We finally did our formal wine tasting over the last day and a half, first at Graham’s port cellars in Gaia on Saturday, and on Sunday as part of a tour of the Douro River valley east of Porto. We’ve been to a lot of wine tastings and done a lot of wine tourning, but I can say we learned some new things on these excursions as the making of port is in many ways different from table wines.

Graham’s is the largest port producer in the world with about a third of the market, especially for high-quality ports. Founded in 1837 by two Scottish brothers it is now owned by the Symington family, which has been involved in the business since the 1890s. It’s brands include Dow’s, Warre’s and Cockburn’s in addition to Graham’s. (Also a couple other port brands that have more Portuguese names and I don’t believe are commonly found in the U.S.)  The Gaia facility is where they age their wines; the growing and initial fermentation of the wine is at their properties in the Douro.

The biggest thing we learned about ruby ports is the yes, while they are fortified with additional alcohol to stop the fermentation process and keep them on the sweeter side, no they don’t last forever. In fact, you should really consume them in the first couple of days because they become oxidized, just like red table wine. Most of us, myself included, have kept the stuff around for months thinking it doesn’t get funky, but it does. My poor palette, I guess, allowed me to consume it anyway. It’s because the ruby ports are aged in huge, and I do mean huge, wooden barrels where they have little contact with oxygen. Once exposed to air, they turn fairly quickly.

Tawny ports are different. Those are aged in smaller oak barrels where there is certain amount of air that naturally seeps through the wood. Those take on a consistency that is closer to a whiskey or brandy and those you can have around for months and they won’t go bad. So unless you are buying a really good vintage port that you expect will go in one night when entertaining hearty consumers, go for the tawney. It was a good tour and thye poured six different ports, three ruby ports and three tawneys, so overall it was a good deal.

Today, Sunday, we went on a tour to the Douro with our guides from Oporto & Douro Moments, Rui and Joao Dias, a father/son team. Rui’s wife Sara, a former teacher that started the tour business a couple years ago. They were great guides and the tour was enjoyable and informative. We would highly recommend them to anyone thinking of traveling to Portugal. The Douro might be the most dramatic wine region we have ever visited. It’s a deep and wide valley that stretches almost to Spain, with terraced vineyards lining the valley walls. UNESCO designated it a world heritage site because of the effort of the Portuguese over the years to create terraces out of the rocky soil almost entirely by hand. It didn’t get to look as it does entirely due to nature.

We first visited Quinta de Pacheca, a smallish producer that also has a wine country hotel and excellent restaurant. It’s an old-style producer that still crushes its greats by human feet: yes, they actually stomp the grapes. (We told Joao that he needs to watch the grape-stomping scene from “I Love Lucy” to understand why we Americans all chuckle at the notion.) They are also primarily a port producer but they also make table wines, but you won’t find any of them in the U.S. because their production isn’t big enough.  After we had a very good lunch in their restaurant before moving on to a boat tour and later a visit to another Symington family property where they make the Dow’s and Cockburn brands.  They are big enough that they use machines to crush the grapes that simulate the foot-stomping. This is the first time we were in a region where they were in the middle of the harvest, so watching some of the operation was a revelation.