What goes around comes around (Part 2)

From the Azores to California – from California to the Azores.

It was hot in the Alentejo last week, so we decided to leave the grapes to get along with their ripening, and take a short holiday to the temperate, verdant Azores. To reach the Azores from Lisbon, one flies towards NY, and stops at 1/3 of the distance over the Atlantic, after 2.30 hours, and 1500 km. It was ashamedly, our first visit to the Azores. It was definitely not our last.

Whenever I am asked the inevitable question of where we export our wines, I like to answer with the pun that Madeira and the Azores are our largest export markets. The pun being that they are not technically ‘export’ markets, but if they were, they would come in strongly in first place. We have been selling our wines in both island areas for many years, and we saw evidence of that often on this trip, including on the restaurant list of what must be one of the best small hotels anywhere, Hotel do Colégio, in Ponta Delgada. But this was NOT a marketing trip. This was a family trip, and as we were travelling with sporty teenagers, a very active one, with swimming in volcanic beachside pools, whale and dolphin watching boating excursions, and lots of hikes up and down volcanic craters, sometimes enjoying spectacular views, sometimes with zero visibility due to the low clouds and ground hugging fog. We were constantly reminded of the Azorean expression “All 4 seasons can be experienced in a single day”. Perseverance was awarded more than once, like on our climb up Pico, which began at 1400 meters, groping in dense fog to find the trail, but ended breaking out in bright sunlight at the summit of 2350 meters, Portugal’s highest point.

From the summit of Pico, we could clearly see the other nearby islands, Faial, S. Jorge, and for us, most important of all, Graciosa, the birthplace in 1872 of my great, great grandfather Francisco Correia Sarmento. We were honouring him by climbing Pico on his birthday, July 22, – 136 years after his birth! He sailed to America with the rest of his family in 1888, never to return to his beloved Azores. In New Bedford, America, he joined other Azorean migrants working in the whaling community, but when the American whaling industry fell into decline, he followed the movement to California, where more than half of the Portuguese migrants from those days eventually ended up.

Frank Courier Simonds (his anglicized name) eventually settled down at the Pacific seaside, in San Diego, California, where he planted figs, avocado, olive trees, and of course vines in his backyard. After having visited the Azores myself, and realizing what an important role the sea plays in everyday life, I can’t imagine anyone having been brought up in Graciosa, ever being happy living far from the ocean.