Luminarias

It's been a while since I traveled in December. It's honestly a tough time to get away. I mean with holiday parties (well, pre-COVID anyway...) and presents to buy and not to mention multiple holiday days off in late November and then again about month later. We took a couple of quick out of town December trips way back in 2013 (Iceland) and then again in 2014 (Key West / Everglades) but since then, absolutely nothing. Until this year, that is, when we got away for a week to New Mexico. And I do love me some New Mexico.

Despite the seven years of no travel at this time of year, getting away in December is actually one of my favorite times of the year to explore somewhere new. And it's that way for one reason and one reason alone: to see how Christmas is celebrated in other parts of the country or the world. In Iceland, we discovered that country's love / hate relationship with the Yule Lads. This year, we found some awesome holiday traditions in New Mexico.

Now, full disclosure (and limiting my complaining about COVID to one small paragraph) here, we were supposed to be in Vienna, Austria this month browsing the many, many Christmas markets in that city while drinking gluhwein and eating whatever good stuff they serve at the markets over there. But COVID shut down the entire country (OK, so actually the Austrian government did that because of COVID) and cancelled that trip, leaving Vienna in December on a scrap heap with Costa Rica, the United Kingdom and gorilla watching in central Africa from 2020. Maybe next year for Vienna. And Costa Rica. And maybe the United Kingdom. We'll see...

Chile ristras at the Albuquerque Holiday Market.

Biscochitos at Golden Crown Panaderia, Albuquerque.

I have a few things to say about Christmas in New Mexico.

First, the Albuquerque Holiday Market at the Rail Yards is awesome. It's held one weekend per year and that happened to be the weekend we landed in ABQ. I am sure that the markets in Vienna would have been larger, more numerous and filled with way more stuff to buy and eat than the one at the Rail Yards but it doesn't really matter. We stuffed our faces with good food; browsed more Zia-adorned items than we really could have imagined; got a look at our first chile ristras of the trip (there would be many, many more) including some wreaths (so cool...); and walked away with some amazing buys, including an awesome red, metal-and-stone roadrunner sculpture that cost us three times as much to ship as it did to buy and it's going to be so worth it when it arrives in front of our house after Christmas. 

And when I say metal and stone, I really mean the stone is a large pebble that weighs about five pounds. It's so awesome. Trust me.

Second, they have these cookies call biscochitos that are legendary and actually live up to their legendary status. Biscochitos are shortbread-like cookies of Spanish colonial origin that are traditionally baked for celebrations like weddings and important other family gatherings. But particularly for family gatherings at Christmas. The classic biscochito is flavored with anise because anise was rare in colonial Spanish territories and thus saved for special occasions. I hate anise. I really don't understand why anyone would voluntarily eat or drink anything flavored with this stuff. Fortunately for me in 21st century New Mexico, bakeries make biscochitos in other flavors. We headed to local bakery Golden Crown Panaderia for an afternoon snack featuring all four varieties of their biscochitos (blue corn, cappuccino, chocolate and, yes, traditional). 

These things are so soft while also being crisp. It is difficult to describe how texturally amazing these cookies are but it's like they are made of packed sand and they just disintegrate into the most delicious, slightly sweet crumbles when you bite down and and press them between your tongue and the roof of your mouth. The flavoring at Golden Crown is so subtle that the texture and the hint of sugar dominates in the best sort of way. Even the anise almost melts away entirely to something actually pleasing. The cappuccino and chocolate were the best in my opinion.

Christmas lights in the Santa Fe Plaza...

and in some random (but definitely not atypical) Albuquerque neighborhood.

Third, New Mexico loves Christmas lights. But Albuquerque might just take that love to an entirely new level.

Now, I realize there are some people out there who are pretty fanatical about decorating their houses for Christmas. But we took a nighttime holiday lights tour with the ABQ Trolley Company that has me convinced that no city anywhere does Christmas decoration like the Duke City. I'm talking houses decked out with light displays of every variety imaginable. I'm talking large projected images onto the sides of houses. I'm talking entire neighborhoods seemingly in competition between houses to see who has bragging rights (there were lots of neighborhoods like this). I'm talking light displays synchronized to music. I'm talking houses with short wave radio broadcasts playing Christmas songs when you tune to their frequency of choice. I took a number of photos from the inside our of 90 minute or so trek around town and have included one above. But honestly, no photo could do this tour justice.

But that's not even the craziest part. Apparently it's an Albuquerque thing to cover your car in lights and then drive around town looking at other people's Christmas light displays. You read that right: DRIVE AROUND TOWN!!! I'm not kidding, we saw a car coated with Christmas lights just rolling around whatever Albuquerque neighborhood we happened to be in. I swear I have never seen anything like that. Maybe I'm sheltered.

One more (admittedly slightly blurry) picture from our trolley tour. Luminarias straight ahead.

But none of that was the best part about pre-Christmas in New Mexico. The best part was the luminarias.

Visit New Mexico between Thanksgiving and Christmas and you are bound to see what look like illuminated brown paper bags on the roofs and in the windows and lining the walkways and filling the gardens of all sorts of adobe and non-adobe stores and houses and hotels and any other sort of building that humans live or work in. And not just one per store or house or other sort of building. I mean like 10 or 20 or 50 or more regularly spaced bags in sequence providing a type of illumination that we'd never seen before we visited the Land of Enchantment in December. These are the luminarias.

