The

The
length of time that visitors tend to spend browsing the
shelves of this singular “farm shop” is at odds with its diminutive
size. Part deli, part design boutique, part community hub, it’s the
kind of cool, sweet-smelling place it’s easy to lose track of time
in, as you curate a basket filled with items sure to bring sunshine
to your dinner table and beyond.

Set on São Lourenço do Barrocal, a 200-year-old agricultural
estate and retreat near the village of Monsaraz in Portugal’s
Alentejo region, the red-roofed, whitewashed store showcases a
thoughtfully sourced collection of the heritage handcrafts, fashion
and flavours the country does best.

“We sell great-quality Portuguese products, local products and
products that we produce on the grounds,” explains shop manager
Patricia David, who is showing us around the immaculately arranged
space – all dove-grey accents contrasting with terracotta-tiled
floor. “It’s important to us to have a close relationship with our
suppliers. Some of our items are made by artisans that don’t even
have email, so you have to physically go and find them.”

She points out a tower of hand creams – “by one of Portugal’s
best-known cosmetics brands, Benamôr, which has been operating out
of Lisbon for almost 100 years” – and a display of calendula-yellow
boxes – “Couto, the toothpaste our grandparents used”.

On a central table are salad servers hand-carved in olive wood,
contemporary pottery made using age-old techniques, embroidered
cotton drawstring bags used for serving bread in and bowls formed
from curls of local cork bark (“perfect for fruit,” advises David,
“but not cheese, because the cork soaks up the fat”). There are
rugs and blankets made on ancient handlooms in a restored wool
factory in nearby Monsaraz, a rail of boldly printed kaftans
hanging above a parade of classic leather flip-flops, soya
wax-based botanical-scented candles and covetable artworks and
coffee-table books (in Portuguese and English). A bank of
old-school wooden desks offers a cornucopia of kid-friendly
diversions, from cheerful woven sheep, small enough to fit in a
child’s fist, to spinning tops, tractors and articulated crocodiles
pulled by string, all handcrafted in smooth, tactile wood.

The pièce de résistance, though, for those browsing while
hungry, is the shop’s second room. Alongside the estate’s own
products, which include herbal loose leaf teas, jams made with
surplus fruit and veg, pepper paste, crackers and craft beer
flavoured with pennyroyal, is a roll call of the snacks and comfort
foods that the Portuguese have been turning to for generations.
Think Regina chocolate umbrellas, Paupério biscuits, Sanzé fried
salted almonds and beautifully illustrated José Gourmet tins of
sardines and cod.

Those almonds will make you thirsty, which is where the shop’s
third room comes in – a cave dedicated to the estate’s reds, whites
and rosés. “We’re very, very proud of our wine production,” says
David. “We don’t irrigate the vines, so they grow at their own
pace. They give us what they want to give us and the guys in our
winery do absolute wonders with what the plants give them.”

Can’t decide? David and her team have thought of that, too. The
Barrocal Favourites selection contains two bottles of white wine
Reserve 2017, two of red Reserve 2016, two bottles of organic
Galega PDO olive oil and a jar of wildflower honey – and can be
shipped direct to your home.

With a picnic in mind, and David with a mountain of mint foliage
awaiting drying, we leave carrying a large tote bag featuring
Jéronimo, the estate’s beloved donkey, laden with rustic breads,
local cheeses, cherry tomatoes, herbs, cakes and a cold bottle of
rosé, which, unlike much of the shop’s stock – quality products
that are long-lasting by design – will no doubt be long gone by
sunset.