Port and the Douro Valley

Although there had been much drunken talk of creating a London-based successor to Bacchus prior to this visit, it was only on our Port-tasting holiday that serious plans were hatched. So it seems fitting to start the Bacchus Vintage website here. And the fact that I've only just got around to pulling the photos from my phone and am looking for an excuse to use them has nothing to do with it.

In planning this trip we relied heavily on a book called "The wine and food lover's guide to Portugal". It was pretty indispensable in planning stuff -particularly when we went up the Douro Valley. A proper review of the book will follow later but the basic message is that I wish all wine regions had such a book since it would make planning wine holidays a doddle.

Porto
Porto is well set up for easy wine tourism. The old town of Porto is North of the Douro River. Across the river in Vila Nova de Gaia sit all the Port houses. If you are in Ribeira then you can simply walk across the bridge. Otherwise simply get a taxi from your hotel to whichever port house you are going to. Many of the port houses will have a free tasting which you passers by can partake of, after which they then hope to sell you bottles of their wine. Alternatively you can follow the free tasting with paid-for tastings where you get to drink the proper stuff. Do this rather than buying wines onsite to take away - the wines are not sold at a discount to local wine shops in Porto or the airport duty-free (which is very well stocked) so you may as well purchase the wines elsewhere.

The main revelation of this trip for me was the amazing quality of the 40-year old tawny ports. Having tried many 10- and 20-year old tawnys before I'd come to the conclusion that the extra age did not add enough to the wine to justify the extra cost. However, it appears that something magical happens to tawny port between 20 and 40 years of age. Every single 40yo tawny we tasted was fantastic - it's just a shame they are so much more expensive.

Port houses to visit which come particularly recommended are Grahams and Taylors (not surprisingly). Grahams in particular has an excellent and informative visitor centre, with some truly amazing ports for you to taste. A strong contender for my wine of the holiday was the 1994 Quinta do Vesuvio we tasted there.



The Douro Valley
We took the train from Porto to Pinhao on around 5pm on Friday afternoon. This journey up the Douro is supposed to be one of the world's most beautiful train journeys. However, it's also a packed commuter route which we were travelling on during Friday rush hour which detracted from the beautiful scenery somewhat! Not least because we didn't get a seat until about half-hour before we arrived in Pinhao. The train journey was followed by a short taxi ride to Quinta de la Rosa, where we stayed the night.



After heading out for a looong and boozy dinner we headed back to Quinta de la Rosa to discover that we'd inadvertently locked all the other people staying there out of their rooms. oops!

The next day we had tours and tastings at two Quintas with radically different approaches to wine making. Quinta de la Rosa makes wine in a traditional manner. There is a mechanical lagar (check spelling) but foot treading of grapes is still used for at least some of their wine. Dusty and covered in cobwebs, the conditions in the winery would give many New-World wine makers an OCD-induced heart attack. However, the wine was excellent, particularly the vintage port.



Later in the day we visited Quinta do Portal. The winemaking practises here could not be more of a contrast to Quinta de la Rosa. Bright, clean and shiny. Yet some fantastic wine at both places. And they get extra points for the fantastic tasting they put on for us. See the pic below for slightly drunken evidence of this. (Note Adam clutching several bottles of port to his chest!)



After this we got a late train back to Porto and flew back to London on the Sunday. There are two flights back to Stansted from Porto on Sunday - we took the later of the two. If anyone reading this is planning a trip to Porto my strong advice would be to not bother. Pretty much everything you might want to do in Porto is closed. Add to this the problem that the later flight gets you back to Stansted in the wee hours and you definitely want to get the earlier flight

So... Porto is a fantastic place to go on a wine tasting holiday and I will definitely go back in the not too distant future.

Links for those who care...

The Wine and Food Lover's Guide to Portugal

Quinta de la Rosa

Quinta do Portal

Quinta do Vesuvio