Funny that I grew up in rural north portugal and never heard of any of this bs

Dunno what to tell you man, apart from maybe it depends on just how rural. Where we are, NE trás os montes, everywhere was a really long way from everywhere until the 20th century, as the terrain is a nightmare of deep river valleys and few bridges. Like, from our village, you can see the nearest village - it’s only 3km as the crow flies - but it’s 30km and 40 minutes by paved road. 10km by heavily worn track and a medieval bridge.

Funny, I was just there last week. Without getting to know locals all I saw was olive trees and almond trees and some grapes and oranges, many hectares of abandoned farms, and wonderful villages built on the seeming near-vertical sides of hills with small gardens with lots of cabbages (it was October, so that tends to be what's left). I'm sure lots was hidden from my passing eyes.

The roads were, well, challenging. We followed Google Maps directions to one destination, but it's not very good. It led us through a medieval town made of stone where the roads were just a centimetre or so wider than our tiny subcompact rental car and then up a steep hill from which we could actually see our destination on the other side of the village. After letting the scent of overheated clutch and burning transmission oil dissipate, we did a 3-point turn with a sheer drop on either side and no guardrails and then back through the village, hoping the breaks were good and holding our breaths passing between the houses. Locals just stared and pointed the right direction without saying a word (I guess we were not the first strangers to be misled by the Googs). Anyways the roads are harrowing but make for great stories.

Also, we found an old abandoned quinta for sale that we'd love to buy (even has paleolithic rock art on the property) but they're asking 3.5 million euros, which is about 3.5 million euros more than I have for such things.

So I'm not surprised if there are local agricultural treasures. Isn't that the part of Portugal where they speak the country's official second language Mirandese?

€3.5m! You can’t have been too near to us, as most everything here is cheap. There’s a watermill with 40ha of pistachios about 5km from us, €320k last I checked. It ain’t selling, even at that price.

Yeah, Miranda is south of us, and pretty metropolitan compared to our particular corner - and here we encounter words and pronunciations we encounter nowhere else in Portugal - not even 30km down the road.

I love it here, but living in the backwater of backwaters has its pros and cons.

The absence of the evidence is not the evidence of the absence.

Down in Mexico, it made the news that about 30 years ago scientists looked into a village which grew corn 20 feet high. It was of interest to them, because it seemed to have figured out how to fertilize itself. It's a wild story.

It's totally plausible that cultivars and species are in some crazy rural pocket and not well known. I'm coming to appreciate the idea that despite everyone being connected to a global computer network with a camera device, not everything has found its way into the realm of scientific knowledge. What other plants and animals might be out there?

You don’t know what you don’t know - and it works the other way around, too. I was telling people here about the wolves I’ve seen on our land and everyone is like “oh there are no wolves here”, and then I showed them the photos and videos. Now, people know there are wolves, and suddenly they notice them.

Ditto with tortoises in the river. Nobody knew they were here, and there are hundreds of the buggers - just takes one person to sit quietly by the river for a day, which nobody here has done in a generation or more.

Gigantic grapes sound awesome, so did a quick check. Assuming 5–6 cm in diameter, this appears to far exceed the size of any known grape variety.

I guess I misremember the size of a billiard ball. They’re like 4cm diameter, 5cm long - by far and away the biggest grapes I have ever set eyes on. They do have enormous seeds, too.

The best sardines (Nuri) in the world come from Portugal. A guy from California…

PS Even better with great bread.