A beautiful day in Porto!

Ola!

 

Another perfectly wonderful day in Porto!  And for once, the weather channel was actually right!  It did get up to 80 degrees and sunny today – a first since we’ve been here!  (Yesterday, we left and returned to Porto and about 65 degrees!). Today is absolutely beautiful!  We have been SO lucky with weather, that’s for sure.  

 

Last night, after our Douro Valley trip, we found a local grocery store and stocked up on salami and cheese and ham – you know, the basic breakfast.  We started today about 7-ish, with a breakfast eaten “in” and I ran a load of wash, as it looked like a good day to wash blue jeans.  The drying rack fit perfectly into our little enclosed patio area, and most things were dry when we got back around 3-ish.

 

Decided that we would try to visit the Cockburn Cellars, very famous in England, and a very favorite of Lord Peter Wimsey.  (And, for the one and only time, it is pronounced: Co-burn).  Contacted them on-line to see about touring, and suggested 11 am this morning – and in less than an hour, we received word that we were a go for tour and tasting – at 11! 

 

Got an Uber pick-up outside our door and over across the Eiffel-build bridge into Gaia, directly on the other side of the Douro River from Porto.  To say that it was a riot of one-way streets is an understatement!  It was wild!  There was no way we could even follow on the phone map all the places we wound around and around, but Marco, our driver, was wonderful!  He talked about different Port lodges (as wineries are called) and made suggestions, and was all around a great guide!  Very, very helpful!  In about 15 minutes we suddenly arrived at Cockburn, and it was about 10:30 am.  Obviously, we were early, but they have an excellent wine museum that was very interesting.

 

Map of Cockburn & associated vineyards

Video of the last trip made by boat down the Douro with barrels

How they navigated the rapids was incredible!

Lovely museum

Cockburn started his winery about 1815.  It appears that once the French and English were fighting the 100 Years War, many years back, England needed a way to get wine – and they didn’t want it from France for obvious reasons!  So, somebody discovered Port and that’s what started all the business back and forth between the two countries.  Cockburn ended up moving here to Portugal and became a big port importer/exporter.  Wanting to eliminate the middleman, Cockburn eventually started purchasing grapes and making his own port to export to England (this is obviously a very condensed version…). The winery was run by the family from 1815 until the early 1960’s.  At that time, it was sold to a large conglomerate and changed from making smaller amounts of first-class port to larger amounts of cheaper port – but still bottled under the same name.  Finally, in 2010 or thereabouts, the company was sold to the Symington family, who had already been involved in port production, and had the benefit of becoming, yet again, a family-owned business.  There are now 9 Symington’s who work for Cockburn in all sorts of different capacities – wine maker, son-wine-maker-in-training, marketing, sales representation in both England and the U.S. and on it goes.  The quality is back, and I mean, really, truly back.

 

They make and repair all their barrels -- and the have a lot!

Still worked the "old fashioned" way; takes an apprentice 40 years!

The cellars went on and on and on ...

The Cockburn crest is beautiful!

Very private reserve bottles

Note the dates!

As it turns out, we had a private tour with Antonio, which was amazing!  We were able to go into the coopery (they’re the only winery with their own full-time carpentry shop making and repairing their barrels constantly!)  It was incredible!  We also got to go into their “private” cellars and see the wines that have been kept for years.  They actually have a bottle from 1861.  I think we now have a very good working knowledge of the differences between white port, and tawny and ruby port.  It’s amazing!  To say that Cockburn has wine storage is to say that it gets warm in Tucson in the summer.  Incredible!

 

From the cellars we moved into our “private” tasting room (dedicated to a family member named Smythes) for our tasting.  We had come in with the idea of each having the same tasting, but our man at reception suggested that if we wanted to taste vintage port (which we did) we could combine two tastings together, giving us five different ports to taste, one flight with chocolate (YUM!) and the other with cheese.  Truly, a wonderful way to go, and a fabulous suggestion.

 

Our handsome guide, Antonio

Robert with second flight

Our first flight (note the chocolate)

And second flight with the cheese

I started our tasting with their white port.  It was good, but got much better with some gourmet Belgian chocolate.  Their tawny port, but with a different chocolate, was really good.  However, we now started moving into the vintages.  Our third tasting was Cockburn’s Quinta dos Canais vintage port, 2010.  Getting better, and our final two tastings were from 2011 and 2007, which were the best prime vintage years in quite a while.  To say that we are now dedicated vintage port fans is an understatement.  I kept looking for something I didn’t like, but that, of course, didn’t happen.  Let me only say that our second case of port will be on its way to Tucson soon…

Our view out to the river

Excellent Vinho Verde

Wonderful light veggie soup

R's cod fritters with two kinds of rice

My wonderful chicken with rice

Close-up of chicken and potatoes

Excellent chocolate mousse

Can you tell why R liked this place?

By this time, we were starting to think of lunch, so headed straight DOWN the street (past a brand-new Hilton hotel that I didn’t know about!) and at the bottom of the street, right on the river was a lovely dining area – lots of different places with tables outside.  We walked into the first place we saw, and when the waitperson said that their specials of the day were chicken and cod fritters, SOLD!  We usually like to sit inside, so as to avoid any problems with cigarette smoke (cigarettes are allowed in the outdoor seating), and this time it was wonderful – we sat right in the doorway with a fantastic breeze and had dinner.  

 

I had their oven roasted chicken with potatoes and rice, and R had their cod fritters with rice.  I have to say, that while my chicken was fantastic, even R’s fritters were great!  Lovely meal, along with glasses of vinho verde (very fresh young wine from the area just south of Porto.  I had a wonderful chocolate mousse for dessert, but R wasn’t as lucky with his creme brulee – it was pretty bad, which I found surprising!  Not a lot of taste!  However, we were both full and just about ready for naps!

 

So … getting picked up by Uber was quite an adventure!  We found a place that was very identifiable but – it was in Gaia, and the one-way streets were incredible!  If anyone who uses Uber remembers, there is signage saying how long before your driver reaches you – this was amazing!  We had to wait over 20 minutes, and it would say “1.2 mi away – 5 minutes” and then it would go back up to 8 or 9 minutes, and then back down to 4 and then back up…I felt so sorry for our poor driver!  I didn’t think he was ever going to get to us, but he eventually did, and was able to get us back to the flat in a very short time – once he got out of Gaia, that is!  SO glad I wasn’t trying to drive there!

 

Once in the door, I got the bed and R got the couch, and we were down for the count!  Up an hour or so later, and figuring we are definitely in for the night!  It’s almost 6 pm and we are still stuffed from “lunch!”  I’ve got some ironing to do, and then we can plan what’s happening tomorrow, our last full day in Porto, before we pick up the car and head to Lisbon on Sunday!

 

Lots of love!

m

xxx