Drinking Some Sweet Wines in Portugal – Porto and Douro Valley

Porto was one of the places I was most excited to visit when planning our trip and I'm happy to report it lived up to my expectations! It ended up as one of my favorite places we visited and a region I would love to return to soon. The food and wine tasting in Porto was amazing!

After spending 2 weeks exploring the southern half of Portugal eating and drinking in Lisbon and road tripping along the south-west coast of Portugal and through the Alentejo region, we hopped on a train from Lisbon to Porto. excited to explore another heralded city and drink some of the famous port wine!

The first thing we saw (or more accurately, heard) in Porto was a rally car race being held on the streets of the city. The extremely loud noises quickly drove us out of our hostel and to the large crowds of people crowding the sidewalks. We were soon welcomed with loud cheering when a speeding car come racing down the fenced off street and over a large jump before drifting around a corner and screeching out of sight! It was a pretty surprising introduction to Porto.

After a day of travel we finished off our first evening in Porto with a beautiful sunset over the Douro River from the lookout of a local park. Every night there were many young people at this park drinking and smoking (weed, which is legal to smoke in Porto) and just chillin, enjoying this gorgeous view. It was a fun local spot we were able to crash and enjoy for a few of our nights in Porto.

We did a free walking tour set up by our hostel the next morning. It was very well done and we lucked out to have an amazing guide. We learned so much about the city and saw some beautiful places we never would have found on our own (like the inside of the downtown train station, Porto Sao Bento, which is covered in huge azulejo murals!) Our tour guide also gave us a few local food recommendations which panned out amazingly.

After our long walking tour we headed to one of the recommended lunch spots, Casa Kanimambo, for a cheap lunch and glass of wine. Our tour guide gave us the tip that if you go to a little restaurant and a cup of espresso or a glass of house wine costs more than €1 then it is a tourist trap. Local little cafes are cheap and good. This place was just that, very cheap and very good. A full steak or chicken lunch cost about €3 with large glasses of wine costing only 0.60€. It was amazing and somewhere I will for sure return to in my next trip for a cheap and delicious lunch.

We found such a cool hostel for our stay in Porto, it was a wine hostel! It was right up my alley with every room themed after a different port wine and wine memorabilia decorating all the halls and common spaces.

The wine hostel also had a great wine tasting flight that included 5!!! port wine varieties (white, rosé, ruby, tawny and vintage). Which was a great way to get introduced to the types of port wine, but given their large pours it was a bit much. Port wine is fortified and thus has a much higher abv than regular wines. Plus they are quite sweet and have very intense flavors, so it was quite the taste-bud numbing flight! Though it was an amazing deal for only 6€, especially if you are trying to get a bit toasted before going out for the night!

At a local bar Alena decided to enjoy the fried treats we sampled with some port-sangria while I, all ported out for the night, washed them down with the local beer of choice. (No she is not drinking the beer with a straw, though it certainly looks like it!) The fried meat pies were perfect drinking snacks while we were playing some darts.

The next morning we went for a refreshing walk through the Garden of the Crystal Palace (which is just a normal city park with a fancy name and an old indoor hockey rink on the grounds). Here we discovered some burrowing peacocks and a family of baby ducks. One of the best bird parks we went to!

For lunch I tried to order my first salted cod dish in Portugal, but due to some poor translating I accidentally ordered a cod sausage. I was disappoint when it arrived but once I bit into this odd fish sausage my mistake was forgiven. The sausage contained delicious smoked cod with marinated olives and some type of aged cheese. It was one of the most unique dishes I tried during our trip. While it was not quite the cod I wanted, it was still amazingly tasty. One should note the classic carbo-load side dishes of rice and French fries. This was the standard side dishes of most of the meals we ordered in Porto.

This restaurant was a super local place and ended up as one of our favorites. Great local dishes served for very large appetites. Definitely visit Churrasqueira Nova Era during lunch if in Porto, just be prepared to wait in line behind a large groups of locals.

While Alena napped off our massive lunch, I went for a Port wine tasting tour with visits to three Port wine houses. This was also organized by our hostel and turned out to be a really fun experience where I actually learned quite a bit about the history and production of port wines while tasting a very diverse selection of wines from different producers. (Those built in lights on the table are so you can better see the colors of the wines, how fancy!)

The first place we visited was a small producer that was forgettable in both name and in wine, but had an amazing cork exhibit that showed how cork is extracted from trees then turned into wine corks and other products. This was a display showing how wine corks are punched out of strips of natural tree cork. They served us a pretty plain ruby port, but gave no information on the wine. Thus I have nothing to say about it and I truly can't even remember the name of the place. All the better, as the tour got a lot more interesting after this forgotten place.

Next we visited the Ramos-Pinto port house. They are one of the larger port producers and are as famous for their outrageous marketing campaigns as they are for their very high quality and tasty port wines. They did an amazing job showing us the history of the winery and giving us a great tour of the old offices filled with cool historical pieces as well as a tour of the aging cellars. To cap it off we tasted two of the port wines in their very comfortably tasting room. We were served a super delicious white port, as well as their flagship tawny port, which was also quite good, but was lacking in distinction compared to the uniqueness of their white port.

Our last tasting was at Porto Cruz, where we were given a glass of their Rosé port and told to enjoy this awesome view from the party roof deck while our full tasting experience was being set up in a room below. They are a port maker who is pushing the usually reserved industry with their cocktail ready rosè port and the overall party atmosphere in their tasting house. I was so taken by the uniquely refreshing rosé port that I later bought a bottle to bring our hosts in Rome as it is a wine unlike any I've had before. Great by itself or as part of a fun cocktail.

