Porto Anyone?

Mostly we prefer red wines on the dry-ish side, but occasionally we have a nice dessert wine, and Cathryn, particularly, enjoys it. Today we drove to the Port capitol of the world, the city of Porto in northern Portugal.

The drive from Lisbon may have been interesting, but the fog was so heavy that we saw little scenery. For 3 1/2 hours on a high-quality tollway with a speed limit of 75 mph, our little Renault Clio made good time.

Porto is situated on the north shore of the Douro River as it enters the the Atlantic Ocean, a hilly, Old World Charm town with 200,000 residents, narrow winding cobblestone roads, and a more gritty feel than Lisbon. It has 6 bridges crossing the river from various spots in town, including the Ponte Dom Luis I bridge designed by the Eiffel of  Eiffel Tower  fame (who was also the architect of a church in Baja, Mexico we’ve visited).

The La Ribeira District (riverfront) is busy and beautiful, and we had lunch at a sidewalk cafe, with Bob ordering Calamari (as always, given the chance) and Cathryn having Stuffed Squid, which was interesting and tastier than expected, stuffed with rice and ham.

Next up was a walk across the river to the area housing all the Port Lodges, several dozen places where visitors can tour the wine-making or wine-storage facilities of various vintners, all of whom make Port. Though we’ve been on a number of wine tours in the Napa Valley and other locations, we learned a lot from today’s tour of the Taylors facility as Port-making is quite different, and varied.  We tasted two recent Ports before the tour, and two fancier ruby Ports, 20 and 40 years old respectively, afterwards – yum! A bottle of the 40-year-old Port costs 118 Euros (about $150) so we declined to buy, though we discussed whether our upcoming 25th anniversary might be an appropriate excuse to splurge; Bob voted instead for a 40 year old scotch since he isn’t really into “sweet”.

A ride back up the hill on the Funicular took us to our hotel for a short rest before heading out to dinner.