19:49:35 05/10/2022

Vineyard Tour:  Tour Guide / Driver: Joao Koehler

We went for breakfast at 8:00am, which was buffet style in the restaurant, and was very good; the fresh yougurt with berry coulis was very nice.

After breakfast our driver Joao, picked us up exactly as planned at 9:30am in front of reception at the hotel.   

Quinta do Cume

We headed to the first Quinta; Quinta do Cume.  The tour was guided by a young wine maker, he showed us where they make the wine, store the wine, and part of the vineyard.  The vineyards here are all rocky, mostly slate with very little soil to speak of.  Planting here is challenging to say the least but not impossible as the proof is the result of producing some great wines, and Ports.  This vineyard also stomps their grapes in the traditional style, people get into these stone / concrete vats with the grapes and stomp them with their feet.  They do this in a very particular way, first very militaristic and to a specific rythm to get the juice extracted in just the right way, they can do this for hours at a time depending on what they are making and the outcome they are looking for, then the stomping turns into a more random and less ridgid method with it appearing more like dancing.

After the tour we went for the tasting.  We were shown four wines, a white, a red, and a tawny port and a vintage port.  All were really nice, all were unique and had great characteristics, but we really enjoyed the port wines, and bought a bottle of the Vintage port.  Joao treated us to a couple of local treats, the first was a meat pastry, sort of like a little meat pie, but the meat (beef) was spiced,  not hot just simple spices, and the other treat was a flaky pastry with pumpkin jam, which was oh so good.

Lunch

After visiting Qunta do Cume we stopped in a small town for lunch.  Joao took us to a great little place in a small town on the way to the next vineyard.  This place serves traditional Portugese dishes, so lots of meats and fish.  I had the Duck Rice, which is simply shreaded duck in rice.  The juice that the rice was cooked in had juices generated when the duck was cooked, it was so good.  Krista had the cod au gratin, again really nice and simple traditional dish.  We both had desert, I had a tiramisu made with port - very nice, and Krista had a traditional desert pastry.

Quinta Alves de Sousa

We were a little late arriving for our appointment here, but Joao just let them know that we were running late because of the restaurant (a little white lie).  Though we had planned for a private tour and tasting, because we were a little late we we joined by a couple from Seattle.  The tour was good, this vineyard is more modern than the first one. They also stomp their grapes, but not in concrete / stone vats but rather in stainless steel vats, and the stomping is mechanized.  This gives the winemakers the ability to control how much pressure is applied to the grape as well as how quickly the stomping occurs.  They also control everything from growing the grape, to production, bottling and shipping.  They were in the midst of bottling some while we were there. 

We were given four glasses to taste:  a red, a white, a white port and a red port.  All excellent wines, and they already ship to Canada, but we did pick up one bottle of the white port to give to Carol.

Quinta do Bomfim

This was the last stop on our tour today, located in the same town as where we are staying, Pinhao.  This vineyard produces only port wines, and also uses similar modern machinery as Quinta Alves de Sousa.  The big exception is they have some of the largest wine barrels we have ever seen, one of them holds 130,000 litres of wine.  The thing is huge.

The ports were very very good, they gave us a tasting of four; the first was a ruby, or vintage port, the next three were all tawny a 20, 30 and 40 year.  We both really enjoyed the vintage, and Krista preferred the 40 year tawny but I preferred the 30 year tawny.  We did not buy any from this vineyard as we already had three bottles and this producer also ships to Canada and it looks like we can get these at the NSLC.

This was the end of the tour, finishing around 7:00pm.  Joao dropped us off a the hotel.  I would definetly recommend him to anyone who would like to take a wine tour of the Douro region.