Ride Day 18: Peso da Regua to Ribadouro

Down river today along the south bank to Ribadouro, which is about 1/2 of the way back to Porto.

Today will be a fairly short ride and at this point we are in no particular hurry and after three days of R & R, a slow day will be good.

Oh, but there are a few lumps in the road it looks like...

 But I need to catch up and I will pick up where we left off.

The riverboat from Porto to Paso de Regua was jam packed.  We got to the dock early to load the bike before the hordes boarded.  That was a good move since the very helpful crew wrang their hands collectively for about 20 minutes trying to find the best spot.  We deferred to them – it is their craft – and in the end strapped it to a deck railing.

First light in Porto

The bike on board, before the crowds

Enter hordes!  By my count there were about 280 folks on the boat.  There were about 50 chairs on the top deck, and in the enclosed lower deck there were tables and chairs for everyone (and name tags).  At first everyone sat at their assigned seat for an odd breakfast of coffee and 2 rolls.  I would rather have been on the top deck but that wasn’t an option.  But our neighbors were 2 British couples on one side and 2 French couples on the other.  The Brits were great fun – one guy was a just-retired solicitor and he spent a great deal of time selling us on why we should retire.  The other guys lived in Northern France “Just an hour or so away from London on the Chunnel.” 

After breakfast we tried to find a good place to sit – the ride was 7 hours.  We eventually found an alcove that we could hid in.

The river is pretty but after a few turns it became rather routine.  We passed through locks associated with 2 dams.  That was cool.  The second lock raised our boat (probably 125 in length) 47 meters!  It is one of the highest vertical lift locks in the world.  Everyone thought it pretty amazing and it was.

The entrance to the lock on the left

A descending boat leaving the lock entrance so we can enter

Inside the chamber

The gates closing behind

We were raised nearly 150 feet!

About ready to enter the lake behind the dam

The gate system; a mechanical behemoth 

Lunch was more sophisticated, which was a good thing because the bar, which had been doing a very brisk business, was running out of booze!  As the recently retired solicitor said, “What the hell else is there to do?”  Just so.  But our table was the very last to be served, except for the wine.  I skipped the booze since I still feel terrible and had some riding to do, but Lorie jumped in with the other-side neighbors and started having some fun.  They sang songs in French that Lorie had no idea of what the words meant, but I am sure were bawdy, to try to get the servers’ attention.  While we were slow to get food, they servers were quick to replace the wine bottle.  One of the French guys is the president of the French Sommeliers’ association and he had a good way to ask for more bottles.  We asked if he thought the wine was good.  He said “Oh hell no, it is awful, but what the hell else are we going to do?”  Great fun and I wish that I had a video of Lorie singing.  You'll just have to visualize!

We finally docked at Paso de Regua, which is deep in the port growing region.  We eventually off-loaded the bike and rode a few miles to the Quinta that I mentioned in prior post.  It was smoking hot and after we got into our cozy room and had a shower, they brought our welcome drink of a “tears” port – tears analogous to our concept of a wine with legs – typically a sweet wine.  I enjoyed mine, Lorie was a bit slow to get into it as she was still working off the French lunch.

After that the owner Cesar Augustus met all of use (the United Nations as we called our group, Irish (Republic, of course), Germans, Canadians and us) for the tour and explanation of how he made port.  The guy is incredible.  Super knowledgeable.  Super interested in his wine and making sure that we understand.  And super opinionated about what is good in the wine business, what is bad, and every other topic you can think of.  The tour was a real joy and I learned a lot about port wine, and Cesar.  He is driven by tradition in making his wine and follows the old, well established rules to the letter.  This is a terrible year for grapes – at least for those whose vines are handled according to tradition.  But many growers choose other routes and it makes him very frustrated.  But his answer is to say that he makes the best wine he can make and he never worries about the others.

A welcome glass of "tears"

This book must weigh 25 kg

Inside the Qunta

The main room -- the walls are 3 1/2 m thick

Add captionThe main entrance

The vineyards are on steep hills

Doug and Cesare debate the merits of government control over neutral spirits -- Quebecois bored in the background looking forward to the inane discussion ending

Moving today's harvest into chutes

And de-stemming

These casks contain port that has been aging for 15 years

Cesar says that the grapes are terrible, but he's reasonably pleased with their smell when crushed

Irish on left, Cesar, and German on right 

The view from our window

The Douro

Prepping for stomping -- hard work and a beer helps 

We watched them empty the grapes into the screw conveyers that delivered them to the de-stemmers.  Then, the grapes dropped into concrete vats for stomping by foot: 8 stompers following an audible rhythmic chant for 4 hours.

Then the juice is placed into fermenters – the type used depending upon how Cesar perceives the quality of the juice (based primarily on his nose and on some analytical data) – this juice was bound for stainless tanks rather than the more traditional concrete or oak.

The juice ferments for several days and then a neutral grape spirit (called “brandy”) is added.  This stops the fermentation and the timing is critical, and depends on the type of port that is being made.  Lots of decision points.

From that point the wine goes into aging tanks, lots of American oak (the ‘best’ according to Cesar, better than French) where it will stay for years, decades, longer.

Bottling occurs later, too, again depending on what it being made.  Ruby port is the youngest and must be at least 3 years old.  Tawny port ages much longer and we tasted several wines that were approaching 30 years old.

But the staff had to cut Cesar off since he’d talked well into the dinner hour.  Our UN group had a fantastic if super simple and authentic Portuguese dinner of some kind of cheese, cod, salad, great bread, olives, and dessert, all served with Cesar’s Douro wines (not all of his grapes are used to make port). 

Then came the formal port tasting.  I won’t linger but we were up until the wee hours and tasted fantastic wines, some odd ones, and eventually just ran out of gas.  Cesar would have kept going, but we had to excuse ourselves at around 1 a.m.  What a big day.

We rode downstream this morning after a great breakfast but we're both beat up tonight so will catch up the blog tomorrow or next.

Best!