This post, written by Willie Weir, first appeared on his blog, Yellow Tent Adventures, in Oct. 2010, and also on KUOW. We publish it here as a sort of ‘wine tasting.’ Take a moment to drink in this colorful story of northern Portugal, the wine of the people, and the world’s single best grape. Then join Cascade at the Seattle Flagship REI on Jan. 11, 2011 at 7 p.m., where Willie will further regale us with stories about bike travels through Portugal with his wife Kat this year.

A bottle of wine.

We go to the store. We peruse the shelves. Check out the variety, the vintage, the price. We buy it. We open it. We drink it.

Our time in northern Portugal has changed that. There is a connection to the contents of that bottle that will ever change how we experience it.

Late one evening high above the Douro River a voice called out. It was hard to find the person attached to that voice amongst the vast rows of grapes. But a cap and a smile and a wave drew our attention to an old man and a little black dog. 

Within minutes he had clipped off bunches of no less than seven varieties of grapes and displayed them for us to try. He was giddy with excitement over sharing his harvest with two cycling strangers. Tiny almost clear grapes. Light green grapes the size of your thumb. Others the color of a rose petal. They were all sweet and delicious, but one dark blue/purple grape was the single best grape I’ve ever tasted. It was earthy and robust and complex. It didn’t need to be made into wine. It had already achieved greatness.

We camped next to those grape vines and watched the sunrise light up thousands of acres of vineyards in the Douro valley.

Most of the grapes have been harvested in the lower elevations, but higher up, two to three thousand feet, the harvest has been in full swing.

One of our first encounters was west of the city of Braganca. It was a small field. The owner, we assumed, a young man with frosted hair and clean hands was overseeing the picking. He seemed uninterested in the traveling cyclists. But the moment we asked him about his land he came to life and was delighted to answer our questions.

The workers, a group of twenty men and women, ranging in age from 18 to 50, were hunched over with hand pruners, chatting and laughing as they clipped the grapes. They filled smaller plastic baskets that were dumped into larger baskets, where burly men then hoisted and dumped them into the metal containers on an old tractor trailer.

The owner filled one of our water bottles with last year’s wine. These grapes wouldn’t make it into a bottle with a label at the market or wine store. This was wine of the people. Stored in huge glass bottles protected by a woven plastic mesh.

Do you want to try? The owner asked. He handed me a pair of clippers.

Why not? For the next fifteen minutes I clipped away. He said I was very good. Very fast. Of course, everyone around me had already been working for seven hours.

They would be paid 14 Euro for a full day’s work.

The tractor driver, a ruddy-faced, barrel-chested man with a beaming smile, pointed to a crate of grapes and insisted that we take them all. I’m not sure how he expected us to pack 25 pounds of grapes on to our bikes.

We thanked the land owner and the workers for their time and gifts. I reached up to shake the hand of one of the men on top of the large metal containers heaped with grapes. His hands being dirty, he offered me his elbow.

Cheers!

I shook my head and grabbed his hand. It was sticky with the mixture of soil and sweat and grape juice. He laughed and squeezed hard.

The wine of the people that we drank from our water bottle was not subtle or refined or worthy of a rating.

It was tangy and a bit sour.

But it was wine with a story and a handshake.

And we loved it.

The following passage is by Joe “Metal Cowboy” Kurmaskie, whose Holiday Spectacular takes place at the Seattle Flagship REI Store on Tuesday, Dec. 14 at 7 p.m. through the Cascade Presentation Series.

The excerpt, which offers a preview of the Metal Cowboy’s storytelling humor, describes the time he pedaled down the East Coast with a toy Santa that he “rescued” from a frat house.

~

Given the choice, never bike camp behind a frat house during pledge week.

Breaking glass and drunken stabs at Loverboy’s Working For The Weekend brought me around. I heard young men hollering for more beer between giggling pleas of a girl instructing someone to “keep it above the waist.” When a Singing Santa broke into Jingle Bells, I felt myself going down the rabbit hole.

