Porto Part 2

On Sunday we got a late start enjoying the quiet of our apartment (on weekdays there has been a lot of construction next door).  We took a bus out to Serralves, a park and modern art museum.  It turned out it was their fall festival, so there were a lot of families in the park enjoying science, craft, and farm-related demonstrations and activities.  We particularly enjoyed the exhibition of macro photos of natural objects and a small farmer’s market.  The park and gardens are quite lovely with big trees and lots of garden styles.

Macro photo of Liriodendron tulipifera!

Not tripe, but waffles!  Should have had lunch here,

Mushrooms at the farmer's market at the festival at Serralves

Kids enjoying the straw at the fall festival

Serralves park

cork oak at Serralves

modern art museum

Group of maybe 200 motorcyclists seen from the bus, most dressed in suits and ties, lost of vintage motorcycles

The modern art museum is very modern.  A big angular white building with various terraces.  We planned to eat at the restaurant but they were doing a buffet lunch for the weekend and we weren’t that hungry.  We had a mediocre lunch in the bar on the lower floor.  I can’t say any of the exhibits really grabbed our attention, but it just wasn’t my favorite style of art.  If I were more in tune with modern art, maybe I would have thought it was great!

For dinner we wandered down to the riverfront, but outdoor seating was mostly reserved or required a long wait.  We ended up in the interior of an older café watching 90s music videos on tv.  My order of clams in cilantro sauce was pretty good, Jake’s fried calamari were just okay.  It was a lovely evening though and wandering through Porto’s narrow streets seeing people out dining and musicians playing on street corners was a treat.

Today was our day of decadence.  We walked over the bridge to the Vila de Gaia, the port wine production area on the other side of the river from Porto.  We wended our way down from the bridge to the riverfront and found a small winery, Quinta dos Corvos, just off the main street offering a tour in English (the first place we stopped had no tours until afternoon).  It was just us and a couple from Spain on the tour.  Our guide was a young sommelier who had learned English in school and in Brooklyn for 2 months.  The facility they have is mostly for show and sales as the wine production all takes place in the Douro Valley and they store their barrels of port at the estate. They have been in operation since the 1700s.  It was a good tour for learning about the history of port wine and the different types of port.  At the end you try 3 ports in the tasting room, a white port (aged 7 years), an L. B. V.  (Late bottled vintage) ruby port aged 2 years, and a 10 year old tawny port.  White port is a lot like sherry.  LBVs can be purchased relatively inexpensively but then you’re supposed to keep them 10+ years in your cellar turning them seasonally.  Vintage ports of defined years increase in price with age.  The Port Association defines in what years ports can be declared vintage based on good growing conditions. Tawny ports can be aged for decades and can be kept for a few months maybe after opening. There was also info about which ones are aged in barrels versus bottles and about blending versus single harvest and I have to say I sort of lost track at that point. We did try a 30 year old tawny port which was really, really good.  We would have tasted the 40 year, but they had sold out recently and had yet to open a new cask to bottle.

morning glories on the way to the bridge

Traditional boat used to ferry casks of port from upriver to the warehouses

Port tasting at Corvo

From there we stopped for a takeout expresso to sip as we strolled along the waterfront.  We made our way uphill to Graham’s, a larger winery started by two Scotsmen in the 1800s.  Graham’s commands an amazing view looking upriver and they have a lovely restaurant.  We had a table on the sunporch looking right out over the valley.  We both got the executive menu, 3 courses with a choice of 2 beverages.  I got a glass of the house red wine, made by the winery from tempranillo grapes (called something else, like the national grape, here in Portugal).  The food was pretty good and the service exceptional. 

Graham's warehouse

Lunch at Vinum

After our leisurely lunch, we went on the 3pm tour of the Graham’s facility.  They do in fact store all their barrels and bottles here in a big old stone warehouse with a tile roof.  The tour is half a video about the families that have owned and operated the winery and half a tour of the casks and bottles.  They have port stored there since the mid-1800s.  At their tasting room I opted for the vintage tawny tasting which was a reserve, a 10 year and a 20 year tawny port.  They do get progressively fuller in taste.  Jake mostly abstained from this second tasting.  There are many other port producers here, but we just couldn’t taste any more.

Aging port

Aging bottles of port

Tawny port tasting

View of the port warehouses from the teleferico

We walked back down to the riverfront and caught the teleferico back up the hill, little ski gondolas.  The other couple in our gondola were from Mexico and Argentina.  I had assumed they were from Spain, they assumed we were European.  We haven’t really seen (or heard) many other North Americans here.