The island of Pico is geologically the youngest island in the Azores archipelago, having been formed around 270,000 years ago, a young island compared to the island of São Miguel, which is over 5 million years old. This young geological age combined with recent eruptions and lava flows, the last eruption being in 1718, means that it is an island marked by the presence of stone, as the basaltic mother rock has not had time to degrade and create soil.
In the volcanic lagid soil that is more than 1500-2000 years old, on the northwest slope of Pico Island, there are vineyards that are 60 to 120 years old, some 80 to 580 meters from the Atlantic. Despite the extreme soil conditions, Criação Velha and Santa Luzia are prime examples of the art of plotting the land, the traditional Currais, which correspond to hundreds of kilometers of arduously erected stone walls, a testimony to lava nature and ancestral cultural practices.
The vineyards, guardians of Pico's ancestral vineyards, are divided into small plots of 0.89 hectares, 0.6ha and 1.4ha. The wines, produced in small quantities, "born and bred" in the heart of the Pico Island Vineyard Landscape, represent the purest and most authentic terroir of Pico.
On this island, vineyards have been planted for over 500 years in the crevices of the volcanic rock, just 50 meters from the sea, where you can hear the "singing of the crab". After the devastating attack of phylloxera and powdery mildew in the 19th century, the stubborn hand of the Picaroto maintained a small pocket of vines that resisted extinction.
This Vinha Centenária is from one of those vines that is over 100 years old and has survived to become the guardian of the Azores' exclusive grape varieties and a witness to traditional winemaking.
In 1465, the arrival of the Utras, a misrepresentation of the name of Joss Hurtere, a Flemish man who was Captain Donatory of Pico and Fayal, was decisive for the development of wine and vineyards on these islands.
We were given the testimony of one of these vineyards still in the Utras' descendants, a small plot in Criação Velha that slopes down to the sea, in the "1st Jeirões", in a place where you get the most sun exposure and concentration, the Vinha dos Utras.
It was also Joss Hurtere, Captain Donatory of Pico and Fayal, who invited Joss Van Aard to the Azores. The Aards became one of the most important vineyard owners on the island, with some of the best plots in the 1st Jeirões.
This is one of those plots, the Vinha dos Aards, on the first line of the sea, which was sold by the family in 1923, replanted by the Cardozos in 1924 and which passes into our hands today.
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