Fundação Eugénio de Almeida Wine Heritage

How to Complete

5 steps curated by Wine Memories

1. 🍷 1

   Smell the Wine Before You Drink It in a 1580 Jesuit Refectory

   wine $$

   📍 WHERE: Adega Cartuxa, Quinta de Valbom, Estrada da Soeira — 2 km from Évora's old walls, 10 minutes by taxi or Uber.

   💡 WHAT: Before your first sip, your guide leads you through the Scents Hallway — a corridor lined with apothecary-style jars holding aroma replicas of every grape grown on the estate. Smell Aragonez (Tempranillo's Portuguese cousin) — dark plum, leather. Then Trincadeira — violet, iron, dried roses. Then Antão Vaz, the white queen of Alentejo — tropical fruit, almonds, that honey note. This hallway exists because the winemakers wanted you to understand what you're about to taste before the wine hits your palate. No other winery in Alentejo does this. Here's the building you're standing in: the refectory where Jesuit professors ate lunch before teaching at Évora University in 1559. The same university founded as the second-oldest in Portugal. In 1759, the Marquis of Pombal expelled every Jesuit in the country — and the State inherited this estate. The first wine press was installed here in 1776. The arches above the barrels are older than the United States.

   🎯 HOW: Book the Cartuxa Tour (€25/person, 10:30 or 15:00) or the Santo Inácio de Loyola Tour (€80/person, 11:30 or 16:30 — 6 premium wines including cellar rarities). Advance booking is required. Call (+351) 266 748 383 or email enoturismo.cartuxa@fea.pt. The €25 tour includes 3 wines and olive oil tastings. Budget 2 hours.

   🔄 BACKUP: If Quinta de Valbom is fully booked (they hit 100% occupancy in peak season), book the Páteo de São Miguel wine experience in the historic centre instead — same wines, different palace (see next step).

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2. 🍷 2

   Stand in the Cellar Where the World's Best Wine Ages

   wine $$$

   📍 WHERE: The barrel room at Adega Cartuxa, Quinta de Valbom — same building, deeper inside.

   💡 WHAT: After the Scents Hallway, you walk into the cellar. French oak barrels line the walls. In here, somewhere, is the wine that 54 million Vivino users voted the best wine in the world. Pêra-Manca — a wine with roots back to 1300, when Franciscan monks at a convent on this hill first made it. A wine so rare it's only produced in the best vintages. Only 20,000–30,000 bottles of the red per year. Currently retailing at €400–499 a bottle. The 2005 vintage — the one the world voted #1 — was made in the hottest, driest year in recent memory. The vineyard team had to green-harvest (cut off half the grape clusters before ripening) just to concentrate what was left. They weren't sure it would work. It became the greatest Alentejo wine ever made. The grapes: Trincadeira and Aragonez, blended in proportions that shift by vintage (anywhere from 30% to 60% Trincadeira). The head winemaker is Pedro Baptista. Ask him, or your guide, which vintages are currently in bottle.

   🎯 HOW: Book the Santo Inácio de Loyola Tour (€80/person, 11:30 or 16:30) — this is the 6-wine premium experience that goes deepest into the cellar and covers the top-tier Cartuxa and Scala Coeli wines. The tasting also includes three house olive oils paired with Alentejo bread. Call (+351) 266 748 383. If you want a bottle of Pêra-Manca to take home, buy it here — the winery doesn't ship internationally and it's nearly impossible to find outside Portugal.

   🔄 BACKUP: The standard €25 Cartuxa Tour still takes you through the cellar and covers 3 wines — you'll see the barrels even if you don't taste Pêra-Manca. Worth every cent regardless.

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3. 📜 3

   Drink Cartuxa by the Glass in the Palace Where a King Studied as a Boy

   history $$

   📍 WHERE: Enoteca Cartuxa, Rua Vasco da Gama 15, Évora historic centre — between the Roman Temple and the Cathedral. Walk out of your hotel, follow the city walls north, and you'll almost step into it.

   💡 WHAT: In April 2024, after their best year ever (30,000 visitors, 40% growth), the Fundação Eugénio de Almeida opened this new wine experience at Páteo de São Miguel — in the Palace of the Counts of Basto. This palace was once the residence of King Dom Sebastião in the 1470s, when he came to Évora to study as a boy. The same boy who would grow up to lead Portugal to disaster at the Battle of Alcácer Quibir in 1578, disappear without a trace, and leave no heir — triggering 60 years of Spanish rule over Portugal. History was made in these rooms. Now you sit in those rooms and drink Cartuxa wines by the glass with a menu of contemporary Alentejo food. Chef Bouazza reimagines migas, bochechas de porco, and requeijão de ovelha with modern technique. The wine list is pure Cartuxa estate — reds, whites, rosés, all from vines 2 km away. Budget €30–35/person for food and wine.

