We started the Google search with escarradeira, then moved on to cuspideira and then we started calling people.
A few hours and many phone calls later, we realised we weren’t going to be able to buy any spittoons in time for the first big wine tasting event we were hosting at our new lodge.
And there are a few statistics for why that might be.
While the biggest wine consumers in the world by volume are the USA, France and Italy, the devil is in the detail. The largest wine-drinking country per capita by a long way – at 61.7 litres per person per year – is Portugal (see graphic below).
And like us, people here don’t really feel the need to spit it out.
It was explained to us very well by João Barroso of the Alentejo wine commission. “Wine in Portugal is a staple food,” he told us. And that’s why the prices are so low, the quality so good, and the consumption rates so high.
Foreigners moving to Alentejo immediately understand the tradition of making time for lunch – the two hours when most shops shut, workers gather around a shared dish in their favourite tasca and it’s all washed down with a jug of table wine.
It’s where real business is done and is often followed by café com cheirinho to finish – coffee with the “little smell” being a shot of the local medronho firewater.
As outsiders drawn to a slower pace of life here, there are two options: a) get stressed about not being able to go to the shops in the middle of the day; or b) learn to enjoy a long lunch.
You can perhaps imagine which option we’ve settled on, and we’ve found some amazing secret places near us here in Odemira, in Lisboa and up in the hills of Monchique.
It’s the time of year for annual self-reflection and while we had hoped to open our tourism lodge this year, things do take longer than expected – not just here, but in the construction world in general.
With documents now regularly being requested and submitted to the câmara, hopefully we’re well on the way to securing the certificates we need to fully open in the spring.
After four years of throwing our savings and all our energy into the Valley of the Stars project, we’re reaching the point where we need to start making some money.
In the ‘Big Plan for Our Second Life’, wine has wound itself into the centre of everything we’re doing here and we’ve been immersing ourselves in the stories.
Wine, of course, is all about the story – a good wine can sell for three or four times the price – if the story is good enough.
And what can be better for a storyteller than to ply one’s audience with booze while the story unfolds? It is only going to get better.
‘Wine story tasting’ will be a big part of what we offer – telling visitors the history of Alentejo and Portugal through wine, and through the great people we’ve met in our podcast series ‘Ana & Al’s Big Portuguese Wine Adventure’.
With this in mind, we held our first public event in the valley with thanks to Howard’s Folly – a wonderful winery headquartered in the eastern Alentejo town of Estremoz.
Howard Bilton is a Yorkshireman we met through a Hong Kong connection, and he makes wine in collaboration with Alentejo’s favourite Australian winemaker David Baverstock.
The winery is run by Howard’s son, managing director Tom, who brought their whole range of wines to our stretch of wild coast for our first tasting event.
We decided to make a day of it – invite some friends to stay, hire a chef and put on a proper dinner afterwards … and take the first tentative steps towards running our hospitality business.
Our plan is to hold regular events for locals and visitors alike to bring the history and the stories and the wines of the Alentejo interior to the coast.
And it was also an occasion to label up the very first wine to wear our Vale das Estrelas logo.
Sadly, it will be another year before we plant our own half hectare of vineyard due to the pressures of time and money – and another three years after that before we can make anything from it – but we do get the chance to improve the soil for another year.
There’s something very special about having your own wine.
Our winemaker friend Mauro Azóia offered us a fantastic red made wholly from Castelão grapes and we roped some friends into labelling up the first hundred bottles and dipping the tops in colourful wax.
The artwork is the beautiful image of a sunset over our valley painted by our pal Ed Sumner.
If you fancy an adventure up the Alentejo coast, come and see us and see what you think … we do have a couple of hundred bottles, but this is the festive season, so you might not want to leave it so long!
And we certainly wouldn’t encourage you to spit any out.
We may not have had any cuspideiras available for the Howard’s Folly tasting which was a great success, but as sensible grown up wine people, we did buy some vases which could be suitably repurposed.
Suffice to say, they weren’t required.
ALASTAIR LEITHEAD is a former BBC foreign correspondent now living off the grid in rural Alentejo. You can find Ana & Al’s Big Portuguese Wine Adventure wherever you get your podcasts, or sign up here for his wine blog. He’s on Instagram @vale_das_estrelas.
