Pico Island Vineyards

On the west coast of Pico, in the middle of the Atlantic, the ground is black lava, and the vineyards are built out of it. For five centuries islanders cleared the broken basalt by hand and stacked it into long, low dry-stone walls that divide the slopes into thousands of tiny rectangles called currais. Each one shelters a few vines from wind and salt spray; the dark stone soaks up the sun by day and gives back warmth at night. From above, the result is an astonishing lattice of black lines running down to the sea, a field pattern unlike anything on the mainland.

Viticulture arrived with Portuguese settlers, including Franciscan and Carmelite friars, in the late 15th century. By the 19th century Pico's wine, above all its Verdelho, was exported widely; island tradition proudly recalls that it reached tables as far away as the Americas and the court of the Russian tsars. Then powdery mildew and phylloxera struck in the mid-1800s, and the trade collapsed for generations. Many enclosures were abandoned to scrub, but around Criação Velha the old vineyards were kept up and today again produce wine.

The landscape protected by UNESCO since 2004 covers about 987 hectares, and it is more than vines. Look for the maroiços, stepped pyramids of surplus stone piled up while clearing the fields; the rola-pipas, ramps worn into the shore rock down which barrels were rolled to waiting boats; and rilheiras, grooves cut into the lava by the wheels of ox-carts. Manor houses, wine cellars, warehouses, wells, small ports and chapels complete the picture, and at Lajido de Santa Luzia an interpretation centre explains it all. Near Criação Velha, the restored windmill known as Moinho do Frade stands among the walls, with the channel and the island of Faial beyond.

Behind everything rises Mount Pico, at 2,351 metres the highest peak in Portugal, its volcanic cone giving the whole landscape its material and its backdrop.

Getting there

The vineyard zones lie on the western side of Pico around the municipality of Madalena. Pico Airport (PIX), at Bandeiras in Madalena, is about 10 km away and has flights within the Azores. Ferries cross the narrow channel daily from Horta on neighbouring Faial to Madalena. Ponta Delgada, the largest city of the Azores, is on São Miguel, about 266 km to the east. A waymarked trail, PR5 Vinhas da Criação Velha, threads through the walled plots.