Head to Porto to discover the range, beauty of Portuguese wines

We went for the wine.

Porto has innumerable charms, and we planned to sample them all. But everything came back to this region's oldest and most famous export. We wanted to understand fortified port wine beyond the ubiquitous ruby splashed into end-of-banquet glasses, grasp more of the process and be able to differentiate better between styles and labels. We wanted to learn more about the non-fortified wines; back home, everything we tasted from Portugal was always great ... why was it so little-known? We even immersed ourselves in a vinous hotel: The Yeatman is part of the Taylor's Port empire and was founded to promote the local drink in all its forms.

If you, too, are a wine lover, you'll need a minimum of four days here ... though I'd recommend a week. (Your liver will thank you for a fortnight, however, so you can drink in a bit more moderation.)

Here are my wine-lovers' top tips for Porto.
1) Spread your port tasting across the trip, doing a bit each day
2) Find a local wine bar to be your tasting HQ
3) Head upriver to check out the wineries, spending at least one night there
4) Indulge in some nice meals with matching wines
5) Splash out on a tutored tasting at the Yeatman

Port Tasting
Port is a wondrous thing. It is also very strong and extremely sweet. Even if you spit rather than drink (and the lack of spitoons here suggests that's rare), most people's taste buds would move beyond the ability to differentiate much after the second port house. One or two houses a day, ideally visited just after lunch, is the ideal schedule. Some of the port houses also have restaurants, so you can combine the two.

Though you'll find port everywhere in town, you'll want to go to the source and do your tasting at the lodges on the south side of the Douro. All of the big names, and some you've never heard of, are clustered together. Climate, geography and shipping conspired to establish a tradition of making wine upstream, then bringing it to this district of Vila Nova de Gaia for the critical aging that produces the magic. Most houses offer a tour ending with samples. They all follow the American style of paying for tastings, whether you go on a tour or not, but you get a lot in your glass for your money. Your tasting will usually include the house's ruby (mass produced, inexpensive) and an LBV or young tawny (a bit of wood aging gives depth). It's important to note that you don't have to go on the tour to taste; while there are variations, once you've seen the inside of one lodge they are much the same. While tastings are reasonable, don't buy bottles here. Quick internet searches at each place (all provide free WiFi) showed that prices were always better at home on brands available in the UK. Also note that you can upgrade your tasting to the nicer stuff.

At Sandeman's, for example, you can go on the standard tour and then upgrade your tasting. We splashed out €35 for their tawny tasting, where we could work our way through their 10, 20, 30 and 40 year-olds. The tour here is nothing special, but the tour guides wear the brand's iconic Zorro-esque hat and cape, which makes it quite atmospheric. The tour up the hill at Croft's was superior. They seem to get much less traffic here and the guides are more experienced. Ours had been with the company for decades and was delighted to delve into whatever areas of detail we wanted to explore. Taylor's tour is an audio guide, disappointing on the personal interaction front, though I would have appreciated it more had I done it later in the trip. Because it's self-paced, it allows you to dig into much more depth than the others, so better after you've learned the basics elsewhere. They have the most beautiful tasting room we visited, however: a Regency-style tent-ceilinged cellar looking out onto rose gardens, peacocks and the old family mansion.

If you take the hop-on-hop-off bus tour you'll get a free tour and tasting at Cockburn's, which will explain why their enormous tasting hall has the noisy feel of an Octoberfest beer tent. Ramos Pinto has another pretty room, and a great branding story with their artistic posters, but even their old tawnys have a cherry cough syrup finish we disliked intensely. Ferreira's has a resolutely Portuguese story in an Anglo-heavy industry, but their local tradition includes closing for a long lunch, so plan accordingly. (We didn't.) For the ultimate port-tasting indulgence, swap the tours and tasting rooms for Vinum restaurant at Grahams. Magnificent view, great food, impressive wine list and a port cart to choose from at the end of the meal. The three of us each tried a different version and shared, though we did not splash out on the 90-year-old, nor on the 19th-century tipple in the customised crystal decanter.

Our conclusions on the taste front? Nothing swayed us from our existing preference for 20-year-old tawny, which has a combination of woody depth and lightness we love. And though we tasted some excellent ones, nothing was distinct enough to woo the Bencards away from our current Berry Brothers own label as our regular brand. The 40-year-olds were like Christmas in a glass, and we noted much more variation here between the houses than with the younger ports. But the 40s' distinct flavour profile limits them to drinking on their own after a very special meal. Cockburn's has a surprisingly tasty ruby, somehow managing to get a bit of depth and sophistication into this entry-level product. White port is a fabulous aperitif that deserves more attention, and is particularly good when mixed with tonic and some orange peel (the classic port tonique).

The Local Wine Bar

Our standard modus operandi on our girls' trips is to find a nearby bar with friendly, talkative locals who enjoy giving advice. In Porto, it was Vinofino on the Rua das Flores, not far from the central train station. In a region with such a vast array of wines, this place helps you to navigate. There's a wide array of bottles open for wines by the glass, far more than appear on any menu. Trust the staff and let them help you explore. They're great at asking about your preferences and then suggesting options. I spotted plenty of other wine bars with extensive by-the-glass selections. I suspect they were equally good. Find one and become a temporary local; the service and recommendations will get better on each successive visit.

Head Upriver
The Douro valley is one of the most dramatic wine regions in the world. The vineyard slopes are impossibly steep, only made workable by a crazy-quilt of terraces. Sometimes they're only one row of vines deep, but continue all the way up the mountains, giving the whole valley the appearance of curving green staircases plunging to a narrow band of water below. Even if you never tasted a sip of wine, it would be worth coming here just to see the remarkable countryside.