The tradition of lighting up properties to symbolically welcome the baby Jesus into the world stretches back all the way to Spanish colonial times, some 300 plus years ago. The first luminarias in a time when paper bags were not readily available were made as small bonfires of piñon branches set alight. When paper became available, the tradition changed to paper bags with small candles inside and a couple of cups of sand to keep the bags from blowing away. Today, I think you are unlikely to find actual candles inside actual paper bags. Most of the luminarias we saw in our week or so in state were a string of pre-wired plastic rectangles in the shape and color of brown paper bags, although we did see some actual individual paper bags weighted with sand and holding an LED tealight. More effort to turn on than flipping a switch but the lack of wires connecting the bags together is a nice bonus. Both options seemed much safer than actual flames inside actual paper bags. 

Luminarias in Albuquerque's Old Town. Waiting for nightfall (top) and illuminated (bottom).

For as simple as these lights are, they are surprisingly effective and romantic. Or maybe it's actually because they are so simple. They harken back to a time that seems to be less complicated, when resources were scarcer and when buying paper bags and candles and putting them together was an extravagance. They pair especially well with the old adobe and wood buildings in Santa Fe's historic downtown and Albuquerque's Old Town. Or even in all sorts of Albuquerque residential neighborhoods alongside animated lights displays and giant inflatable structures. They just work. They are pretty much the most perfect Christmas reflection of the state's colonial and wild west roots. 

We don't spend a lot of time decorating our townhouse for Christmas. We have a nativity display I've collected over the last 20 or so years and we have a plug-in three foot high Christmas tree that we cover with souvenir ornaments from all our various travels throughout the United States and the world. But next year, I'd seriously consider getting some paper bags and dropping some sand and tealights in them and lighting up our windows or mantel or some other part of our home. And of course, they sell luminaria kits on Amazon.

Our Santa Fe hotel, lit up with luminarias, of course.

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How We Did It

It's not difficult to find luminarias in New Mexico in December. At least not if you are in Santa Fe or Albuquerque.

If you are in Albuquerque near Christmas, I'd highly recommend the ABQ Trolley Company's Trolley of Lights Tour. It's about an hour and a half long in a very poorly heated old trolley but it's a complete blast. They take you to some just mind-blowing light displays (and I mean that in the best "what are these people thinking?" way) mostly north of downtown. They also keep you distracted and entertained en route with Christmas movie clips and trivia, including a half impossible name that tune exercise. I think I'm pretty good at name that Christmas song but Slade? Really?

I'd also highly recommend seeking out some biscochitos in your time in New Mexico at any time of the year. Our sample size was pretty much as small as it gets but Albuquerque's Golden Crown Panaderia will not steer you wrong in the biscochito department. They had some pretty good looking non-biscochito baked goods also. Next time, maybe.

Finally, the picture of the burrito on the top of this post has almost nothing really to do with Christmas. It's available year round at Tia Sophia's restaurant on San Francisco Street in Santa Fe. But it does look festive, right? That's because in New Mexico a lot of foods are available with a green or red chile smother. If you want it half and half like I did the chilly Monday morning we were in Santa Fe, just ask for Christmas. Your server will know what you mean.

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Azulejos

Our trip to Portugal this past October took us from Lisbon to the Alentejo to Coimbra to Porto. It took us to cafes and past farms and vineyards and into castles and museums and bakeries and past bridges and to lots and lots and lots and lots of monasteries and churches. It was a bit of a whirlwind tour that touched on some of the highlights of the country and barely scratched the surface in most places. It was an introduction.

If there was a single constant through our entire week in country, I would have to say it would be the ceramic tiles. Sound like a strange thing to highlight as a cohesive memory binding a week long vacation together in a gorgeous European country? Expecting castles or all those monasteries or sardines or hills or churches or art or Cristiano Ronaldo or salt cod or a Mediterranean climate or something else? It was none of those. It was ceramic tiles. It was the one thing we found everywhere we went in Portugal. And to be honest, there are some spectacular looking tiles over there. 

I know maybe what you are thinking: don't we have ceramic tiles in the United States? Well, yes we do. But not like they have in Portugal. If you have been there or if you go in the future, you will know what I'm talking about. It's pretty obvious. These things are everywhere. Just walk the streets. There are buildings everywhere that are tiled on the outside. Think you won't notice? You will. You can't escape it. It is literally inescapable. And if by some chance you don't pick up on it by walking down the street, it will hit you over the head in every church and convent and palace and monastery you visit. And you will visit a lot of these, especially those monasteries. There are a ton of them. I might have already mentioned that.

Azulejo covered buildings in Coimbra (top) and Lisbon (bottom).

Now in Portugal, of course, they don't call them tiles. They call them azulejos. And if you are wondering how to pronounce that word (we were...), it's a-zu-le-jos, not az-ul-e-jos (hopefully that non-dictionary guide makes sense; the "l" belongs to the "lejos" and not the "azul"). The word itself is derived from an Arabic word meaning "polished stone". And Arabic and Muslim lands is not just the origin of the word. It's the source of the tiles themselves.

Azulejos were introduced to the Iberian peninsula in the 13th century by the Moors, who conquered and held much of Portugal and parts of Spain beginning in the 10th century until they were driven out a few hundred years later. Coincidentally that was just about the time that azulejos started to become widely used on buildings in southern Spain. 

While tiles started to become a thing in Spain about the end of the Moorish occupation, it would take a little longer before the azulejos started being used in a common way in what is now Portugal, although the use of mosaics for sidewalks and public paved squares had already been popular for a couple of hundred years when they started decorating the walls of places with these things. Think 15th century and think simple geometric or naturalistic motifs in blue and white only. This is all the Moors had available to them so that's all they used to make these things back in the 1400s.

