Ask someone in Portugal where they are from and they will rarely answer "Portugal". They will tell you Minho, or Beira, or Trás-os-Montes, or the island. The country is small enough to cross in a day and varied enough that crossing it feels like changing countries several times.
The green, wet north with its granite villages and its espigueiros standing on stone legs. The terraced Douro, cut into the hillsides over centuries. The high, cold Beira Interior under the snow of the Serra da Estrela. The Alentejo, flat and golden and enormous, where a single tree can hold the whole horizon. The Algarve's cliffs going gold into the sea. And out in the Atlantic, the Açores and Madeira, volcanic and green and entirely themselves.
Each region has its own food, its own accent, its own saints and festivals and way of building a house. People who have left Portugal do not miss Portugal in the abstract. They miss a particular valley, a particular kind of bread, a particular view from a particular window.
That is who this collection is for. Not the person who wants a tile of Portugal, but the person who wants the tile of their place.
The Regional Collection will keep growing. There are more corners of this country than thirteen.
