Category: Places to Visit

This is an unusual “Places to Visit” article, because you can’t visit the places described here.  They’re gone, vanished into corporate policy, Napafication, wine economics or just the passage of time.  We’re talking about wineries that we have loved in the past that are no longer there.  These musings were occasioned by a recent visit to Joseph Phelps’ Freestone winery in Sonoma county.  Phelps is one of the best known Napa Valley wineries and they added a tasting room way out towards the Sonoma Coast when they bought vineyards in the area in the late 1990’s.  It has been open since 2007 and as of December 31, 2016 it will be closed.

Joseph Phelps’ Freestone Visitors Center

The tasting room had a gracious farmhouse feel to it and we hope that someone else decides to share their wines there.  Even if someone does, it won’t be the same without those wonderful Phelps wines, which will still be available at their St. Helena winery.  How sad that future wine lovers won’t be able to enjoy it the way that we did. (Actually, we’d love to buy it as a home but Phelps isn’t offering and we doubt that we could afford it.)

Not so many years ago, Michael Mondavi Family, owned by the son of the great Robert, had a winery in Carneros.  It was similar to the Phelps Freestone winery in that it also gave visitors a sense that they were stopping by an old friend’s home.  Sure, there was a bar and a server, but with a fireplace and some easy chairs, you felt that Mike would be dropping by any minute to offer you a glass and a welcome.  Okay, this was all in the imagination but for one thing, wine tasting calls for some imagination and for another, that feeling is part of the experience.

[Today the Michael Mondavi tasting room has been replaced by that of a businessman who has turned the winery into a monument to ego and garish taste.  No more need be said about the sense of loss.]

The former Michael Phelps Family tasting room

Perhaps the saddest loss was the Stag’s Leap tasting room built by the master winemaker, Warren Winiarski.  Oh, you can still visit Stag’s Leap Vineyards and taste their famous wines.  But Mr. Winiarski hasn’t had anything to do with them for some years now, since he sold his vineyards and winery to a conglomerate.  Today, there’s a stunning stone and glass Visitors Center there, a truly modern Napa building.  But there used to be a wooden building, a bit too crowded to be sure, with an inviting terrace and shady trees that told you that wine making is about farming and artistry, not just business.

The former terrace of the Stag’s Leap winery

There was that same sense in a lot of the wineries that have upgraded to meet the demands of tourism and trade.  Perhaps it’s just wistfulness, but there was an immediacy to the experience when you stepped up to a plank stretched between two barrels and got a glass of wine from the fellow whose name was on the bottle.  You can still experience that in Paso Robles and other out-of-the-way corners of Wine Country.  But for Americans, it all started in Napa Valley and it is missed there.

There is more than simple nostalgia to these memories.  Wine has a history; that’s why they give it vintage years.  And wine tasting, as a voyage and as an experience, has a history as well.  Our children won’t encounter a visit to Wine Country the way we did.  It will be great fun for them too, but it won’t be the same fun.  We have no yen to bring back the good ol’ days.  They weren’t always that good; some poor wineries have been replaced by great wineries
in places that were only orchards back then.  But it is important to keep the memory alive, if only to measure progress.  As the economics of wine making and selling have changed the product, so it has changed the sensation one gets when going wine tasting.  As wineries like Phelps Freestone and Michael Mondavi Family disappear, a bit of our lifetimes disappear with them.

One of the pleasures of going to Wine country and visiting wineries is the chance it gives you to think to yourself, “Imagine if I owned this joint!”  A lesser pleasure among all those of wine tasting, but a pleasure nonetheless.  Nowhere in the world are such imaginings so fertile as in France and nowhere in France are they better than at the Clos de Vougeot in the Côte de Nuit of Burgundy.  Pronounce that Kloh de VOO-zhoh.

A clos is an enclosed field, or in this case and enclosed vineyard.  Yes, there’s a wall around it but the vineyard is enormous, the second largest of the grand cru vineyards in the Côte d’Or.  (Corton is larger.)  There is a hierarchy of vineyards and thus wines in Burgundy and grand cru is the highest level.  As beautiful as it may be, the reason to visit is not the vineyard but the building sitting in the middle of it.

Photo courtesy of the Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin

The chateau of Clos de Vougeot has a history, in fact quite a lot of it.  It was erected in the 12^th century by Cistercian monks.  The name originates from the nearby abbey of Citeaux, which is the mother house of the Cistercian order (known as Trappists in the United States and elsewhere).  It was one of the most influential monasteries in medieval Christendom.  It was eventually abandoned, restored in the 19^th century, damaged in World War II and once again restored after the war.  That latter task was carried out by the members of the Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin, a definitely snobby club of rich and famous Frenchmen.  Today the Confrérie has, according to its web site, 12,000 members.  It’s still rich and snobby but no longer exclusively French.

You can visit the chateau and pretend you’re one of the 12,000.  It’s worth doing on its own merits, just to see a 12^th century castle in the heart of a great vineyard.  You can do a self-guided tour and watch a film or you can be shown around by one of their guides.  Based on our experience, the guided tour is worthwhile.  The cellars and the formal rooms bring on that imaginary ownership mentioned above.

Perhaps the most exciting part of a visit is knowing that you are at the epicenter of Burgundy winemaking.  Sadly, the one thing you can’t do at Clos de Vougeot is taste wine.  That is, you can’t taste wine.  But every year in spring and fall they hold a “tastevinage”, a grand wine tasting with a jury of 250 of the finest connoisseurs that can be assembled.  They’re famous wine-growers, great merchants, heads of viticultural unions, wine-brokers, oenologists, government officials from the government’s wine office, restaurant owners, enlightened amateurs.  Maybe you’re one of them, otherwise you’re not going.  Out of the tastevinage comes a seal of approval, the emblem of the Confrérie des Chevaliers des Tastevin that the selected winery can put on its bottles.

