ThePortForum.com

I have recently booked airfare to Porto (April 10th to the 15th).

The purpose of my visit centers around catching up with Oscar, but any logistical guidance / advice this group could offer would be hugely helpful. Ive been to Porto twice (once just a few months ago), but this will be my first time out in the vineyards and watching the bottling!

I expect to be bringing 2-4 friends from the States on this little adventure, and by all means if you are at liberty to join -we'd love to have you.

TIA

Chris

you should drop cynthia from SFE a note,

you might also want to check teh distances from the various vineyards if yer doing a vineyard tour, ie more than 1.

oscar's winery is located at sao joao de pesqueira

i think quinta passadouro (of fonseca ) is at least an hour away across teh river too up north.

btw, Quinta de la rosa is a fun stay, it's very .... relaxing is probably the best I can say (no tv and the town of pinhao is a very quiet and sleepy town) and walkable to the train station which can take you out to vargellas and vesuvio too (check train schedules)
great view, and the water is hot and the rooms are affordable and big.

Most enjoyable way i've found is to take the train out from porto up
http://www.cp.pt/cp/displayPage.do?vgne ... RD&lang=en

From there though, you'd have to find a car, or ask oscar to see if he can arrange a car to pick you up.

It's not difficult to organise taxis when in the Douro, although if there are 5 of you there was only one 7 seat taxi based in Pinhao when I was there in summer last year.

I've not stayed at de la Rosa (might try it next time) but alternatives would include Tedo's 5 bedroom B&B or Passadouro's more rustic B&B. Both are a taxi ride from Pinhao and the train, but both have spectacular views.

Sandman's Quinta do Seixo is the best organised Quinta for receiving visitors, but is very standardised as a result - but I think you can book upgrades to the standard tour if you do so in advance.

If you book in advance, there are quite a few quintas who will welcome you. I'll post some suggestions later.

Quevedo is way out there, long drive indeed.

Mr Doty,

How many hours/days will you have in Oporto and how many in the Douro?

Both are full of goodies, so knowledge of the available time in each will help us advise what you should do.

Unfortunately, I will be unable to negotiate a pass as I already have one trip to Portugal organised in April, and not on the dates you are there

DRT

reminds me
Warre's Quinta da Cavadinha
is near pinhao and i believe walkable

you might want to see if the SFE might allow a visit.

So where are you now? What itinerary did you come up with?

And I should have added that if you need a volunteer to write up your visit I have some experience in doing this.

The Doty has landed.

It would appear that he's on his visit out to Oscar with a blue zip jacket and a light blue polo and his typical gleaming smile.

He's got this bowl of what I can perceive as mushroom cream soup and a glass of some chilled white wine.

I'm going to have to chase him down for some details!

i shall have to recap in a new thread but apparently Doty has now taken upon swigging from a 5000L fermentation tank.

g-man wrote:...from a 5000L fermentation tank.

That might be a large enough format to keep even JDAW happy.

AHB wrote:

g-man wrote:...from a 5000L fermentation tank.

That might be a large enough format to keep even JDAW happy.

he has now made a throne of 6L bottles and is sitting upon them.