COUNTRY MATTERS
Red berries and the ‘spirit of the devil’ Joe Kennedy
EANNA Ni Lamhna, the naturalist and broadcaster, once discovered a strawberry tree — Arbutus unedo — in a garden in the Berkeley Court apartments area in Dublin 4, a minor sensation she records in her book, Wild Dublin.
This tree or bush of variable dimensions (from 9-13ft) that prefers mixed Mediterranean scrub or coastal pines, is a Lusitanian that may be found today in Munster woodlands, particularly Killarney National Park. Near where I walk in southern Portugal, an arbutus sticks out here and there in scrub, its fruit crunched underfoot for insects and birds to plunder.
The mature arbutus hangs with prickly red fruit for which Pliny, the Roman naturalist, had little time: “The fruit is held in no esteem, the reason for its name being that a person will eat only one.”
I have never sampled. Arbutus berries were then considered animal fodder. Virgil, in his Georgics, commanded that “goats shall have good store of arbutus boughs”. Yet, elsewhere in The Aeneid ,he shadows the ‘rough gaiety’ of the foliage to the funeral of Pallas “braiding with wickerwork a soft, pliant bier, weaving shoots of arbutus, sprigs of oak… shrouding the piled couch with shady leaves… Pallas lying like a flower cut by a young girl’s hand.”
A leap, then, to 16th Century Spain and Bosch’s painting, The Garden of Earthly Delights, now in the Prado, Madrid. In the central panel may be seen arbutus berries, and other fruits, bitten or held by nude human figures. A city symbol of Spain’s capital is a bear with paws leaning against a strawberry tree.
Of course, there is a more contemporary, role for the arbutus which tourists soon learn about in the Algarve: it is the core of a potent spirit — something like poitin, but commercially marketed. This is called ‘Medronho’ which packs a powerful punch of alcohol strength of 45pc to 60pc! ‘The spirit of the devil’ is one local name for it.
The hilly countryside around Monchique is its centre where the tree flourishes on wetter, north-facing slopes in dense clumps on thousands of hectares. It is a flourishing business with different brands, some honey-flavoured. Monchique is a place of spa wells which has attracted visitors since Roman times. The early white blossom of the arbutus turns yellow as berries form, growing red as they ripen. Harvesting is in stages, the berries being over-wintered in vats and pulped while fermenting. Distilling begins in spring when the liquid is transferred to copper pots and brought to the boil. The pots are then sealed with clay and the pure spirit drops through a spigot.
The mineral waters are important to the village of Caldas where three sources feed a commercial plant and a hotel. Visitors with empty containers may fill them for free, though it costs but a euro in national supermarkets for a demi-john.
Medronho, of course, is not free, which is very wise! Last year, several English tourists had a challenge to polish off six shots in succession with almost fatal consequences for one of them. This is a spirit to be occasionally sipped, ‘just the one’
like poitin.