Visitors are flocking to Portugal’s second city, thanks in large part to the jealousy-inducing views from the Yeatman
Torrential rain is a rarity in Porto, so there isn’t a great selection of umbrellas in the few shops that sell them when you get caught in an unseasonable September downpour.
That’s how I ended up under one of those dome-shaped clear plastic brollies that were favoured by the late Queen Elizabeth.
She had a big collection of them, each with a different coloured rim so she always had one to match her outfit on a wet day. Mine, however, was decorated with little yellow ducklings wearing wellies and splashing in puddles.
I felt like a right eejit, but it didn’t matter – I was back in my favourite city in the world.
At the five-star Yeatman hotel, where I was staying, the bowler-hatted doorman took the offending article from me and told a young porter to hurry up and hide it.
There was no sign of the rain abating, so with time to kill I squelched my way to the bar and had several ports in a storm.
Porto is the birthplace of port wine, made from grapes grown on the steep, terraced hillsides of the Douro Valley upriver from the city and fortified with spirit (aguardente) before fermentation is complete.
This results in an alcohol content as high as 22pc, which is nearly twice the strength of most table reds and whites.
There are six main types of port – tawny (matured in the barrel for up to 40 years and even longer), ruby (matured in the bottle), vintage, late bottled vintage (LBV), rosé and white.
I asked a barman buddy in Dublin if he could name a handful of well-known brands, and it was like asking a Celtic fan to name the Lisbon Lions. He rattled off 11 – Dow’s, Taylor’s, Graham’s, Sandeman, Cockburn, Croft, Niepoort, Fonseca, Offley, Kopke and Ramos Pinto.
On my most recent of many visits to Portugal’s second city, I discovered Croft Pink during a wander through the World of Wine (WOW) complex of museums, restaurants, bars and shops next door to the Yeatman and owned by the same company.
An online reviewer wrote: “Croft Pink presents attractive floral notes underlining the pungent, aromatic fruit aromas. The palate is full of deliciously ripe cherry and raspberry flavours with lovely nuances of honey and grapefruit.”
Or, as I would say: “Enough of the guff – pour another one out and to hell with the gout.”
Actually, it’s a common misconception that drinking too much port brings on gout because, for a start, I don’t have it. The excruciating arthritic condition known as the “disease of kings” is more associated with a lavish diet and has afflicted the big toes of bigwigs down the ages.
Henry VIII, who was a martyr to it, was no stranger to a lavish diet – his idea of a breakfast roll was a goose stuffed with a pheasant stuffed with a grouse stuffed with a pigeon stuffed with a partridge.
All of those are high in purines – chemical compounds that form uric acid in the blood, which in turn forms tiny grating crystals in the joints.
Columbus, Da Vinci, Michelangelo and Nostradamus were sufferers, but like the gluttonous Tudor monarch they had shuffled off, wincing and wailing, long before port was invented in the late 17th century.
So, too much fortified wine from the massive cellars in Vila Nova de Gaia, facing Porto across the Douro, doesn’t cause gout, but too much beer does. I’m doomed.
By early afternoon the rain had stopped and steam was rising from the paving outside the hotel as the sun clocked on for the afternoon shift. It was time to head back out.
Port is said to be the perfect partner for chocolate, and it just so happens that WOW has a wine school and a chocolate factory.
My runners were still squelching, but it was with a spring in my step that I hurried off to class, where sommelier José had set up five bottles for a tasting session followed by a short exam.
He poured generously and spoke eloquently about hints of cinnamon, liquorice, Milkybar, toffee and other stuff from the sweetie shop while I made a show of twirling the glass, holding it up to the light, giving it a quick sniff and knocking back the contents.
It was only after I’d drained the last drop from the fifth sample that José told me the ‘vase’ on the table was a spittoon. Nevertheless, I got a certificate saying I’d passed the taste test with flying colours – mostly tawny and ruby.
In the chocolate factory’s souvenir shop, the top-sellers are individual small bars with a letter of the alphabet on the label, so you can choose to spell someone’s name under the see-through lid of the long, thin presentation box.
I have a pal who has rather large lugs, so for a laugh I wrote BIG EARS for the girl behind the counter to put on his present from Porto.
However, the bars must have got rattled around in my luggage, because when we met for a pint a few days later and I handed him the box, the labels read BIG ARSE. How weird is that?
Breakfast next morning in the Yeatman was like a scene from Brown Thomas. I’m a Penneys man myself, but I know a Prada handbag when I see one, and each of the four French women wearing enormous Gucci sunglasses at the table next to mine had one at their feet.
Small dogs are welcome in the hotel, but not in food areas, so I sneaked a peek to see if any of my neighbours had sneaked a Peke into the Orangerie, where breakfast is served, but failed to spot any hairy little heads poking out of les dames’ sacs à main.
On warm sunny mornings, guests can enjoy their coffee and croissants or made-to-order omelettes outside – if they put down their phones long enough to stop posting jealousy-inducing photos of Porto and start tucking in.
The views of the Douro below, the houses clinging to the steep hills opposite and the arched Dom Luis metal bridge to the right sell the city in an instant to prospective first-time visitors browsing for ideas for their next weekend break.
Those same views can be seen from the balcony or furnished terrace of every massive guest room and suite, where the power showers can be turned up to water cannon strength.
The beds are so big you could nearly fit all of the Waltons into one, and there’s even a pillow menu, which I didn’t bother with as I had already dined in the Yeatman’s two-Michelin-starred Gastronomic Restaurant.
It’s hard to eat when your jaw drops with the arrival of each artfully presented dish prepared under the direction of executive chef Ricardo Costa, but eat I did, relishing each forkful as if in a reverie.
The day of departure dawned all too soon, but cloudless, and I slipped my feet into my runners, which had dried out overnight, thanks to the underfloor heating in the bathroom.
A taxi was waiting at the hotel entrance, where the doorman doffed his bowler hat and told the young porter to put my bag in the boot.
The lad got a tenner for his troubles, but I nearly snatched it back when he then handed me my little yellow ducklings brolly. Twenty minutes later, it was in a bin outside Porto airport.
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GET THERE Ryanair flies several times a week from Dublin and seasonally from Belfast International to Porto.
STAY Tom was a guest of the Yeatman, where rooms start from €335 a night. See the-yeatman-hotel.com for details of special offers.
Tom Sweeney Travel Writer 