As Portugal embarked on their age of discovery in the 16th century, they started to import goods which would forever change their way of life. On the tile manufacturing front, trips back and forth to what is now Asia brought yellow dyes which added a third color to the two-tone azulejos that were already so popular. At the same time, the tile artisans started to supplement the regular and repeating patterning with narrative scenes or pictures, effectively creating large scale artworks through tiles.

Tiles (ca. 1680) from the Museu Nacional do Azulejos (top) and St. Michael's Chapel, Coimbra University (bottom).

Those new, large scale scenes seemed to become the next point of departure for azulejos artisans as we entered the 17th century. I can't tell you how many churches and monasteries and train stations we visited with detailed scenes upon scenes from history or the Bible constructed out of tiles 4" or smaller. These things must have been created off site somewhere as a giant sort of canvas and then put back together in situ. And they most always were just simple blue and white, taking a step back a couple of hundred years but in a totally different level of detail and precision.

If churches seem like an odd place to find these murals of azulejos, they shouldn't. For a while, the Catholic church was the main patron of azulejo artisans. Think about the number of paintings and sculptures in churches all around the world. There was a time that the only secure place to have a commissioned work of art was in a church or cathedral. Think Michelangelo in Rome. Think Goya in Madrid. Think azulejos in Portugal. And there is a whole of Catholicism in Portugal.

To get a great look at tiled buildings everywhere we went in Portugal, we walked the streets, we visited churches, we visited monasteries (have I mentioned there are a few of those in Portugal?), we visited castles, we visited palaces. But for a more in depth and formal learning experience, we stopped by the Museu Nacional do Azulejos in Lisbon. Yes, there is a whole museum dedicated to the history of tile work in Portugal.

The Museu is located in the old Madre de Deus convent on the east side of the city. The Museu features both original azulejo artwork in their original spaces and exhibits extracted from elsewhere in the country and moved and displayed in the halls of the convent. Arguably the start attraction in the museum is the main church space, which features blue and white tiled murals in the style that became popular in the 17th century, but there are other similarly impressive exhibits hanging elsewhere in the Museu accompanied by plentiful signage in Portuguese and English. 

Two of the more interesting exhibits in the Museu for me were a tile mold for making tiles with raised patterns and the scene (in tile form, of course) of Lisbon before the great earthquake of 1755 which ends the museum's visit sequence. We saw so few molded tiles in Portugal but we did find some on the walls of buildings in Porto and Sintra; these mini-sculptures are in some ways a lot more interesting than the flat painted tiles we found elsewhere. I also appreciated the scene of Lisbon pre-earthquake as an historical record. It was different and (to me) far more informative than the Biblical scenes we found all over the religious buildings we traipsed through during our time in Portugal.

Museu Nacional do Azulejos: the church, the great Lisbon panorama and the Chicken's Wedding.

I can't tell you how many pictures of tiles I ended up with on my phone after a week in Portugal but it was a lot. I wouldn't be surprised if they made up half of the total pictures that I took during the week. There were a lot because honestly I found these things super interesting. Maybe borderline obsessive. "Maybe" and "borderline" means not really, right?

I think for me, I was more fascinated by the earlier, simpler patterned blue, white and gold azulejos than the later blue and white large scale artworks. I know that part of this attraction was fueled by the Moorish connection. We worked hard to try to find any remnant of Moorish culture in the places we visited and were largely unable, probably because when the Christians drove out the Moors they destroyed most or all of what they had created. Maybe by the time the Moors were defeated the Portuguese didn't remember where the azulejos came from in the first place.

I also appreciated some of the earlier departures from the simple patterning into actual scenes of life real or imagined. There are some really impressive views into daily Portuguese life in some of these tiled works, along with some very fanciful scenes of ridiculousness like the Chicken's Wedding that we found in the Museu Nacional do Azulejos. Seriously, there's a chicken's wedding scene in multicolored tiles. Who thinks up this stuff in the middle (or maybe a little later) of the last millennium?

If you are thinking all that would likely mean that I was not a fan of the later and almost exclusively Biblical artworks created for the churches and monasteries, you would be correct. I just don't get the amount of effort that went into these things and I'm not a super fan of the subject matter either. They are so serious but some churches really got into these things, commissioning about as many works as would fill either the interior or exterior of their buildings. There's a church in Porto (the Chapel of Souls) that has gone full arm sleeve on us and covered pretty much every square inch of available exterior wall space with tiles.

The Chapel of Souls in Porto (top) and a molded or stamped tile in the Pena Palace in Sintra.

Azulejos are clearly a symbol of national pride for the Portuguese. There are so many old buildings with centuries-old tiles inside and outside that have endured over the centuries. But it also appears that there is an ongoing effort to resurrect this tradition in a more modern way, meaning not just copying the colors or motifs of centuries of several hundred years ago. I think we saw this beautifully in the main train station in Porto. 

Porto's train station features some older works of tiled art showing scenes from Portugal's history, including a massive battle scene on the west side (if I'm remembering correctly) of the main entrance hall. But next to these historical artworks are more modern tiles showing locomotives. They aren't necessarily using the colors or subject matter used in azulejos laid in the 15th through 17th centuries, (although honestly the top portion shown below is remarkably reminiscent of the 16th century azulejos) but they ARE tiles. And they do remind us of Portugal's history of this sort of wall treatment. I love it. Well done!

I know it's a strange thing to memorialize as a memory of Portugal but honestly, I'll always remember the azulejos.

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How We Did It

As I hope comes across in this post, it is not difficult to find azulejos in Portugal. We found them to be plentiful in Lisbon and Sintra and Coimbra and Porto, although perhaps a little more difficult to find in Évora.

