Food Tours · Tour

Seven Ports, Three Lodges, Starting at the Old Bridge Pillars

You meet on the Porto side of the river by the stone pillars of the Ponte Pênsil, the suspension bridge that crossed here from 1843 until Eiffel's partner replaced it. The pillars were left standing when the rest came down, next to the lower deck of the Dom Luís I, and your guide waits there in a red jacket. Then you cross to Vila Nova de Gaia, where the port has been aged since the eighteenth century because the north bank was too warm and the south bank's cellars were not. Three houses, seven wines, and they are deliberately different in kind. A traditional cellar for how port is made and how the wood does its work over years in barrel. A small producer's tasting room, which is where the wines that never leave Portugal usually are. And a modern interactive museum with a professional tasting room, where a workshop teaches you the mechanics of tasting rather than the vocabulary of it. What you come away with is the distinction between the families: ruby aged in bulk and bottled young, tawny left in wood until it goes amber and nutty, colheita from a single year in barrel, vintage from a declared harvest and bottled after two years to finish in glass. And when each is drunk, which in Portugal is not only after dinner. All entries and taxes are included. It is all walking, with no stretch longer than 800 metres, and the route is wheelchair accessible. Guided in English, up to twenty in the group and fifteen per booking. Food is not included. Minimum drinking age eighteen; children over six can come with a paid entry if you contact the operator first. Not recommended for pregnant travellers. It ends at a tasting venue on Avenida Diogo Leite, on the Gaia waterfront.