Tag Archives: Cruz

Visit to Vila Nova de Gaia and Porto

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In June this year we visited Porto and Douro, starting with a few days in Vila Nova de Gaia and Porto and concluding with visits to some of the quintas in Douro. In Vila Nova de Gaia we had several fantastic and very well organized tours and tastings, but also a few drop by tastings at some lodges we had not booked in advance.

Symington is one of the leading Port companies and has several lodges in Gaia. We visited Graham’s and Cockburn’s. At Graham’s, that is one of the bigger lodges in Gaia, the tours are very professional and interesting and the tasting was very good.

Tasting at Cockburn’s

Coopers at work in Cockburn’s lodge

Cockburn’s new lodge offers also a very good tour and tasting and includes a very interesting view into how the coopers make or renovate the pipes, barrels and vats.

Alvaro van Zeller in the Barao de Vilar lodge

Barao de Vilar Colheitas

 

 

 

At Barao de Vilar wine maker Alvaro van Zeller showed us their stock and bottling operation in Gaia. Barao de Vilar is much smaller as a company than the major port groups, but they are also one of the most creative. In order to make an impact they are making very clever packages and bottles, such as their 100 years tawny, consisting of four small bottles of 10+20+30+40 = 100 year tawny. Alvaro and his team also have a number of very old colheitas, of which we had the great honor to taste 1990, 1977, 1963 (Barao de Vilar vs Palmer), 1962, 1950, 1934 in addition to their vintage and white colheita. It was an absolutely amazing tasting which we will remember for a long time.

2016 Vintage Ports tasted at the Calem lodge

Sogevinus owns Cálem, Kopke, Burmester, Barros and some other brands. We visited the newly renovated and upgraded Cálem lodge that combines hi-tech presentation in combination with a traditional tour to provide a good experience. For example, they have a 5D-cinema experience. We had a very interesting tasting of their latest 2016 vintages as well as some fabulous older colheitas. We really appreciated to be able to taste their fine ports in the company of Sogevinus PR & communication manager Jose João Santos, Business manager Stefano Marello and winemaker Carlos Alves.

Beautiful colours of Dalva and Cruz port wines.

Cruz and Dalva are situated in the main square in Gaia, at Espaço Porto Cruz. Gran Cruz bought the company C. da Silva and their brand Dalva in 2007 and they are now both presented at Espaço Porto Cruz. At Grand Cruz you can have a meal in their restaurant or try a selection of their ports. We got a very good expose of Cruz and Dalva port including their fantastic white ports, Dalva Golden White, and Presidential Vintage 2011. Presidential is an alternative brand for Dalva used in some markets.

In addition, we stopped at some other lodges and had some ports in the bar at:

  • Ramos Pintos,
  • Quinta dos Corvos
  • Augusto´s
  • Portologia, port wine bar in Porto

 

A wonderful day in Porto

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Figueira2007After a great day with good spring weather we decided to visit a Port wine lodge in Vila Nova de Gaia. We went in to the Porto Cruz lodge and decided to have a tasting, and as my friends were new to the wide world of port I decided to have a tasting with broad range of port to show that port is a very wide concept. We got seven port, starting with the dry white, continuing with a few tawnies and ending with Cruz Vintage 2011 and Dalva Golden White 1963. We all agreed that we did not prefer the dry white but the decision between the old white and vintage was more difficult. It is astonishing that white port can transform from a quite mediocre wine (new on release) to a very complex and fantastic wine with age. We also learned that La Martiniquaise, the owner of Porto Cruz has bought the stock of Vasconcellos port from Christies. The brand of Vasconcellos remains with Christie’s.
Figueira2011After the touristic Gaia lodges we decided to have a glas of nice vintage port in the fabulous port wine bar Vinologia. I was very disappointed to find that is was closed! On the outside everything looked at usual but looking through the window we say a pile of letters inside and that everything was abandoned. However, we were lucky to get directions to the new location. It is just 30 meters down the street towards the river but there were no signs to the new place. We entered the new location, Portologia, and I wanted to find a vintage port we had never tried before. As I was looking at bottle of Quinta de Lamelas Vintage 2010 I said half aloud to myself “I wounder if we have tried this vintage” and as a reply I heard “yes, you had that the last time your visited us”. You cannot imagine my surprise when Maria at Portologia told me that she often uses our web site and knew that we had this particular vintage in September 2014. I was deeply impressed. Few, if any, wine bars has such an amount of vintage port to offer and after some discussion we found a vintage we had not sampled before, Quinta de Val da Figueira Vintage 2007. It was very good. I also had the opportunity to try the 2011 of the same quinta. However, the 2007 was better. Maria really provided a spectacular service and made us feel very welcome. We do recommend that you visit the new Portologia at your next visit in Porto.
Author: Jörgen