Port, Porto, Portugal (30)

Germany gave us Bach, Beethoven, and Hitler; Portugal gave us port, ginja, and the Inquisition. 

I like port and ginja because they are sweet and go great with dark chocolate. But I have a problem with the Inquisition, even though the suffering it inflicted upon my people was on a much smaller scale than the Shoah, probably because there were fewer Jews in Europe five hundred years ago than in 1939.

It’s not like the Inquisition has been on my mind since I arrived in Portugal. On the contrary. I wanted to get a feel for the country and see if I could communicate in continental Portuguese in case I decide to retire here, not dwell on the past. But the tuk-tuk guy in Lisbon brought up the topic, and since then I’ve been thinking about Portugal’s historical sins even though I never intended to do it.

To be fair, most of the credit should be given to the ruthless Spanish Inquisition and King Ferdinand, who forced the Jewish population to convert to Roman Catholicism or get the hell out of Spain. In March of 1492, the famous year that Columbus “discovered” America, Ferdinand issued the Alhambra Decree with the blessing of Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor, and gave his loyal Jewish subjects four months to pack up their stuff and leave. Thousands left for North Africa and areas controlled by the Ottoman Empire, where they were allowed to resettle. Many converted and stayed in Spain or escaped to Portugal; some continued to practice their religion in secret. 

Portugal was more like the evil sister of Spain. She learned from the Spanish experience and perhaps tried to improve on it. The goal of the Portuguese Inquisition, which was established in 1536, was to prosecute and eliminate New Christians who were suspected of secretly practicing the old faith. The courts conducted show trials of the Crypto-Jews—as they are called to this day—in Lisbon and Porto, and other places less famous, all the way to the colonies in India and Brazil. The blood-cleansing laws that made possible the immiseration of the New Christians and their descendants were in effect until 1770, and the Inquisition remained in place until 1821, when it was finally abolished.

The funny thing is that to this day the name Torquemada sends chills down my spine. Maybe I have seen too many movies, I don’t know. I also cannot say that my childhood teachers tried to protect me from the gory details of his actions. He was actually part of the curriculum. I can still remember the drawings of Jews secretly lighting candles on Shabbat or being tortured, hanged, and burned at the stake. As a result, even today, when I see the number 1492, I don’t think about the discovery of a new continent by European sailors, but about the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. It’s what it means to be Jewish. Even a non-practicing one like me.

I am not holding a grudge, though. Bad things have happened to Jews throughout the centuries in many places, not only on the Iberian Peninsula, and the calamity that was inflicted on the Jews of Portugal has already run out the statute of limitation, anyway. I’m over it. Besides, the Portuguese government is trying to make amends by offering descendants of the expelled Jews Portuguese citizenship, which includes an EU passport. It’s pretty great for Jews with a Portuguese last name. But I can’t completely ignore history when it is shoved in my face in broad daylight. So, I’ll send it to the back of my mind, and leave it there for the time being. In the meantime, I am going to see what Porto has in store for me. 

I know nothing about Porto, apart from the assumption that port wine is named after this city or that it comes from this city. I became aware of this piece of trivia under somewhat unexpected circumstances.  

It was during a seminal wine tasting that took place at a large convention hotel in San Francisco more than twenty-five years ago. My participation in that event was not due to my interest in wine or my good connections. I was part of the floor crew whose job was to clear the wine glasses from the tables and replace the spit buckets. It was one of the most disgusting jobs I have done in my pre-full-time job days; but it did have a few perks, including free food and meeting a variety of San Francisco artist types and hard-working immigrants from non-European countries.  

I have to confess that in spite of the fact that I have worked in the hospitality business for many years and learned to perform the entire ritual of pouring wine into a glass as if it were liquid diamonds ($395K per gram) and not just fermented grape juice, I did not become a wine connoisseur. I knew how to open a corked bottle without putting it between my knees, I knew into which glass to pour the wine, and I knew to wait for the guest to ceremoniously taste and approve before I filled the glass almost halfway. But I couldn’t care less if the bottle cost three hundred dollars or $2.99 at Trader Joe’s. 

I just never cared about this stuff. 

Until I found out that the port served at that wine tasting had been shipped to San Francisco from Portugal after sitting there in oak barrels for 150 years. My imagination ran wild when I heard that dozens of bottles of port dating back almost to the days of the Inquisition were piled up in the back aisle, where we were taking short breaks between emptying spittoons the shape and size of KFC buckets and collecting used wine glasses from long tables. I just had to try to get a taste, not because I was a lover of port, but because it felt cool to be able to say to myself, “I just had a glass of a hundred- and fifty-year-old port,” to justify the shitty job I was stuck in.

I decided to take my chances with the clean looking white guy in khakis and a blue shirt who was standing by the boxes in which the bottles were waiting to be opened and taken to the guests.

“Hey, are you in charge of these boxes?” I asked him.

I wasn’t sure how he would react. Based on my outfit of black slacks, white shirt, black jacket adorned with gold buttons, and stupid bowtie and name tag, he could have thought that I was just another lowlife trying to get a free drink from him. But he was nice. Maybe a little bored, too. 

“Yes, I am,” he responded, and gave me the name of the distributor he was working for. Not that it mattered because I knew nothing about wine distributors.

“Someone said that these bottles are over a hundred years old,” I said. “Is that true?”

“Yup. That’s right,” he said in a friendly tone, not at all what I expected.

“Can I have a taste?” 

The man looked at me as if I had asked a legitimate question. “Are you allowed to drink during work?”

“Of course not, but this is a special occasion.”

He smiled. “I don’t want to get you in trouble.” He was a lot friendlier than I thought.

“Don’t worry. I’ll tell the manager that I wanted to find out what the stuff I’m serving tastes like.” 

I didn’t think he’d believe me, but truth be told, many times we did get to eat filet mignon and salmon combination plates as well as Alaskan king crab legs and scallops sautéed in butter and garlic at the end of the dinner service. It was more because of optics than the management’s magnanimity. There was just a ton of food left over after large functions that we would have to dump in the garbage had we not been welcomed to it. 

My courage paid off handsomely. The guy let me taste the oldest port he had in his inventory and then offered me a taste from the newer wines, one only a hundred years old and another from fifty years ago. He even offered a taste to some of my colleagues, who at first thought that I was crazy for asking him for a taste and then quickly shed their apprehensions when they saw the outcome of my direct approach. They didn’t see that he was as low on the totem pole as we were, and that he was more than happy to engage with us instead of standing there, alone, like a stick in the mud guarding boxes of wine for a boss who didn’t know he existed.

I have to say that drinking old port was not a life-altering event. I didn’t see fireworks or feel any different afterward. I remember it was sweet, that’s all. It’s hard to remember taste if you do it only once. Even when you know it’s something you will never taste again.  

The memory of drinking port stayed with me, but I never imagined that I would actually see Porto in person. Until now. Not that I can see much because the sun has already set, and all that I can see from the back seat of the car are the blinking lights of the city as we get closer and closer to it.