РУССКОЯЗЫЧНАЯ ВЕРСИЯ ПО ЭТОЙ ССЫЛКЕ. CLICK HERE FOR RUSSIAN VERSION.
April 18, 2024 – Thursday
In the morning, after breakfast at our hotel, we went for a walk to the centre of Porto – we walked down to the river. On the way, we stopped at a church, but there was a service going on, so we left. Then we saw the Church of the Clérigos, where we plan to go tomorrow.
The Ribeira embankment was very, VERY crowded.
To kill time before our wine tour, we had lemonade on the embankment, and then took the funicular back up, planning to get to the famous Majestic Café and have coffee there. But the queue was so long that instead we went to a conceptual hipster coffee shop called Calma, where the coffee was very good.
Once again, we walked down to the embankment, crossed the bridge to the Gaia side, where we were supposed to have lunch. The first place we tried turned out to be closed, but that worked out well, because we found a great restaurant with a panoramic view of the river.
After lunch, we finally went on our wine tour. It was a walking tour, mainly focused, of course, on port wine. We visited three wineries. Our guide, Ricardo, talked about port wine in a very interesting and humorous way.
The first winery was Churchill’s, founded by the English. There, they showed us the different barrels used in making port. One type, ruby, is a red port aged in chestnut barrels to avoid oxidation when exposed to air. Another red port, tawny, is aged in oak barrels specifically to oxidize. There is also white port. The point is that port is a fortified wine, so 77% brandy is added to stop fermentation. Brandy can be added at different stages, which makes the wine sweeter or less sweet. We tried all three types of port there. We liked ruby a bit more than the other two.
The next winery was called Vasques de Carvalho. There, we were told that their barrels “mature” not here, but in the Douro Valley itself. We tried the same three types of port, and we liked them better here.
At the last winery, we tried only one port – tawny – but we didn’t like it at all, as it had a strong alcohol taste. But there, we also tried three table wines – rosé, white, and red – which we really liked. I don’t remember anything about these wines, except that they are blends, and wines made from a single grape variety are almost never found here. There are about 200 grape varieties in total.
We didn’t leave the tour very drunk, since we only took a couple of sips of each drink. After returning to the hotel and resting, we went out for dinner at a five-story food court and walked around.
Overall, Porto is very different from Lisbon. Maybe it doesn’t have such a distinctive character, but it’s quite charming. In some places, it’s grand, in others – shabby, and it’s clear that this is a port city.
Travelling Leila 