Fleetwood Vibe, most mysterious son of that sinister household, recalls on page 168 his travels in Mozambique—then a colony of Portugal:

Debarking at Lourenço Marques, he spent a week in various local cantinhas, gathering information, as he liked to think of it. This required a tidy lakeful of Portuguese colonial-market wine, the rotgut rejectamenta of Bucelas and Dão, among puzzled looks from the locals who by tradition were its devotees. 

The only information he really seems to be gathering is on the limits of his own intoxicatibility. Somehow though, the lakeful of wine does lend him the inspiration to head to Johannesburg and make himself a fortune. Later, fortune made, he returns to Portuguese Mozambique, “turning up one day back at the old local saloon, standing rounds till closing time,” (p. 169).

Probably not the most expensive rounds to stand, given that the house specialty is “rotgut rejectamenta.”

The particular regions credited with producing the rotgut, Bucelas and Dão, are DOC-protected regions in Portugal. Dão, Wikipedia states, is one of the longest-established wine regions in the country. Being rejectamenta, I guess we shouldn’t expect Fleetwood’s rotgut Dão to reflect the finer possibilities of the terroir.

I wouldn’t classify the bottle of Dão wine in front of me quite as rotgut (how will I ever convince a wine store to sponsor this blog using language like that?). It was pretty cheap though. The shop had a pricier Dão that I faithfully eschewed. Rather than particularly corrosive, this just tastes a bit thin and bland. Enjoyable enough with food, but not very exciting. Insubstantial—almost like ghostly Fleetwood himself, detectable “only in the way some can detect ghosts…”