   🎯 HOW: Walk or take a 5-minute taxi from Quinta de Valbom after the winery tour — combine them in one afternoon. No booking required for the wine bar/enoteca. For the Páteo de São Miguel wine experience (tasting + palace tour), times are 11am and 4pm — book via the Cartuxa website (cartuxa.pt) or call (+351) 266 748 383.

   🔄 BACKUP: The Forum Eugénio de Almeida (the Foundation's contemporary art gallery — in the former Inquisition Palace, Largo do Marquês de Marialva) has a wine bar as well. Open Tuesday–Sunday, 10:00–19:00 (May–September). Different building, same foundation, same wines.

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4. ⛰️ 4

   Watch 2,000 Years Catch Fire at the Roman Temple — Bring Your Wine

   adventure Free

   📍 WHERE: Templo Romano, Évora historic centre — 200 metres from the Enoteca Cartuxa. You'll see the columns above the roofline before you arrive.

   💡 WHAT: Twelve Corinthian granite columns, 7.68 metres high, standing since the 1st century CE. Nobody has called this the Temple of Diana since it was built — a 17th-century priest named Manuel Fialho invented that name in the 1600s, based on nothing, and it stuck for 400 years. It was actually built for Emperor Augustus, who was worshipped as a god during his lifetime. After the Roman collapse, it became part of Évora Castle, then a medieval butcher shop — the stone walls between the columns kept the structure from falling. Imagine: butchers cutting meat inside a Roman temple for 400 years. The golden-hour light on white Alentejo evenings turns these columns the colour of old wine. The Jardim Diana viewpoint behind the temple gives you the columns with the Alentejo plain stretching south for 50 kilometres. There are no walls, no queues, no ticket, no audio guide. Just you, 2,000 years, and whatever is left in your glass.

   🎯 HOW: Show up between 6pm and 8pm (summer) or 4pm and 6pm (winter) for the golden-hour light. There is no entrance fee. The square is freely accessible at all hours. If you've just come from the Enoteca Cartuxa, you've walked 2 minutes. If you've just come from Quinta de Valbom, take a taxi (10 min, €8–10) and ask to be dropped at Praça do Giraldo — the Roman Temple is a 5-minute walk from there.

   🔄 BACKUP: In rain or overcast conditions, the Évora Cathedral (Sé) is immediately adjacent — the cloister is extraordinary and costs just €4 to enter.

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5. 📜 5

   Read the Most Honest Thing Anyone Has Ever Written About Wine

   Optional

   history $

   📍 WHERE: Igreja de São Francisco / Capela dos Ossos, Praça 1 de Maio, Évora — 500 metres south of the Roman Temple.

   💡 WHAT: Three Franciscan monks in the 17th century built a chapel from the bones of 5,000 human skeletons, exhumed from Évora's five cemeteries. They decorated the walls, the arched ceiling, the columns — all in femurs and skulls arranged into patterns. The room is 18.7 metres long and 11 metres wide. Above the entrance, carved in stone, is the inscription that the monks chose: 'Nós ossos que aqui estamos, pelos vossos esperamos.' 'We bones that are here, for yours we wait.' You've just spent the afternoon drinking wine from a 1,000-year-old tradition, in a city that has been continuously inhabited since the Romans. The Cartuxa monks who made wine in this region arrived in 1587 and left in 2019 when the youngest of them was 84 years old. This chapel was there for all of it.

   🎯 HOW: Adults €5, Seniors/Under 25 €3.50, Family (2+2) €12.50. Open daily from 9:00am — closes at 5pm (October–April) or 6:30pm (May–September). Plan 20 minutes inside. The Igreja de São Francisco itself (construction 1470–1510) is worth 10 minutes in the main nave before you descend to the chapel.

   🔄 BACKUP: If the chapel is unusually crowded, the Jardim Público (public garden, free) immediately south of the church has one of Évora's best preserved sections of the medieval city walls, with a ruined royal palace — sit here with a bottle of anything from the Cartuxa wine shop and think about what the monks meant.

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