Definition: Patamares

In Portuguese, "paliers" is also the name given to the vineyard terraces in the Douro Valley where port wine is produced. Wherever you look, the vines seem to have taken over the mountains, even on seemingly inaccessible heights; the patamares, terraces without walls, bathed in sunlight, undulate from the sky to the river, and it is hard to imagine the energy that man has expended over the centuries to carve out these steep slopes. For the soil here is rock. Schist, which is used for everything and can even be found, cut into splinters, in the form of stakes! We are in the Douro Valley. Here, between Régua, 100 kilometres from Porto and the Spanish border, Portugal offers some of its most beautiful landscapes.