Outside's Go Magazine - Travel and Style for Men

Plowed fields alternated with thickets of mushrooming cork trees, their trunks numbered one to nine depending on how many years ago they were harvested. In each tiny town, the sound of our Ulysseses — a baritone grumbling unfamiliar in a region of put-put scooters — caused the old men smoking in the squares to turn their heads in unison and watch us pass. A popular joke about Alentejo: Why does a farmer from Alentejo keep a chair by his bed? So he can rest after rising.

Our first appointment took us to Monte da Comenda Grande, a 100-year-old family farm that spans the horizon in Arraiolos, 85 miles east of Lisbon, just northwest of Évora. Nuno, a 35-year-old with salt-and-pepper hair and the third generation to manage Comenda Grande, gave us a tour of the winery, a low, L-shaped building with a red-tile roof, blue-trimmed shutters, and perfectly tended lemon trees dotting the gravel drive. Despite the quaint facade, the facility, like all the wineries we would visit, was immaculate and modern inside with a temperature-controlled storage room, a white-wine chiller, and a central computer.

At lunch, Nuno led us past antique hammered-copper pots hanging over sooty fireplaces and ceramic cauldrons once used to make wine to a long, rough-hewn dining table. Two aging maids scurried out of the kitchen wearing white aprons embroidered with the family crest and carrying sausage and sheep's cheese produced on the farm.

"We say grace," declared Nuno's stately mother, Maria de Lourdes de Noronha Lopes. "Thank you for the meal, thank you for a safe trip from the U.S..."

The highlight of the meal was a simple country stew of eggs, potato, tomato, brown beans, and green pepper. A local herb that grows wild near streams lent a tangy flavor, like mint and oregano.

And then the wines, five of them uncorked in the middle of the table. Nuno poured the table wine first, and we gradually progressed to the reserva. They were simple and honest, what you would expect from vines that are four years old and growing in blazing sunshine.

The winery's story might be there, but Tim and I agreed that the wine wasn't quite. That evening, we toured another vineyard down the road and the next day two others up north that were solid but not astounding. Even so, with the Ulysseses always waiting, we never felt even a twinge of disappointment. The empty, two-lane roads between wineries wound and dipped through ranches and mowed fields with huge boulders clustered around flat-topped trees in the middle of brown meadows. We'd juice it over a rise to feel our stomachs float, then careen into windy creekbeds and round out the tires. Twenty minutes of whoop-and-holler riding would pass before we'd see another car. Dangerous-corner signs signaled fun ahead.