And Santa would not shut up. Apparently, someone else had qualms with the holiday keepsake on a song loop.

“Is this a sword?” a pledge asked, slurring his words.

“Sure is. Samurai! I bought it at the mall.”

The Fat Man was a goner.

“Gimme that sword.”

Lots of laughter.

“Any last words, Santa?”

While his singing was torture to someone trapped in a tent, did Father Christmas really deserve execution? The porch door bounced opened.

“Hey. Totally uncool. Shelly’s mom lent us these decorations. You want to hack something, there’s trees all over New England.”

Fraternity brother to the rescue.

First light found me cold, tired and surrounded by beer cans. I packed up. That should have been the end of it. But curiosity and all….

I tiptoed up the steps. What did I hope to find?

At least Santa’s presence out of season was explained. Someone majoring in sloth had decorated for all the holidays at once: colorful lights, plastic pumpkins, a green leprechaun resting in the nativity manger with Mary and Joseph kneeling over him, no doubt praying for answers as to why the son of God was a wild-eyed gnome swinging a pot of gold. It took me a moment to locate singing Nick. Someone had thrown the Twister mat over him. Only his black boots and the cuff of his red suit were exposed.

I removed the mat. He looked a bit rough. His pipe was hacked clean off, leaving only a small black nub. This gave him the appearance of a cigar-chewing crime boss or a rough and ready Yukon explorer. Also sliced was the top of his trademark cap, adding to the working class look. Think Santa Brando in On The Waterfront. When I pulled away the Twister mat, he broke into song.

I was holding him up to locate an off switch when I heard the pack of dogs.

Working a bicycle up to speed with a two-foot plastic Santa stinking of beer balanced between one’s knees, well, that’s no picnic. I’d fidgeted on Santa’s lap plenty of times as a child, but this was the first time he’d returned the favor.

Once you’ve saved a life you are responsible for it. I lashed Santa to the back rack with a bungee cord.

He had speakers in the back of his head and his belly so I was getting the holiday spirit from all sides. When a good size truck blew by, Santa detected motion and broke into song. Why not just turn him off when I wasn’t in the mood? He had no off switch! No discernible latch, secret hatch or hidden nest for batteries.

Strapped across the rack, Santa looked to be cloud gazing, working on his tan or counting birds for the Audubon Society. Fine if we’d been pedaling across a desert, but every telephone line of starlings set him to song. Shifting my butt would cost me a Feliz Navidad or a few verses of White Christmas.

By New Hampshire we’d worked some things out. For starters, I’d located his sensors. They were behind his eyes.

I moved him from the rack to one of the rear panniers. His top half sticking over the rim of the bag put me in mind of an old sailor scanning for land. If only he knew a few shanties. If I didn’t want to hear from my fat friend, I’d blindfold him with a bandana. Granted, this made him look like a condemned man awaiting the firing squad, but when I pulled the sash up to his forehead, he became a swashbuckler performing a giddy holiday medley.

In my secret heart, I liked having a sidekick to egg me on, even if we drew stares.

But let’s face it, Santa was a conversation starter. Who can resist dancing to a rowdy rendering of Holly Jolly Christmas? Not a pack of hacky sack playing teens on the courthouse lawn in Hartford, I’ll tell you that.

Roadside diner waitresses asked if Santa would like an order of cookies and milk, or a carrot for his reindeer. He was worth his weight at scoring me free desserts and veggies.

Another use: security. I’d assign Santa night patrol outside my tent when renegade camping. If anything breached the darkness he’d go off like a holiday-theme alarm system.

In the years since, I’ve had many riding partners. And every single one of them has been better company than a two-foot chunk of singing plastic.

But I’ll say this, no one ever pulled me through a lonely little patch in my life with more flare and musicality.

All along I thought I’d rescued Father Christmas. It turns out, it was him saving me.