The ghost grape of the Atlantic. Ramisco grows only at Colares, west of Sintra, in dune sand so deep that the phylloxera louse could never cross it — so every vine stands on its own roots, as all of Europe's did before the plague. The vines are planted down through the sand to the clay beneath, then trained crawling along the ground behind reed windbreaks that blunt the ocean wind.
Once the pride of Lisbon's tables, the vineyard has been squeezed to some twenty hectares between the Atlantic and the advancing suburbs. The wine repays the obstinacy: pale, fiercely tannic, salt-edged reds that demand years and can age for half a century — a taste of pre-phylloxera Europe, preserved in sand.