Other than wandering around the streets of these cities and discovering, I thought it was worthwhile visiting the Museu Nacional do Azulejo in Lisbon. The Museu is located at Rua da Madre de Deus, 4 and is easily reachable by public transportation. We took either the 759 or 794 bus directly there from the Plaça do Comércio. The total bus ride is about 15 minutes or so. The Museu is open daily except Mondays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. although they do close for lunch every day for an hour starting at 1 p.m.

There are definitely tiled buildings worth visiting in Sintra, Coimbra and Porto in addition to Lisbon. Some are pictured in this post although quite frankly there were many more pictures left on the cutting room floor. Other than the Museu, I don't have a strong feeling either way about the value in seeking out these other buildings. There are literally tiled buildings pretty much everywhere.

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Two Bridges

The first thing we did when we got to Porto was walk downhill. There was really not much other choice. We were staying most of the way up the hill that Porto is built on and our first destination in the city was on the south bank of the Douro River. Which is decidedly not at the top of the hill.

The journey down the hill to the Douro is quite the walk. In most places the hill seems to go about straight down. It is so steep in most spots that paving the path with a sloped surface from point A to point B won't work. Switchbacks and curves and lots and lots and lots of steps are required. And big steps too. Walking down is an awesome voyage of discovery combined with a pretty good workout. But at least it's down. And luckily there are plenty of mechanical contraptions to get you back up to the top on the way back. Thank goodness.

As we made our way down to the Douro while keeping an eye or two firmly on where we were stepping, we caught glimpses of the river and Vila Nova de Gaia on the south bank, home to the region's many Port cellars. And if we were pointed in the right direction at the right time on our trip downhill, we could see pieces of a very large metal arch bridge: the Dom Luís I Bridge.

The Dom Luís I is one of six bridges spanning the Douro connecting Porto to the south side of the river. There are a number of boat tours which leave from the north and south banks of the river that will take you to see all six up close. But the Dom Luís I is one of the best you'll see on that tour. And you don't need to get on a boat to experience it.

First sighting of the Dom Luís I Bridge, Porto.

The Dom Luís is a pedestrian, automobile and Metro bridge. The top deck is reserved for the Metro and pedestrians, and the lower level accommodates automobile as well as more people on foot. The bridge itself is an iron arch supported from massive concrete piers on either end with vertical iron trusses extending upwards from the arch to support the upper deck and downward to support the road and sidewalks of the lower level. 

Its importance to both Porto and Vila Nova de Gaia cannot be understated. It is THE main thoroughfare allowing people whether on foot, Metro or car to cross the Douro River and get from one side to the other. Each time we crossed it (four times, if you must know) it was packed. I'm sure a ton of those people crossing were tourists like us but I'm guessing there were a fair number of locals also. 

But it is not just functional. The bridge is also visually stunning. Not only is it sort of a true expression of its own structure with the clear span arch so obviously supporting the two decks via the connecting trusses, but the top deck is also narrower than the roadway, which causes the arch to pinch at its top and splay out towards the concrete piers. It's impossible to notice this in elevation; the bridge just seems the same width for the whole span. But catch it on an oblique view and you can see the splayed arch that captures lateral loads on the bridge and transfers them to the support piers. The best view of the bridge seemed to me to be from the top of the Teleférico de Gaia, or cable car, which connects the pedestrian areas of Vila Nova de Gaia to the top of the south side of the Bridge.

It's also a bit of an engineering marvel. When construction was completed in 1886, it was the largest clear span iron bridge in the world at nearly 1,300 feet across. It is a treat that this bridge is so accessible during a visit to Porto and Vila Nova de Gaia. It takes literally no extra effort to visit and interact with the bridge, which has become one of the most recognizable symbols of Porto.

View of the Dom Luís I Bridge from the debarkation point of the Teleférico de Gaia.

The engineer of the Dom Luís was Théophile Seyrig, a German engineer who was all of 38 years old at the start of construction of the Bridge. I am pretty confident you've likely never heard of Seyrig. I hadn't. Not that I'm some authority on bridge designers or anything. But I have heard of his mentor and former partner, Gustave Eiffel, who has a tower of some sort in Paris named after him.

Eiffel actually submitted a design for the Dom Luís but lost the competition to Seyrig. But Eiffel also has a bridge that spans the Douro also and it looks remarkably like the Dom Luís. Only better. His bridge is the Maria Pia Bridge.

First sighting of Gustave Eiffel's Maria Pia Bridge.

Like the Dom Luís, the Maria Pia is an iron arch with vertical iron trusses extending upwards from the arch to support the deck above. When it was built, the Maria Pia was the largest clear span iron bridge in the world at 525 feet. Or in other words, both bridges have pretty much an identical form and both pushed the limits of clear span engineering when they were built. And, like Seyrig, Eiffel was relatively young when he designed the bridge, just 43 years old. It's not really a coincidence, right?

Eiffel's commission for the Maria Pia Bridge was the result of a competition run by the Portuguese Railway Company in 1875 (it was constructed from January 1876 to October 1877). The central engineering challenge of the competition was to span a river which had never before been crossed by a bridge and which was known to be completely unsuitable for bearing on the bottom of the river. Eiffel proposed a cantilever construction method to construct the bridge from either side of the river and have the two sides meet in the middle.

Now at the time of the competition, nobody really knew who Eiffel was. There was no body of work to support his construction idea or his price tag, which was a third less than any other entry into the competition. The Railway accepted his proposal, but they ran a good background check first, and kept a close eye on him during the design and construction. It's ironic considering what would come later but every engineer starts out with no experience, right?

