiring Viswanathan Anands, and table tennis for those with less intellectual plans. A tiny chapel nestles in the grounds, light streaming through a small but lustrous stained-glass window above the alter.Part of the small hotel chain, Vila Vita Parc, the Herdade dos Grous is owned by the German investment company DVAG. The main snag with this is not towels claiming sun loungers by the pool (there are more than enough to go round), but that the company books up the herdade most of the year for its employees and rooms are only available in the cooler months from November to March. However, the real reason to visit Grous is for the food and wine.
The vineyards at Grous were only planted from 2002 onwards and they produced their first wine in 2004. The 73 hectares are irrigated from their lake, and winemaking is pretty modern – mostly stainless steel, temperature controlled and selected yeasts with pumpover. 80% of production is red, but they do a couple of deliciously crisp clean white wines that go beautifully with food. One of their red wines is called Moon Harvested; 100% Alicante Bouchet, this is picked when the sap is rising (a phase of the moon, apparently, when it has maximum influence on the earth and results in a rounder wine) and is a dense blueberry and chocolate wine with an edge of herbs and a fragrant dusty finish. It was a particularly good match for the lamb that we had with our lunch. They also do a charming ‘illegal wine’, a no-name for a wine that cannot be called DOC Alentejo, Vinho Regional Alentejano, Vinho do Mesa or even dessert wine, for such a myriad of tripping-over-red-tape reasons that as the winemaker tries to explain, our eyes start rolling. Then my husband’s glaze over and I give up trying to write it all down. It’s 100% Petit Manseng, inoculated (wait for it) with botrytis cinerea flown over from Australia, and then sprayed from five o’clock in the morning until six o’clock in the evening. It clocks in at 13% with 165 g/l of residual sugar and its rich creamy candied fruit flavours would be absolutely divine with those luscious little doces conventuais (convent sweets, more of those later).Grous also raise their own organic lamb, beef and pork on the estate, along with own organic fruit and vegetables. Much of this, in season, forms the basis of their restaurant menu.
Lunch at Grous started with the tiny Galega olives and silky succulent slices of what was soon to become our greedy favourite. Presunto de Barrancos is an intensely flavoured cured meat from the black pig (porco preto), a PDO product which is pretty much the same as jamón ibérico , and made under very strict regulations as we were to later find out. Plates groaning with food kept coming out, lavishly generous portions which, to my shame, we did justice to. A dish of migas with sweet fresh tomatoes and cockles, beneath perfectly fried octopus and drizzled with bay-leaf-infused olive oil had our mouths watering. This was followed by tender spring lamb in a broth called ensopado de borrego, steaming with the fragrance of the herbs. We waddled from the table.
I find that I want to find these recipes, to get into those kitchens and watch them being made, to write them all down, to come back to the UK waving a cook book in my hands and saying, ‘Move on Spain, Portugal has arrived!’ I keep wondering why we don’t have more Portuguese restaurants in London…It wasn’t just the food that absorbed us. Mariana, as so many of the people we met in Alentejo, was practically bursting with stories of the region, the history, the things to discover. April, we found out, is the most beautiful time of year when the dry tawny plains literally explode into colour as the spring flowers come out. It’s cooler, but the landscape is like as breathtaking as an Armand Guillaumin original. We start to understand, as the conversation buzzes round the table, the impact of the 1974 revolution, when the weight of the Portuguese empire, fighting a war on five fronts with poorly paid soldiers and with colonies, richer and stronger than their ruler in rebellion, took its toll. There is a lot beneath the surface of this quiet, slow, dusty place.
Tamlyn Currin