The Chinese called Mongolia “a moving country”, peopled by nomads of no fixed address. A world of horsemen and big skies, Mongolia is for those who mourn the fact that they never rode with Billy the Kid or Doc Halliday.Mongolians were born in the saddle, their lives defined by journeys. Each success was announced by a cacophony of drums, conch shells, and cymbals. Outside, the abbot was stepping into a stretch Cadillac, the gift of a local businessman eager to smooth his path to paradise. Behind its darkened windows the ancient ascetic looked like a shrunken head.
I had come to Mongolia with a company called Discovery Expedit-ions, to join an environmental project under the auspices of the United Nations Development Programme biodiversity team. Our particular mission was to help the Mongolian government establish a national park around Lake Hovsgol, in the north of the country – but our first stopover was in Ulan Bator, the capital As always, there was a hidden agenda. Mine was to wear tall boots, ride a horse and talk out of the side of my mouth.

Ancient Tibetan manuscripts were propped up like the Sunday papers among plates of bread and mugs of tea. They were saying prayers for the dead, chanting like auctioneers bidding for lost souls. Astrologically, it was a good day for chanting, and inside the monks were hard at it in an atmosphere thick with incense and the rancid smell of butter lamps. IN ULAN BATOR the wind was beating the prayer banners on top of the Gandan Hiid monastery.

In the courtyard, men hung on to their trilbies and an old woman, frail as a bird, steadied herself against my arm before starting to knock her head against a holy pillar smeared with mutton fat. “I’d start drinking this in two or three years’ time,” David says, “and then carry on for five or 10 years. This Douro wine really holds its fruit – just like vintage port does.”. The more complex, longer- lived 1994 Reserva will arrive in September.