The Maria Pia Bridge, seen beyond the adjacent São João Bridge.

Unlike the Dom Luís Bridge, the Maria Pia is not in the middle of Porto. It was built for rail trafffic only and there's no really good reason why anyone would run a freight railway through the center of a city. It's a good ways up the Douro River either on foot or by boarding one of those boat tours that spend all day every day chugging up and down the River to show the tourists each of Porto's famous bridges up close and personal-like. I'm not panning these tours. We boarded a boat in the early morning of our only full day in the city and saw Eiffel's bridge just that way. Although we also saw it on the drive into the city.

We didn't spend a lot of time in Porto. Just about a day and half over two nights. Because our time was limited, my wish list had to also be limited. And it was: at least one Port cellar and laying eyes on the Maria Pia Bridge. Not the Maria Pia and the Dom Luís. Just the Maria Pia. Eiffel's bridge is better. And yes, I know I already wrote that.

It's all about the arch. Or more precisely, the support of the arch.

Both these bridges are arches which support a top horizontal truss on a series of vertical trusses. In the case of Seyrig's bridge, those trusses also run to the bottom deck hung from the arch. But whereas Seyrig's arch is thinnest at the center span and highest point and thickest at the supports on either side of the River, Eiffel's is not. His arch is thickest at the top and center and tapers to a point at the two sides where it connects to solid ground.

Seyrig's arch terminates at a buttress. Eiffel's ends in a point or pin connection. The overall effect of the Dom Luís is one of solidity. The overall effect of the Maria Pia is lightness. And it all comes down to the supports.

The support of the Maria Pia at the north side of the Douro. 

It's this lightness (the pin connection does not transfer moment to the supports on the banks of the river) that makes Eiffel's bridge more pleasing to my eyes and why it, and it alone among the six bridges spanning the Douro, was one of the two reasons I wanted to visit Porto. Quite frankly, I find Eiffel's bridge almost in defiance of gravity and absolutely breathtaking. It is for sure well worth the visit to Porto and a quick boat trip down the River, as ephemeral as that experience turned out to be.

I've been to Paris three times and have laid eyes on the Eiffel Tower in that city on all three trips and find the Tower to be overly heavy and a little clunky. I didn't get that from the Maria Pia. I have not sought out many of Eiffel's works (the structure supporting the Statue of Liberty doesn't count) but I might based on this experience. This bridge truly is remarkable, even if it is difficult to get to. Definite top five bridge ever for me (and I'm honestly not sure what the other four would be so I'm guessing a little bit here). Go to Porto. Eat sardines in a riverside cafe. Drink some Port. And go see these bridges. But especially Eiffel's.

The Dom Luís looking south towards Vila Nova de Gaia.

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How We Did It

It is super easy to see and cross the Dom Luís I Bridge. It is pretty much one of the central focuses (or foci, I guess) of the pedestrian experience along the Douro River in Porto and Vila Nova de Gaia. We crossed the bridge the first three times on the sidewalks of the road on the bottom deck and then took the cable car to the upper deck on our fourth and final passage. I recommend you cross it on both decks for the full experience. The cable car stops running at 6 p.m. although if you are in line with a ticket at that time, you are guaranteed one way passage.

The Maria Pia Bridge is more difficult to get to. We took a boat operated by Tomaz do Douro, who got us there just fine. There is no bad seat on the upper deck of the boat where we sat the entire time. The bridge is no longer used for rail traffic. As best I can tell from searching on the internet (always dangerous, I know...), it appears the bridge either wasn't designed or constructed or maintained (not sure which) to accommodate rail travel at a reasonable speed long term. And yes, I get the irony of a bridge which looks super light not being able to accommodate the purpose for which it was built. It still looks incredible.

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Whites, Rubies & Tawnies

The last stop on our Portugal trip was a couple of nights in Porto in the north of the country. That wasn't a lot of time to cover an entire city. Two nights meant less than two days, so we had to be focused about what it was we prioritized in the limited amount of time we had there. I think if we had been visiting Portugal under non-global pandemic circumstances without a testing requirement to come back home, we would have added another day to the end of our trip and allowed ourselves a little more time. But, well, you know...

So. About 36 hours, which included two nights sleeping. What to do here? I narrowed it down to two must-sees: Gustave Eiffel's Maria Pia Bridge and a visit to at least one Port cellar. That was it. That was the list. Which is not to say that's all we did in Porto. We actually completed both of those two items in less than 24 hours, which allowed us some time for some more sightseeing. Like visiting more Port cellars. Hey...we were only going to be there so long. Might as well go for it. 

So first of all, Porto is amazing. Lisbon, Évora and Coimbra (the other cities we stayed overnight on our trip) have nothing on Porto. Don't get me wrong, they are all incredible in their own right. But seriously, they have nothing on Porto.

Like Lisbon and Coimbra, Porto is built on a series of hills. Lisbon's are up and down all over the city reaching their height at the Castelo de São Jorge. Coimbra is built on a single hill which is a little steeper than Lisbon and topped by the city's famous University. Porto's hills rise straight up from the north bank of the Douro River and are covered with a multitude of vibrantly colored houses, shops, warehouses and all other manner of building clinging to the steep slope. The view of all that in the daytime and at night and the way that water's edge is activated by dockside cafes at the bottom of the hill and the boats cruising along and across the River is just awesome. It's like a stage set it's so perfect.

Running up and down the hills of Porto are small streets and tiny alleys all either with some significant slope or massive sets of steps connecting the water with the city proper. Every so often you come across some small plaza or square (not always on level ground) which provides a spot for rest or a view of whatever there is to see in Porto. Walk down. Take the funicular or the cable car or some other way of getting back up.