It is not, however, an easy trip. We splashed out on our own driver, who was also a guide. (€300 for the day, plus tip.) Given the fact that it take nearly two hours to get to the heart of the region, and that the driving once you get there features a challenging procession of hairpin turns at high altitudes with frightening drops to one side, we were delighted with the choice. Roger filled the long drive with stories of Portuguese history, wine and culture. Our wine tasting also benefitted from his insider knowledge: when slow service at our first destination crashed into the scheduled time for our second tasting, Roger found a better option.

Aneto Winery was the highlight of our day, and the kind of place almost impossible to find without insider tips. Winemaker and owner Francisco Montenegro started developing his little piece of heaven in 2001, but worked as a wine making consultant at bigger brands until more recently. Now he operates from a beautifully-designed little winery where modern architecture sits comfortably with tradition. Upon entry through a cement-and-glass cube of a lobby, you'll look out onto a modernist storage area cradling a resolutely old-fashioned store of hand-crafted oak barrels, beyond which a giant glass wall lays the valley before you. Next door, the equipment may be the latest, but the newly-harvested grapes were awaiting the tread of human feet. This most ancient of pressing techniques is still widely practiced in the Douro, where winemakers insist that nothing else works so well in getting the juice out, while not crushing the stems and pips. Maybe that's why the wines here tend to have both rich fruit and subtle complexity, without harsh tannins. You'll need to make an appointment to come here, but the tasting and the intimacy of the experience is worth the effort. So's the wine: we all shipped bottles home.

Earlier in the day we visited Quinta Nova, one of the better-known producers in the area. We were less impressed by the wines, but have rarely done a tasting while taking in a better view. We enjoyed the tour ... especially since it was mid-harvest so we saw production going on ... and had a great lunch. No surprise they've turned this beautiful place into a luxury B&B as well.

Given the winding roads and the travel distance, B&B for a couple of nights would be an even better way to visit the vineyards.  Other possibilities are to take a boat from Porto (there are multiple options, but it's a full day trip and you spend a lot of time going through locks) or to take the train.

Great Food
I talked to a local who was emphatic about this point: "We don't drink without eating. Portuguese wines are made to go with food and are best enjoyed that way." While I, personally, would disagree ... the fruity, rich-yet-mellow-reds are all the accompaniment I need while curled up with a good book in front of the fire ... she has a point. Because the locals think this way, restaurants are a great place to do your wine tasting. Not just in fancy places with sommeliers, but in everyday spots. In this, I think the Portuguese may be better than most.

I've found French service to be curiously ignorant of food and wine pairing. The onus is on the diner to make the selection; if you ask them to match for you, you may simply be relegated to whatever is opened. The Italians will usually default to terroir, recommending whatever is grown and produced closest. The Californians are keen to oblige, but their prices will break the budget. The Portuguese not only know their wine and food pairing, but even nicer restaurants have great choices in the €20 - €30 range.

All the restaurants we visited had generous wine lists, and we saw little repetition across them. The number of producers here is staggering, which is another reason to trust the staff. I'll write a separate entry on restaurants, but here I'll call out Cantinho do Avillez and Largo Sao Domingos, both in the historic city centre, for a reasonably priced and impressive experience. If you want to go high end, head toward the beach for Restaurant Pedro Lemos in Foz. The wine flight here matches the chef's menu with all the confidence and quirky innovation you expect from a Michelin star restaurant, but draws the majority of its choices from those little-known Portuguese producers who deserve wider acclaim.

Tutored Tasting
For the ultimate in Portuguese wine education, put yourself into the assured hands of the staff at the Yeatman Hotel. The place is owned by a wine dynasty and exists to promote the wines of Portugal. The staff and the wine cellar are full of the quality you'd expect. They have plenty of wine-related events ... just check their web site for a schedule ... and you don't have to stay here to attend. They're also happy to customise tasting events to your wishes.

The first part of my trip marked a friend's 50th birthday. Our gift to her (and to ourselves!) was a tutored masterclass with hotel sommelier Elisabete Fernandes. Our trio settled into the Yeatman's glamorous wine cellar, surrounded by natural stone and thousands of bottles, ancient grape vines twisting along the ceiling above. We sampled two whites, three reds and a port, with examples coming from across Portugal. The generous spread of meats, cheeses, nuts and pastries was ample to play around with flavour matching and as a substitute for lunch. We learned an enormous amount, from the nuances that distinguish Portuguese wine to the quirky stories of individual producers to specific details of what was in each glass. It was hard to pick a favourite, as each was as tasty as the one before. Until we reached the summit of our tasting: a 1966 Croft vintage Port in honour of Lisa's birth year. It was a privilege to taste. A pure amber in colour, far less sweet yet almost syrupy thick, full of complex notes of spice, wood and nuts.

Prices for customised experiences change depending on the details. Don't be put off by the room rate of the hotel; the wine events are more reasonable than you'd think. While the tasting was a splurge, it also provided value for money when we considered the cost of six special glasses and accompanying food. Add on Elisabete's expertise, totally devoted to us, and it was a bargain.

Sadly, most of the wines we tasted were difficult ... if not impossible ... to track down in the UK. The Yeatman offers a wine club to get around this issue. We signed up, of course! There are varying levels and prices. We're having four cases a year delivered to Hampshire, a mix of bottles of the Yeatman's choice. Delivery is included and the cost comes out at an average of £14 a bottle, though I suspect a case will comprise a range from high-end reds to more affordable whites. A reasonably-priced way to remember an extraordinary wine trip.