North Portugal

I think we lost track a bit of writing - this time because we were enjoying ourselves instead of writing about how we enjoy ourselves :) but also the fact is that our internet limit was reached so we were not connected. Anyway, arriving to Porto changed a lot - we relaxed a bit having less km to conquer and we decided to spend a day in The city. What we would not do without kids is to take a sight seeing city train tour, but this time it was the perfect choice given Leon's fascination with trains and our limitations to otherwise cover distances. So as the bargain was a wine cellar tour was included in the ride on the other side of the river in Gaia, which turned out to be one of the most fantastic things we saw so far. You can see the photos in the Flickr gallery so in short: the winery was established in the 18th century and has been producing wine ever since, but now as a private property with 3 million litres of wine being aged in the cellar at the time of our visit. And opposed to our visit to a winery in Italy these guys really do age and process the wine in oak barrels and harvest by hand. I cannot remember who asked me some time ago which wine can be stored for ever without being spoiled, but here comes the answer, hopefully not too late: the vintage port wine can be stored in bottle horizontally in normal temperature basically limitless, but once you open you ought to finish it the same day as the oxygen destroys it. And it tastes heaven! We tried a 10 years Tawny and a Ruby, hmmmm. And the cellar was beautiful!

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