There's one more significant difference between Lisbon and Porto. When you get to the Tagus River in Lisbon, there is nothing but water. The River at that point of the city is massive and it doesn't matter what's on the other side because you can't really see it. Not so in Porto. Take a water taxi or walk across the bridge and you will quickly get to what you can see from the north side of the Douro when you look south: Vila Nova de Gaia, filled with cafes much like those on the north bank and home to all of the area's Port cellars, built for storing and shipping their product centuries ago to the rest of the world and still here today in the 21st century. Let's go!!!

The view across the Duoro to Vila Nova de Gaia.

OK, so what is Port and what is a Port cellar? 

Let's start with the Port: at the most basic of levels, Port is a fortified wine, meaning a wine with a boosted alcohol content (most wines have alcohol contents between 10 and 14 percent; Port has an alcohol content of about 20 percent). It gets that way through the addition of a distilled spirit or brandy to the fermenting wine, which also stops the fermentation process before all the sugars in the wine have been converted to alcohol. This process not only makes the wine more boozy, it also makes it sweeter because the natural sugars stay in the wine. The earlier the fermentation stoppage, the sweeter the wine.

There are many, many fortified wines in this world. Not all of them are called Port. That's because Port is an appellation (like Champagne or Prosecco) which can only be used to name wines from the Douro Valley. The Douro Valley is located about 120 kilometers east of Porto and stretches for about another 100 kilometers all the way to the Spanish border. The Valley has a unique microclimate caused by sheltering mountains which our guide at the Burmester cellar described as "nine months of winter and three months of hell". The soil, which is rockier than most soils I've ever seen (they had a sample of the soil at the Cálem cellar) is the great equalizer, retaining the heat of the day at night in summer and regulating the water supply for the vines. The grapes are grown on terraces, sort of like the Incas used to grow their crops centuries ago, which I've also never seen in the viniculture industry. 

That covers the Port, at least for a couple of paragraphs anyway.

The wine, after it is harvested in the fall and crushed by machines and feet (machines only crushes too many seeds and seed taste is not good in wine), remains in the Douro Valley over the winter and is then moved to Vila Nova de Gaia on the south side of the River from Porto. The wine was traditionally moved downstream on custom built Rabelo boats (there's a photograph of one above) which are now on prominent display near the south bank of the Duoro River. Today, trucks move it faster.

Once the wine is moved, is is cellared, meaning it is held and aged in either vats or barrels or both, depending on the type of Port. Everyone does it this way. ALL of the Port producers are at Vila Nova de Gaia. The skyline at night is a neon (or more likely LED at this point) who's who of Port houses. It's really pretty cool. It also emphasizes the value to the economy of the region.

Vats and barrels. The "223" on the barrel is the quantity of the barrel in liters.

Got all that? Good! Now it gets really complicated. I hope I get this part right.

Generally speaking, there are three different varieties of Port: White Port, Ruby Port and Tawny Port (there are actually four - rosé is produced by some sellers but none of the cellars we visited offered this option so I'm sort of skipping it here). In addition to the three main varieties, there are other terms to know, namely Vintage, late bottle vintage (or LBV) and colheita.

Whites are probably the simplest to deal with so let's start there. Whites are produced with white grapes and are aged after fermentation in either stainless steel or concrete tanks or in barrels, but never vats. Whites aged in stainless or concrete will develop flavors based on the grapes alone and will retain a clear, light color. Aging in barrels will add extra flavor notes from contact with the wood, but they will also darken over time. Some White Ports are aged in barrels for decades. Others are bottled after just a couple of years in a tank. White Ports make up about 10% of the total Port output, so not a significant focus of the industry.

During aging, Port will be exposed to oxygen to varying degrees depending the aging method. Barrel aged wines will be undergo a lot of oxidation whereas those wines in vats or bottled young will be exposed to less oxidation. The more oxidation during aging, the longer the wine will typically last after opening the bottle. I'll come back to this.

Port at Burmester: White, Ruby (LBV) and Tawny 10 year.

Let's do ruby next because on the White-Ruby-Tawny spectrum rubies are the second most sought after Ports (although there are HUGE exceptions to this). Ruby Port is made with red grapes, hence the name. It is produced with the natural fruit flavors of the red grapes in mind and is therefore only aged in vats to allow the least amount of oxidation possible (oxidation causes wines to last longer after opening but it also deteriorates the natural flavors of the grapes). Rubies are younger wines when they are bottled. Both of the two major producer cellars we visited use up to six year old wines for their ruby Ports.

Finally (but not really...) we get to the Tawny Ports. Buy a bottle of Tawny Port and it generally comes with an age on the label, usually 10 year, 20 year, 30 year or 40 (!!!!) year, which indicates the approximate age of the blend (most but not all Tawnies are blends of different vintages) in the bottle. And by age, I mean time in the barrel. Tawnies get a ton of their character from the time they spend in the barrel. They will start out with the natural fruits and add to that spices, dried fruits and other notes from the wood. More time equals more money. We tasted a couple of 10 year Tawnies in our time in Portugal. We did not get anything older than that.

So...Whites, Rubies and Tawnies in that order, right? Least complex to most complex? Youngest to oldest. Least expensive to most expensive, right? Umm...no.

