Vintage Port in the Douro Valley Wine Lodges

Vila Nova de Gaia sits across the Douro river from Porto, its south-facing hillside stacked with the white warehouses of the port wine lodges — Taylor's, Graham's, Sandeman, Ramos Pinto, Niepoort, and dozens more. Port wine has been shipped from here to the world for three centuries, arriving from the quintas of the Douro Valley sixty miles inland, maturing slowly in pipes (550-litre casks) in the cool, humid conditions that the river creates. A visit to a lodge cellar is an education in patience.

Tawny port is aged in small casks exposed to gradual oxidation, turning amber-gold and developing nutty, dried-fruit complexity over ten, twenty, thirty, or forty years. Vintage port is the opposite: aged in large casks and then bottles, for decades, developing tremendous depth in relative isolation. The 40-year Tawny from a good house — Graham's, Ramos Pinto, Niepoort — is one of the more extraordinary drinks available to ordinary civilians. It costs money but not unreasonable money, and it repays attention.

Porto itself is one of Europe's most satisfying cities: hilly, slightly chaotic, full of azulejo-tiled facades, excellent bacalhau (salt cod) and francesinha sandwiches, and a specific granite-and-fado energy entirely its own. Walk across the Dom Luis I bridge to the lodges in the morning, taste three or four different ports from different houses, take lunch in Gaia, and return to Porto on the lower bridge deck in the afternoon with a bottle under your arm.