The vines on Pico grow in a basalt maze. For five hundred years, the islanders have built tiny walled enclosures called currais out of black volcanic stone, each one just big enough for a few vines, to protect the plants from salt wind and sea spray, and the result is a landscape of thousands of small rectangles covering the rough coastal lava plain, mile after mile, with parallel walls running down toward the sea. UNESCO listed this vineyard culture in 2004, and the sight of it from the coastal road is among the strangest and most beautiful in Europe. The grapes ripen in the heat that the black stone holds, and the wines, especially the white Verdelho, were once shipped to the courts of the Russian tsars.
Pico is the second largest island of the Azores and is dominated by the volcano that gives it its name, the highest mountain in Portugal at 2,351 metres, its upper slopes often hidden in cloud. In the nineteenth century, disease destroyed most of the vines, and the culture shrank, but in recent decades it has been revived, and new wines are winning prizes. The coast has a whaling history, too: the men of Pico hunted sperm whales from open boats until the 1980s, and the museum at Lajes do Pico tells the story. Today the same waters are famous for whale-watching.
Madalena, the town where the ferry from Faial arrives, has about six thousand people and the fuel, shops and restaurants you need. The ride around the island, on the ring road that hugs the coast, is a series of long bends between stone walls, hydrangea hedges and black cliffs, with the occasional detour up to a crater lake or a lava cave. Surfaces are generally good, but the weather is the issue. Azorean weather can change in minutes, with wind, rain and fog, and the volcano's summit is seldom clear.
The best time is from May to September, when the days are long and mild. Hydrangeas bloom in July and August, lining the roads in blue. Winter is wet and stormy.
Try the local cheese, queijo do Pico, and the island's limpets, lapas, grilled with garlic and butter. They go well with a glass of Verdelho.