History
More than one century ago from Azores to America in a sailing boat…
Francisco Correia Sarmento, born 22 July 1872, sailed at the age of 16 with his family from Santa Cruz da Graciosa to New York in 1888. In New Bedford, Mass., the family was to join up with an elder brother who had set off in advance to try his luck in the New World. New Bedford at the time, was nicknamed the Portuguese capital of the US, and the majority of those immigrants were from the Azores, reflecting their early involvement in the whaling industry. When the American whaling industry fell into decline, many of these migrants moved to California.
In America, his name was anglicized to Frank Courier Simonds, and as a young man, he settled in the Wild West of the time, Colton, California to practice his craft as a barber. He cut the hair of many a legendary cowboy, names such as Wyatt and Virgil Earp. To be sure, he must have had a steady hand, as he lived to a ripe old age of 95, spending his last years once again near the ocean (the Pacific), in an Azorean enclave in San Diego, California.
2 sons and 2 daughters were born from his marriage to Agnes Blackwell. The eldest, Frank Manuel Simonds, born 25 January 1906, was Carrie´s maternal grandfather. Francisco Correia Sarmento never returned to his beloved Azores, but in 1988, exactly 100 years after his one-way voyage to America, his great granddaughter (Carrie) moved to Portugal, where 2 of his great-great grandchildren, (Thomas and Anna) would be born, and would grow up speaking fluent ‘Alentejanan’.
Read more on how the Earp Brothers were some of the few survivors from the OK Corral gunfight.
…20 years in the Far East…..
What do you do if you have made a bit of money in the Far East and decide you want to go into the wine business? If you´re Hans and Carrie Jorgensen, a dynamic Danish-American couple with a can-do spirit, you buy a boat and set off to find your ideal vineyard.
In Malaysia, Hans worked for 20 years for a Danish company - United Plantations
…and back to Portugal in a sailing boat!
‘We´d looked in California, and all sorts of other places first, but we decided that we wanted to return to Europe.’ says Carrie. Their travels took them down the Atlantic seaboard to Spain, via Bordeaux. From there, they drove inland to the hot, dry expanses of the Alentejo. There the future awaited them.
‘I used to be a big Bordeaux fan, but I forgot about that when I saw this for the first time,’ Hans remembers. ‘This’ was Cortes de Cima, a beautiful, sweeping 365 ha estate near Vidigueira in the southeast corner of Portugal. There was a working farm here when the Jorgensens saw it, mostly devoted to cereals, but no grapes. Their search had ended. ‘We liked the climate and we liked the people, so we decided to move to Portugal.’
Finally, Home Sweet Home
After they´d done up the house, they put in a dam and irrigation (absolutely essential if you´re going to make wine in such a climate) and planted 50 ha of mainly Aragonez (Tempranillo) vines with some Trincadeira, Periquita and Syrah. In designing the vineyard, they drew on the expertise of the Australian guru and consultant, Dr. Richard Smart.
The Jorgensens sold their grapes to a local cooperative in 1995, but released their first extremely promising wine in 1996. Right from the start it was clear they’d picked an excellent spot for their vineyard.
- excerpts from Tim Atkin, Wine Magazine Nov. 1999
