It’s beaches, hills and endless plains. It’s cork, olive oil, wine – and a great deal of space left over for simple nature, rosemary and lavender.

It’s a proud people, a forgotten history; it’s discrete creativity, it’s the quivering tranquillity of life.

It’s like the magician’s top hat delved into all the time: out pop rugs, cowbells, tasty titbits. It holds humour, patience, bonhomie; and so much sagacity that, so well developed, catches lovers and the rash in the mesh of a slumbering philosophy that is not without its risks.

It’s a subtly knotted web that stretches out and makes it harder to go away. For those who have been here and for those who live here. So much is left behind, so much that has not been tasted…

It’s a painless yearning, a feeling that brings to each hardy day a secret taste, an inebriating sensation that, quite close by, one can find paradise lost.

Lying within the grasp of all, the Alentejo is a closed coffer the key to which lies in one’s heart.