Landscape of the Pico Island Vineyard Culture
The 987-ha site on the volcanic island of Pico, the
second largest in the Azores archipelago, consists of a remarkable
pattern of spaced-out, long linear walls running inland from, and
parallel to, the rocky shore. The walls were built to protect the
thousands of small, contiguous, rectangular plots (currais) from wind
and seawater. Evidence of this viniculture, whose origins date back to
the 15th century, is manifest in the extraordinary assembly of the
fields, in houses and early 19th-century manor houses, in wine-cellars,
churches and ports. The extraordinarily beautiful man-made landscape of
the site is the best remaining area of a once much more widespread
practice.