Despite our best efforts, it was tough to rise for our second day in Porto. Fortunately all was not lost, we just need some grub to kickstart the morning. After a quick stroll, we found a café that served something we had been looking to try: the francesinha!
The francesinha is a Portuguese sandwich originally from Porto, made with bread, wet-cured ham, linguiça, and roast pork; all of which is covered with melted cheese and then drenched in a hot thick tomato sauce, served with french fries on the side. We made the comparison to the Hawaiian loco moco, since that was the closest thing we had ever had previously! And in case you were wondering, yes, it was an amazing combination of sweet and salty, and gave us great base of energy for the day.
Refueled, we walked downhill to the Riva and stopped to admire Porto’s famous multilevel steel bridge on our walk across it, en route to Port Cellars for some tours/tastings.
Panorama from the Porto side of the river, showing the bridge on the left and the river walk buildings on the right
We first tried to go to Taylor’s because we had heard good things, but alas, it was closed for a private event (looked like a wedding we seriously considered crashing).
View from the uphill walk to the cellars
This sign captured most of our itinerary this day, with “caves” indicating the port cellars below
Undeterred, we strolled over to Offley, where we got our first tour of a port storage cave cellar, which of course, ended in several tastings. We tried a ruby port, a rosé port, a white port, a ruby LBV (late bottled vintage), and our perennial favorite: a tawny port.
Port-o-ramic view
With our palates warmed up, we moved to Croft next, where Jess indulged and had a port + chocolate pairings tasting; while Grant opted for the typical multi-port lineup.
Afterwards, we went to our third port tasting (fear not, it was after 12noon at this point! which was Kopke, one of the oldest port wineries in Portugal. Knowing we enjoyed tawny ports the most, we ordered a few older ones to taste (a 10-year, and late-90s vintage). Both were tasty!
From there, we hiked up the hill to cross the top of the steel bridge back to Porto in an attempt to make it to the tower which was closing shortly.
Sadly, we just missed the final entry to the tower, but backfilled the time with something even more unique: a bookstore!
We strolled through one of the world’s greatest bookstores, but only for a few minutes, as they were closing. Grant took some pictures, and Jess smelled some soap. It was a pretty grand time.
For our evening, we had gotten recommendations from a host at the Kopke tasting, who suggested we take the bus out of the city to the coast. We were excited for a mini-adventure, and eager to see what the other side of the Atlantic looked like. We took the bus out, had a nice seafood meal of John Dory fish for dinner, and then opted for a cab back to try and visit a port tasting house we had heard great things about.
We made it to the tasting house, Vinologia, and with the help of a great sommelier, opted for the ‘super tawny’ tasting flight, where we were graced with generous pours of SIX tawny ports, starting from the standard port, and progressing to a reserva (8-year) then onto 10, 20, 30, and 40-year samples.
View of the port tastings from above — you’ll notice that the color changes as the ports increase in age, with lighter colors (almost an orangey amber for the 20- and 30-year) found to the left.
We quickly realized we had refined tastes — Jess liked the 20-year the best, while Grant was torn between the 30- and 40-years as his favorite. Guess we’ll have to keep tasting to narrow further!
Overall, we really loved Porto (as you might have guessed). One other thing we forgot to share is how pretty the streets are — lots of color and tiling around every corner!
-G & J