A pretty wonderful thing about having friends that also travel is the possibility that you can overlap in the same place. (Of course, the other fabulous thing that can happen is when friends not only overlap with you but decide to buy and build next to you. IYKYK)
One of Trev’s oldest friends from Austin had on his bucket list to run with the bulls in Pamplona. His wife’s bucket list is to hit as many world festivals as possible. Pretty awesome bucket lists actually, though I’d rather watch the bulls from above. Anyway, when they realized we weren’t that far away in Porto and they already had a car rented, they drove over for a weekend.
Seemed a perfect fit then that we schedule a tour of a port house and do a port tasting with them. There are so many to choose from as you can see from the photos. All the port houses are across the Douro from Porto. It was explained to us that one of the reasons was that if and when there is ever a fire, it is much safer to have all that alcohol fueling a fire away from where most of the people lived back in the day. Certainly this is changing. The town across from Porto is Vila Nova de Gaia and is booming in its own right.
The other reason we learned for the port houses being on the south side of the river is that the hill behind them shields them from direct hot summer sun. This is pretty key for aging port. In fact, while the grapes are grown up in the Douro and juiced there, it is all (still to this day) brought down to Porto which has a cooler climate by the ocean. Back in the day by boat, and now by truck. Still, all pretty brilliant.
As you can see, I got a lot out of our tour. One of the reasons we chose Cockburns, which by the way is pronounced Koe-burns, is that they are the only one that maintains there own cooperage shop. Other port houses have tasting rooms right with a view of Porto, but we opted to wander a bit more away from the hill and, it should be said, UP hill, to Cockburns. So worth it. I don’t think the photos of the warehouse rooms of wooden barrels and vats really do it justice. All incredibly interesting.
We learned a good deal about the port aging process for white, ruby and tawny. We had a great tasting where we were not rushed out of there. It was really nice to hang out with our friends. So thankful for those moments.