Every so often there is a harvest where the growing conditions are so perfect or so close to perfect that the grapes produce a wine of extraordinary character. When that happens (which is about three years out of every ten, if you must know), the producer may elect to declare that year a Vintage (I'm going to use a capital V for this without really understanding if that's required). These are the absolute best Ports produced. They are bottled young after two years, only from that year and only from vats. They are also bottled so that they continue to age, meaning you really aren't going out and grabbing a bottle of Vintage right after it's bottled and drinking it. It needs time in the bottle. Vintages are technically Rubies, but they are the most expensive Ports out there.

Whites, Rubies, Tawnies, Vintages, LBVs, colheitas...talking the whole thing through at Burmester.

Can't wait for (or afford) a Vintage? Then maybe you pick up a Late Bottle Vintage (hereafter just referred to as LBV). LBVs are also a premium product for their age, made from the same outstanding year as Vintages but aged in a barrel. So they are a bit of a cross between rubies and tawnies but they are all younger (six years before bottling) than the youngest tawny. They get a single year on the bottle just like a Vintage but their quality is dulled a little by barrel aging. 

Why don't Port producers just save all their best year wine for Vintages? Well, maybe cash in hand (LBVs can sell younger) and market saturation (fewer Vintage bottles means they are more expensive) have something to do with it.

Finally, let's talk colheitas, which are really Tawnies (meaning lots of time in the barrel) but from a single year, rather than a typical tawny which is a blend of several years. The goal behind a 10, 20, 30 or 40 year Tawny (which are all blends) is to produce a wine of uniform character for each decade. Colheitas being from a single year's harvest will produce a wine of singular character which might vary from year to year.

That's what I learned about Port in Vila Nova de Gaia supplemented by a few hours of online research. And all that's well and good, but there's still an experiential side to this whole thing that's the reason why we travel.

The alley approach to Augusto's, a super small Port producer in Vila Nova de Gaia.

We managed to visit three Port cellars in our 36 hours or so in Porto: Burmester, Cálem and Augusto's. The first two have been in business a long, long time (Burmester since 1750 and Cálem since 1859). Augusto's...not so much. Try 2014. So two old masters (I mean they must be doing something right to be in business 150+ and 270+ years...) and a really, really (by Port standards) fledgling operation.

While we didn't know it before we visited Burmester and Cálem, they are actually now both owned by the same parent company, Sogevinus Fine Wines. We picked those two based on available on line booking times and by just walking in the door and asking if there were tastings available. Turns out like a lot of other breweries, distillers and wineries in the world, there is a very, very corporate side to the Port business. The contrast with Augusto's (which was picked for us by our tour company, G Adventures) was striking. And honestly, if I had known we were visiting two cellars owned by the same parent company, I probably would have worked a little harder at finding an alternative.

I know all that sounds like we didn't get all we could have out of Burmester and Cálem. Nothing could be further from the truth. I thought the visits to both were excellent. Both were full museum-type experiences, with video displays and projections in addition to in person narration as our tour groups walked by vats and barrels containing the actual product that made Porto famous. You didn't get much of that at Augusto's. You get a lot of talking while passing barrels and bottles of their Port.

The wow or shock-and-awe factor or whatever else you want to call it definitely tilted the front parts of our Port cellar visits towards Bermester and Cálem as being more enjoyable and informative. Learning is better sometimes with displays and animations. It just is. Plus the opportunity to stand next to the enormous vats in both places was appreciated. These things are absolutely massive. One single vat holds 74,000 bottles of wine. I've never seen an aging tank for any sort of liquid this big, I don't think.

In the end, I think Burmester was the best experience and it's all about location, location, location. The front door of the cellar is pretty much right at the south side of the Dom Luís I Bridge and there are spectacular views of the gorgeous bridge that is so important to Porto and Vila Nova de Gaia both from their waiting room and their terrace right alongside the Duoro. I would have loved to have had our Port tasting on that terrace. Unfortunately, that's not what happens on the tour we booked.

The Dom Luís I Bridge, as seen from Burmester's waiting room.

Speaking of tasting, I did.

First of all, let me say that I fully expected to not love Port. Maybe not even like Port. Since I'd never really had a dessert wine, that's a pretty closed-minded thing to think, but considering I am not a fan of sweet wines (but I do love the odd sweet stout or porter now and then), I expected that Port would be a hard pass for me. OK, maybe soft pass.

At both Burmester and Cálem, there were a variety of tasting options. Some of these different tasting options followed the very same tour of the cellars. Same tour, different glasses when you sat down. Not so at Porto Augusto's. Just one option there, although there were options within the tasting for two of the three glasses (essentially they poured a choice of two wines for each of the first two tastings and one wine for the third, meaning you couldn't taste all five wines unless you shared or had some no shows; we did both).

I prefer to taste wine with food. It's odd because I generally prefer to drink wine at home without food. But since I don't really know much about pairing wine with food, I'm always up for a little education from someone who knows way better than me about this stuff. Plus it gives me something else to do rather than just downing wine. Because the option was offered at both Burmester and Cálem, I opted to do the tasting with food. And in both cases, the food was chocolate.

Port at Cálem: White, colheita (Tawny) and Tawny 10 year. More chocolate at Cálem.

I know pretty well what I drank at both Burmester and Cálem because I took photographs of the bottles neatly lined up behind our tasting glasses. Both offered a White and a Tawny 10 year. Burmester went with an LBV and Cálem went with a colheita as the third offering between the White and the Tawny. I am less sure about what we sampled at Augusto's because each was poured from a bottle in front of us and then the bottle was taken away but here's what I wrote down: a choice between a six year Tawny or White followed by a reserve eight year Tawny or White followed by a 2013 LBV. And yes, I know those terms and ages don't match what I wrote earlier in this post. But that's what I wrote down.

