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