So the primary purpose of making a quick trip out to Porto was to visit some Port wine makers and try out a bit, in addition to eating this roughly 3000 calorie sandwich known as the Francesinha.

The first winery we visited was Calem…as it was the first location we noticed after crossing the bridge.  It is apparently one of the oldest still working port wine shops in Porto.

Their basic wine flight was good I especially preferred their desert wines.  I almost had several shipped back home but was convinced to at least try one more place.  I’m too easy.  That said we were stuffed into a 2nd story room not near a window and we had to go downstairs to really get service, it was a bit tedious especially in hindsight after comparing it to spot 2…

The second stop was Quinta do Noval.

Now I definitely loved the 2nd spot a bit more.  One, because I liked the wine more and as someone who does not have a very strong palate for that sort of thing it seems pretty relevant that I could tell a difference.

Additionally, I liked the seating area more.  We were right by the entrance at dusk on a sweet barrel table and could people watch whilst imbibing.

The one downside to the 2nd spot compare to the first was they do not ship to the USA.  SO our options were to ship wine we didn’t quite like as much or none at all.  They made it up to me though by giving me way more wine than I really needed as we were some of the only people there at the moment.  Excellent customer service.

Just kidding, we bought a tone of wine shooters and filled our backpacks with them.  We figured with the shutdown in The States maybe we would get lucky.  We did.

At this point I was a bit tipsy as the above mentioned sandwich was roughly 5 hours earlier.  Plus a lot of these places closed around 5pm which we had not anticipated.

So I’m not completely sure if these reviews are even helpful but I can say I very well may have introduced you to the Francesinha which is definitely need to know info.

Overall Porto was really spectacular and on my next trip to Portugal I will definitely need more than one day there.  Way too many wineries to fit into a single day trip.