Of the Whites, Cálem's tasted just like a standard dry white wine and Augusto's offerings were darker and decidedly more brandy-like. Burmester's hit a sweet spot in the middle. I'd drink Augusto's and Burmester's again (especially at Burmester's €7.50 price tag!!!). I'd pass on Cálem's White & Dry. I actually didn't finish it.

On the chocolate side of things, Burmester directed us to eat dark chocolate with the Ruby and milk chocolate with the Tawny. Cálem gave no such directions. Yes, we didn't have a Ruby at Cálem, but they did give us both milk and dark chocolate. Regardless of the direction we received, here's the thing with chocolate and Port: it's incredible. The sugar in the chocolate works extremely well with the natural sweetness of the wine and brings out those many flavors, especially the fruit flavors. Remember earlier when I wrote I expected not to love Port. I was wrong. I do love Port and bring me the chocolates when you break open the bottle. 

Overall, I appreciated the Burmester Tawny 10 Year the most. Maybe it's a first love kind of thing but that was the one that drew me in and got me. There may have been a stop at the duty free on the way home because it didn't appear we'd be able to get any back home. That's two consecutive Europe trips with duty free stops on the way home after zero in my entire life before that.

Cálem's cellar, with a cable car in the background. And a view of Sandeman from the cable car.

A few final notes on Port.

First, I really did appreciate our visit to Porto Augusto's but as a novice or virgin Port taster, I needed something more than just a few glasses of wine dropped in front of me. I wanted some context. I wanted displays. I wanted large vats. I'm not ready for nuances yet and I think that's what Augusto's was all about. I enjoyed it; I just didn't get as much out of it. The white was the most impressive of the whites we tasted. 

I especially wanted to love Augusto's because they are 100% Portuguese owned and that's rare for a Port house. Burmester was founded by an Englishman and a German and are now owned by a Spanish conglomerate. A number of the older Port houses were founded by the English in some way. When war was declared with France (and when was England NOT at war with France?) and the import of French wines was banned, the English nobility turned to allied Portugal and Porto for their booze lifeline.

Second, those vats that I love? They are custom built on site. They are too big to fit practically through any manmade opening and too unwieldy to really transport anywhere. We were told at Burmester that it required eight people to build a vat and it took those eight all of 14 days. The upside is they last for more than 100 years. How cool is it to invest that much effort in something to have your labors last that long? I think that's pretty impressive.

Finally, Vila Nova de Gaia has had a tendency to flood. A lot. Every cellar we visited that had been around more than 20 years or so (we actually stopped into Sandeman to check tour times in addition to visiting Burmester and Cálem) made note of this fact. Some of these floods were pretty minor, maybe a foot or two above the cellar floor (not that I really want any part of any building flooding) but some were significant. The 1909 flood covered the streets of Vila Nova de Gaia with ten feet (!!!) of water.

Finally, finally, I feel like I missed something in Porto. I'm sure some of that was the short stay, but I'm also sure that with something like wine, you need some time to digest what you have learned and tasted and processed where you'd like to go (or more accurately what you'd like to taste) next. Unfortunately, I had all this sink in on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. I'm wondering if there's a significant difference between the 10, 20, 30 and 40 year Tawnies. I guess that gives me a reason to go back.

Historic floods marked on the side of the door to Sandeman.

One more thing...storing Port and how long does it last when opened. We got a pretty uniform set of instructions from all three purveyors on the storage of this stuff: store non-vintages with stoppers (as opposed to corks) vertically, like you would a bottle of liquor and store vintages and other corked Port horizontally, like you would wine. For all types, cool and dark is best as an environment.

On the "how long does it last after opening" question, though, we got a variety of answers. Augusto's seemed to give the longest times at one week (for Vintages), "months" for LBVs and two to three years for aged Tawnies (those at least 10 years old). Neither Burmester nor Cálem claimed quite this long and other online resources suggest shorter times. It seems based on some checking of various different sites that a 10+ Tawny is likely good for two to three months whereas a Vintage is lasting a week maximum before it starts losing flavor significantly (if it's an older Vintage then maybe two or three days). A filtered LBV will last 10 to 12 days and a colheita will last two to three weeks, as will an unfiltered LBV or a White. That's about as good as I can get; looks like I need to finish that Tawny I brought back in less than two months after it gets opened, whenever that might be. 

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How We Did It

We visited three Port cellars in Vila Nova de Gaia. One of the three (Porto Augusto's) was reserved in advance for us but the process seems pretty simple from their website: pay half when you book online and pay the other half when you get there.

The other two we found on our own. I will say from my (admittedly very limited) experience trying to book Port cellar tours online that it's confusing at best. Some cellars have pretty clear reservation systems (Sandeman stands out here) while others were very difficult for me to figure out. We booked our tour at Burmester online, although when we completed the reservation, we found out we really had just sent an email inquiring about availability which would need to be confirmed with a return email (which came quickly). For someone who knew nothing about Port, I think Burmester's was about ideal. Go with the chocolate! And the location of their cellar is about as perfect as you could wish for.

We also did some walking-in-and-asking at both Sandeman and Cálem. Both places had spots on the day we walked in just after lunch-ish. Sandeman's time didn't work for us; Cálem's did and that's how we ended up there. I think Cálem would be great for the uninitiated just like Burmester, although ultimately I thought Burmester's Port was better. They have been in business 91 years longer after all...

Both Burmester and Cálem served us Arcadia Chocolates, a producer based in Porto which was founded in 1933. I appreciated this local touch. This is good chocolate. We saw it in the Porto available for purchase in the Porto airport on the way out of town.

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