Food Tours · Tour

The House That Invented Dry White Port, at Your Own Pace

Taylor's has been shipping port since 1692, which puts it among the oldest houses still trading under its original name. The cellars in Gaia are three hundred years old and have recently been renovated, and you walk them by yourself. That is the format: no guide, no group, no fixed departure. You scan a QR code, put your own headphones in, and the audio commentary runs in thirteen languages while you take as long as you want in each room. If the barrel hall holds you for twenty minutes, it holds you for twenty minutes. The commentary covers how port is made, what the Douro Valley does to the grapes, and the house's own history, which includes two things that changed the category. Taylor's made the first dry white port, and it created the Late Bottled Vintage, a style that gave people the character of a vintage without the decades of waiting and the decanting. The tasting at the end is three glasses: the Chip Dry, the extra-dry white that came out of that first experiment and is drunk cold with tonic across Portugal; a Late Bottled Vintage; and a 10 Year Old Tawny, aged in wood until it turns amber and tastes of nuts and dried fruit rather than of the fresh grape. An hour, up to ten per booking. Under-17s get a Douro grape juice instead. Wheelchair accessible throughout. Additional tastings cost extra. Go straight to the cellar reception on Rua do Choupelo.