Burmester — Attraction in Vila Nova de Gaia

We booked the "Tawny Experience" in Italian directly from the Burmester website, which includes a 30 minutes visit to the cellar that ends with the tasting of 3 Tawnies (10 years old, 20 years old and Colheita 2009) paired with dried fruit for a very reasonable price (25€). The visit to the cellar was presented by Luca, a Portuguese guy that speaks excellent Italian. He presented and explained everything beautifully, mixing funny jokes to the explanations in order to make the visit interesting and keep everyone's attention even when talking about more technical aspects. He also answered all of our questions, and gave us good advices as far as the tasting is concerned. Since the Tawny was the kind of Porto wine that we liked the most, we decided to book the "Tawny Experience" wine tasting, which did not let us down. The 20 years old Tawny was particularly good. The cellars themselves are relatively small, but the history behind this company is very interesting. Last but not least, there was the shop where not only you can purchase their wines, but you can also ask them to ship your purchases directly at your home (not all countries have the shipping option available, but there are quite a lot). The price of the shipping service varies depending on how many bottles you have, and the country to which you want them shipped. Generally it's not very cheap, but it's very convenient if you're traveling with...

the cellar of a 1750 port company. If you walk across the lower level of the bridge, you can’t miss it. Booking a tour and tasting with chocolate for 13€ online, here’s my experience:

1. Tour: Making it for right when they open at 10 a.m. on a Thursday, I had the entire tour to myself. “It’s like a private tour,” my guide joked. Speaking in English, the guide gave me the history of the company and the history of port while also showing the rooftop terrace with river views, old equipment, and old giant oak barrels. The tour portion lasted just under an hour.

2. Tasting: It included three healthy pours of white, ruby, and tawny and two circular pieces of chocolate (one dark and one milk). As a treat, the guide brought a fourth of vintage. Each port was superb!

3. Store: The tasting room includes a store where I bought a small bottle of white port for around 5€.

Tip: Make sure you bring cash to tip your hide for...

We booked over e-mail and the experience of this process was ok. We had a tour in a group of 8. The information about winemaking were very basic and at least a third of th tasting was direct marketing for their wines rather than learning about the type of wine. It took 30 minutes as your and then we tasted on our own for 15 minutes. The style of the guide was also very commercial, impersonal, non-authentic and due to the expressions and assumptions used it was also quite annoying. Asking questions without waiting 5 seconds for answer and actually hoping there is no dialogue is wrong. The wines were decent, overall value for money debatable at 16 euros. Sorry for 2 stars, but some things need to change. I have no idea if more of the Vila Nova da Gaia cellars offer same type of basic experience, but this is the weakest of 5 wine tours we had...