Summer’s simple pleasures

The summer months seem longer in the Alentejo than anywhere else.  Not just because watching grapes grow and ripen is a very slow process if followed day by day. Not just because of the anticipation and anxiety of guessing when the vintage will start, and bustling around the winery to get ready in time.   Not just because Portuguese school kids enjoy more than 3 months of never-ending summer holidays, and their parents enjoy a 1 month annual break.

The long daylight hours bursting with summer heat and sunshine, are followed by the magical summer nights, when the Alentejans emerge from their thick white walled houses to enjoy the fragrant balmy evening breezes until the wee dawn hours, visit the local popular fairs held in each village by turn, or for the true ‘aficionados’- watch a local bullfight.

An escape to the chilling Atlantic seaside is one of the highlights of the summer months for all Alentejans, whether it is to enjoy a prolonged family holiday in a rented Algarve apartment, or just a snatched Sunday drive to the closer and less crowded rugged Alentejan west coast, where the waters stay chilly all year round, and the seafood is divine!

Another one of the great pleasures of the Portuguese summer is the abundance of luscious local fruit.  Strawberries in the start of the summer are followed in quick succession by cherries, peaches, nectarines, apricots, plums, figs, quinces, and melons, which as the summer progresses, appear in all shapes and varieties.  We have no pangs about gorging out on the local seasonal fruit, and it appears as an essential part of each and every meal on our table.  Amazing how well the local Iberian black pig Presunto and a slice of ‘Serpa’ sheep cheese, plus a nicely chilled (16º) Chaminé Tinto or Branco accompany a slice of melon, a fresh fig or an apricot!  Add a loaf of crusty sourdough bread baked just hours earlier in the village stone oven  - and sit out under the stars until the wee hours enjoying the simple pleasures of summer!