Back in June, to celebrate our 5th wedding anniversary, Marc and I went to Porto. I came across this adage before going: "Lisbon plays, Braga prays, and Porto works." I've never been to Lisbon but since it's the capital and the richest city in Portugal, I think I can safely assume that Lisbon does indeed play. We made it to Braga, by train, a two-hour ride north of Porto through sleepy towns and rolling hills. It's a medieval town with stunning churches and clean streets and lots of balloons. (We happened to be there the weekend of the famous Sao Joao festival.) Porto was definitely industrial, like any port city I suppose, but had enough pockets of charm and tranquility that I wasn't so bummed by the amount of graffiti and crumbling buildings. There is tile work everywhere -- on the facades of houses, businesses, churches -- and it really lights up the stonework that has blackedned from years of pollution. We watched football (it was also the weekend of the EURO Cup Semis) and ate salted cod, and attempted to speak pidgen Portugese which was a lot harder than I expected. And I don't mean pronouncing words, I mean hearing them. It's a beautiful language, very sonorous, but when the Portugese speak it sounds like they're wrapping their words in a wad of cotton. We also took a boat ride along the Duoro River and spotted an enormous peacock in a tree in some beautiful park. I didn't know that peacocks hung out in trees...maybe Portugese peacocks do?
The highlight of the trip was a day of Port tastings. We went to two places, Ramos Pinto (where I learned about white port) and Graham's. Graham's was the most fun and informative. Our guide, whose name I've forgotten, was really enthusiastic and completely transmitted his love of everything Port to us. It turned out his stepfather, un Francais, owned one of the surprisingly few Port tasting bars in the city, one which we had found the night before and stopped by only to find it closed. We were a small group of 4, guide included. The other was an American radiologist, from Maryland of all places, who took to Marc and I and who was really a pleasure to speak to. After a post-tour tasting he offered us a flight of vintage Ports and we just couldn't pass that up. So we stayed for another hour or so, chatting about Port and its history, and the pleasure of drinking Port, and travelling, and drank 4 vintage portst, all of which were incredibly good and one of which was the current year's and a gift from our guide. And it was during this carefree, slightly drunken afternoon that I heard 3 interesting stories involving Port.
The first man is the radiologist's father. He fought in WWII and after fighting finds himself in London. There he drinks Port for the first time and falls in love. He spends the rest of his time scavenging the city's liquor stores for Port and by the time he leaves has put together quite a nice collection. When he goes through customs in New York he's told that the bottles have to be impounded. The man bursts into tears and begs the custom's agents not to quarantine his bottles because they'll be ruined. Perhaps surprised by the man's outburst, touched by his passion for something as seemingly banal as Port wine, or feeling nice on that particular day, they let him go -- with this bottles of Port. One of those bottles was from the 1940s, which the radiologist had the pleasure of sharing with his family this past Thanksgiving. Unfortunately his father had died a few years earlier but, as the radiologist told us, his father was there in spirit. I'm sure it was a memorable feast.
The second man orders a case of vintage port. He picks up the case at a bar (the same one owned by the stepfather of our friend) and on the way out trips and falls. All the bottles shatter and the port spills out onto the street. He literally gets down on his hands and knees, crying like a baby, and begins to lick the Port off the street. Someone joins him. Eventually they are convinced it's not a good idea to lick the street and so the man, heartbroken, resigns himself to the loss.
The third and final man is our guide. He was young, a couple of years younger than me, but had grown up, as I imagine him, living and breathing Port. He had worked for a variety of Port companies and found Graham's the most authentic (despite it being run by an immigrant Scottish family) and the least commercial. There he has free reign. His guides are completely his. He goes on tangents, he gives his opinion, he holds up the other group behind us in order to finish his point. There's no script, no timed pauses. During the flight of vintage Port wines, he explains how the French are too chatty, the Americans not interested enough, the Germans and the Dutch too impatient to drink, and that in all his experiences the most enthusiastic listeners who pose the best questions are, drum roll please, the Maltese. Go figure. One day he had a large group of Maltese, about 50 strong, who were so attentive, so involved, and so patient (instead of running to the tables after the tour and guzzling down drinks they waited for him to tell them what to do) that he cried. He cried in front of 50-some people because their love of Port wine matched his own and so he cried because he was happy. He cried as they gave him their addresses in Malta, telling him to come visit. And he almost seemed to want to cry when telling us this story.
Needless to say, I am now an ardent fan of Port wine. (And a factual tidbit: Graham's 2000 Vintage Port, which I tasted, was 1 of 5 Graham ports, a rarity in and of itself, to make it on the 2006 Wine Spectator's top 250 wines from 1995-2005.)
