On a rainy dismal day in Porto I learned the hard way — or maybe to some the fun way — that Port wine is 20% alcohol by volume.
Porto is THE city for Port wine. No really. All Port wine comes from the Douro valley in Portugal and that wine was originally shipped from Porto to the rest of the world. To this day there are numerous Port wine cellars that people can tour and afterwards can enjoy a tasting. To name a few there is: Graham’s Port House, Cockburn’s Port House, Taylor’s Port House, Porto Wine House (right on the Douro river), Burmester Cellar and many many more.
A Cockburn’s cooper keeping the casks in working shape.
We decided on Cockburn’s — mostly because they had an available tour the day we wanted to go — and settled in on what we hoped would be a fun experience. Boy was it a fun experience. The tour itself was very interesting. Not overly long but filled with fascinating information. Fun fact, all port wine must be stored in casks and Cockburn’s still employees coopers to make/maintain those casks — we got “lucky” and saw a cooper working on some of those casks while we were there. Although, it became something of a distraction because the hammering was so loud. Cockburn’s employees something like seven full-time coopers including a “master cooper.”
For those who are “wine” ignorant, or rather Port Wine ignorant, the tour also goes through the explanation of what makes a reserve wine, a vintage wine, the process of making port and just how much of it gets lost per year due to evaporation. They also explain the different kinds of port wine — a Ruby port, a Tanwy port (the two most common), white port and a rosé port — who knew rosé port existed? We may or may not have spent the rest of the trip looking for rosé port.
But the really fun part comes at the end of the tour. My travel companion and I decided to splurge a little post tour and sign up for a tasting with some of the “nicer” port wines offered. For us this meant we each got a flight of three different port wines. One was a flight of ruby port wines, each a different age — 20 years, 30 years and 40 years — and the other was a flight of tawny ports with the same ages, and one was also a vintage.
A port wine and ginger. Delicious.
Now it’s not like we had FULL glasses of port wine to drink — but what was given was definitely more than a sip. We opted to order some food with our wine as well as our lunch was very light. This ended up being a very wise decision. I ended up finishing off most of the samples — I mean when a 30 year old vintage is placed in front of you, it seems rude to not drink all of it. After having four of the six flight samples, we noticed they also offered port wine cocktails. They include a white port wine with tonic, a ruby port with ginger beer and the port and lemon. This is not something I’ve heard of before. Apparently they are becoming quite popular throughout Portugal. So naturally we had to each order a cocktail to see what all the fuss was about. Now on the tour, our guide did say that getting these was “dangerous to order” because they were very light and you tend to not notice the port wine in the drink.
I can now confirm that is indeed the case. Those cocktails are DELICIOUS and you really don’t notice the port wine. Making it far to easy to keep drinking them. Also, I think Cockburn’s tends to give a generous pour with their cocktails because they gave us each an extra glass of port wine to mix back in when our cocktails started getting a little “low.” After about an hour, the port house announced it was closing for the day and that we needed to start heading out. It was apparent immediately that I enjoyed the drinks a little too much. I may or may not have needed to hold onto my travel companion while leaving Cockburn’s — which if I didn’t already mention was on a very steep slope overlooking the river and the sidewalk was slick with fresh rain. It wasn’t until after a nap in the car back to the hotel, a nap at the hotel and a VERY starchy dinner at an Italian restaurant did the effects of the port wine * start* to ware off.
Long story short, go on a port wine tour! Just make sure to order some food for the tasting and maybe pace yourself.