Guimarães & Braga Tour

We throughly enjoyed this terrific Douro Valley wine-tasting tour with Jose. Jose picked us up in a very comfortable Mercedes-Benz minivan in downtown Porto, drove us to the Douro Valley, and guided us through visits to two nice vineyards/wineries. This tour had everything — quality table wines and port wines, a pleasant boat ride on the river, a delicious luncheon of Portuguese fare, and beautiful scenery at every turn! The tour is very well-designed, and Jose is an expert tour guide. First, we visited the Quinta de Santa Eufemia, a family-owned winery where they still process the harvest in the traditional way, by stomping the grapes in large, granite tanks. We tasted their red and white table wines and two port wines — delicious! Next we visited the picturesque village of Pinhão and enjoyed a 50-minute boat ride on the Douro River in a vintage cargo boat, now powered by electric engines. We finished the tour with a visit to Casa Dos Barros, another family-owned winery, in the village of Sabrosa. We enjoyed a lunch of Bacalhau à Brás and a pork dish with red and white table wines, followed by chocolate cake and a 10-year tawny port for dessert. We tasted the 20-year and 30-year tawny ports in their shop after lunch. We also were surprised to learn that Sabrosa is the birthplace of Ferdinand Magellan. The home in which Magellan was born still stands, around the corner from the winery. We enjoyed spending the day with Jose, and we especially enjoyed conversing with him over lunch. We think Cooltour Oporto is a top-flight company. We learned that the other couple in our small-group tour cancelled at the last minute, due to an illness, but Cooltour Oporto still honored our reservation — essentially giving us a private tour. Wonderful tour guide, wonderful tour, wonderful tour company! Highest recommendation!

We booked this tour for 2 main reasons, one, because we drink a fair amount of Port at home and, two, because it’s only a small tour, up to a maximum of 8 people. As it was, there were 6 people on our tour, ourselves from the UK, 2 from Canada and 2 from Sweeden. Our tour guide was called Marcel and he was excellent all round. You are advised to have a good breakfast, which we did, and I can see why: Because the first wine tasting was at round 10:30 ! The day included a river tour (about 45 minutes), a meal in what was a primary school and the a second wine tour and tasting. The wines you try and both Port and table wine, but more Port than wine (as you would expect really). It’s a full day, we were picked up from our hotel at around 08:15 and dropped off just a short walk away about 17:30. Finally, it was my wife’s birthday on the day of a tour, and the first vineyard produced a small cake, and an extra glass of wine, which I thought was really good of CoolTours to organise!

Excellent packed day of a trip to the Douro River valley, 2 wineries and lunch...guide was very informative and an excellent driver.