After starting off light and fun at Porto Cruz, we descended back into one of the main tasting rooms for a full professional port wine tasting lesson with 3 of Cruz's more traditional and well know port wines. We were set up with their white port, ruby port and tawny LBV (Late Bottle Vintage) port. These were fantastic examples of each variety, with the LBV being my favorite of the day and second favorite overall of all the port wines I tried on our trip.

After the tour I met back up with Alena for some post drinking dinner. Luckily I was super hungry as our plan was to finally try the famous Porto behemoth of a sandwich, the Francesinha.

This thing was exactly was I needed after drinking port wine all day. It is a Porto creation made with white bread slices filled with ham, Portuguese sausage, and a thin piece of steak; covered in multiple pieces of melted cheese then drenched in a hot beer and tomato based sauce and always served with a heaping portion of French fries. It was a perfect combination of sweet salt and fat flavors all jumbled together. Man do these people know how to drink and eat! It was my first Francesinha but, sadly for my general health, not my last.

Alena with some beautiful street art and azulejos before we parted ways and she went back to Lisbon and I continued to explore the north of Portugal. I spent a few days Camping in the North then heading to the most famous wine region of Portugal, the Douro Valley, to see where all the Port wine is actually grown and drink some more delicious wines.

Most people who visit the Douro Valley do so by boat from Porto, but as I had a car and was coming from the northeast instead, I began my Douro excursion with a different perspective. The first location I visited in the Douro Valley Area turned out to be my favorite place and was not actually even in the Douro Valley. The Casa de Mateus was listed as one of the don't miss experiences in the north of Portugal and I would agree.

It is a beautiful 18th century palace that you can tour the inside of along with its gorgeous gardens, vineyards and historical chapel. The chapel was amazing and contained the embalmed body of a decapitated martyr, complete with a wax head, along with other Vatican approved religious relics. Cool but definitely creepy.

Casa de Mateus is not only a beautiful historic place to visit with an amazing tour of the palace, it is also a well regarded wine producer with an onsite winery.

I decided to enjoy a tasting and Mateus and I was super lucky to have Manuela as my host. I was the only person tasting, so she and I spent the better part of an hour in an amazing discussion about the great wines she was pouring as well as each of our own experiences in wine tasting and wine making. She was gracious enough to share her knowledge of the local wine history and allowed me to tasty many wines beyond the standard tasting array. I think by the time we said our goodbyes I had tasted at least six or seven of their non-port wines as well as 4 different port wines. I ended up buying their very well priced (€3) and delicious Cheda rosè as well as a half bottle each of their vintage 2008 and LBV 2008 tawny ports.

The vintage 2008 was one of the best port wine I've ever tasted, especially for the price (€12). The port wines were bottled under the Quinta Da Costa label.

I finished off the half bottle a few days later and was shocked to find crazy heavy amounts of sediment and fully grape skin pieces in the final pour of the bottle. They do not filter their vintage or LBV tawny ports and you can see the proof here.

After this marathon tasting experience I walked across the street and had a plate of the famous Portuguese salted cod. This time I successfully ordered the correct cod dish and it was delicious! Perfectly grilled with caramelized onions and marinated olives. It even came with proper veggies as a side dish which was a nice surprise. The dish was not covered in a red sauce, for some reason the restaurant's lighting was intensely red making all my pictures turn out pinkish, but hey the food tasted great!

The next day I had the opportunity to visit the Douro Museum of Wine. It is a small museum, but if you take the time and effort to read all the exhibits it is chalk full of great information on the unique features inherent in the local grape growing and wine making traditions that give Douro wines and port wines the distinct characteristics and charm they are famous for. This was a visual representation of all the wines made in the Douro region.

The museum is a must visit for true wine nerds.

I tried to visit a few wineries or "Quintas" but many were not open to public tasting or had confusing websites. So my only other proper winery visit in Douro was to Quinta Das Carvalhas. I knew nothing about this place before visiting but just dropped in after seeing their sign for tastings on the main highway along the Douro river. This place was definitely geared towards the large wine tours and wealthier clientele. A tasting cost a whopping €20! Expensive by California standards let along Portugal, but as my last day in Douro was winding down and I had been shut down from tastings that entire day so far, I ponied up the cash for their full tasting. I was given a spread of their flagship wines, mostly made from grapes I had never heard of before. All were adequate but not at all impressive given the high bottle prices. I enjoyed the experience of trying the various wines in a beautiful tasting room overlooking the river, but was a bit disappointed in the quality to price ratio and the general lack of attention and explanation I received from the staff. It was a bitter sweet ending to my Douro wine experience.

Luckily I found an awesome place to stay that night: a penguin themed waterpark/campground.

There I ordered another tasty Francesinha. My waiter, seeing I was thoroughly enjoying the delicious sauce, brought me out a supplemental bowl of sauce and a full soup ladle from the kitchen with which to better drench my enormous sandwich and pile of fries with. Nothing better to wash away the memory of a overpriced and mediocre wine tasting experience than with a meaty, cheesy, beer sauced excuse for a sandwich.

The Douro Valley was a truly beautiful place with amazing wines beyond just the known Port varieties. Douro Valley, along with Porto, is definitely on my "to return to" list. Maybe next time I'll try out one of those classic river wine cruises.

Let me know if you are in for next time and we can start planning over a bottle of Port wine, I have some recommendations!