By the way, what is a tastevin?  It’s a wide, flat cup that sommeliers use to slurp a little bit of well-aerated wine before serving it to you.  Or at least sommeliers used to do that (maybe some still do) in restaurants that had sommeliers.  If you take the guided tour, they give you one.

Photo courtesy of Amazon.com

 

Let’s suppose that you are in Paris, perhaps on business.  You have no time to leave the city, so even though you’re in France, you will have no opportunity to go wine tasting.  You have that old “so near but so far feeling”.  Fear not, redemption is at hand.

We’d like to point out to you a chain of restaurants called L’Ecluse (http://www.lecluse-restaurant-paris.com), which means the lock, as in a lock on a canal.  (To be honest, we only tried the L’Ecluse alongside the Madeleine church in the 8^th Arrondissment.  There are also sister locations in on rue Francois 1^ier also in the 8^th, St. Honoré in the 1^st, in the 17^th not far from the Arc de Triomphe, and along the Seine in the 6^th.)

L’Ecluse restaurant, near the Madeleine in Paris

We at Power Tasting are not in the business of restaurant reviews, so we will only note that you can get a meal at L’Ecluse from a limited menu long on Bordelais cuisine, especially sausages and patés.  In nice weather, you can sit outside, which is generally a pleasure anywhere in Paris and particularly so in the better neighborhoods.  All the L’Ecluse restaurants are in better neighborhoods.

The reason for avid wine tasters to go to these restaurants is the wine.  If you love Bordeaux wines (and which wine lover does not?) this is your chance for sampling a wide variety of wines from that region while still in Paris.  What part of Bordeaux do you like the best?  Margaux?  Got it?  Paulliac? Got it.  St. Emilion? Got it.  Get it?

Perhaps the most fun is to try wines from sectors you’re not as familiar with, such as Lalande Pomerol or Listrac.  The good news, especially if you’re visiting as a couple, is to try a few things previously unknown to you and then follow them up with your favorites.  We noticed something interesting: we each ordered wines we particularly liked, shared sips and found that we liked what the other had chosen better.  Isn’t that what wine tasting is all about?

Not sure what to order?  You’ll find the manager (more so than the wait staff) very knowledgeable and willing to listen to you (in English or French), find out your tastes and try to match them.

As stated, we don’t do restaurant reviews.  But here’s a tip.  If you do visit L’Ecluse and if you do have a meal, finish it off with the chocolate ganache and ask for advice on the best Sauternes to go with it.  Believe us, you’ll remember the experience.

 

 

 

For many wine lovers, including ourselves, our interest in wine started with Bordeaux reds.  Of course, we hadn’t tasted the greatest of the great Bordeaux chateaux when we were younger; maybe it was Mouton Cadet that first caught our attention and our taste buds.  From then on, as we were able to drink better wines, we thought of visiting Bordeaux as the summa of wine tasting experience.

And in many ways, it is.  But in a few ways, it isn’t.

For one thing, the wine growing areas around the city of Bordeaux cover a lot of ground and produce rather different grapes and styles of wine.  In a gross over-generalization, the vignerons of Medoc north of Bordeaux and Graves to the south make wines heavy in Cabernet Sauvignon; St. Emilion and its satellites to the east favor Merlot; in Pomerol it’s Cabernet Franc; and in the Sauternes-Barsac area they make sweet wines from Semillon.  So you don’t exactly go to Bordeaux, you go around it.

The first thing a visitor needs to know is that, as Dorothy might have put it if she were a wine afficianado, “We’re not in California anymore”.  You don’t just drive up to a winery, enter the tasting room and ask for a few pours.  You need, with a few exceptions, to have appointments.  While you can write well in advance and make them yourself, many only deal with the trade.  That means you are either a winemaker yourself or otherwise in the wine business.  “Otherwise” for these purposes often means tour organizers and brokers.  So you wind up paying someone to be an intermediary just to get you in.

Some visits are in groups; others are one-on-one with a guide who will almost always speak English.  Anticipate a tour and a tasting, each visit lasting 90 minutes to two hours.  The better the wine, the snobbier the visit.  And they generally have only one or two wines, so there is less to taste at the end of the tour.

For the most part, the villages aren’t particularly either.  The port at Paulliac is a good place to eat oysters right off the boat and Margaux has a few nice bistros, but save your dining experiences for the city of Bordeaux.

That all sounds pretty negative, but there are many more positives that outweigh the foregoing.  For one thing, especially in the Medoc, you are visiting real French chateaux.  They are gorgeous to behold and to be in; you never know when you might see some nobleman out with the hounds, as actually happened to us in Barton-Léoville.  Just driving up the main road, the D2, is to behold castles that seem to come out of fairy tales.  Unlike many other vineyard areas, the Medoc is flatland, so the castles you pass more than make up for the lack of rolling hillsides.

Chateau Pichon Baron (Photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

The big, big exception is St. Emilion.  It is a medieval town around which wine has been produced for millennia.  You can see Roman ruins in the vineyards.  Walking through the town, you’ll find enticing restaurants and outdoor cafes.  There are bakeries selling the local delicacy called canelés, which are small, rich cakes flavored with rum, vanilla and caramel. And in town and on the outskirts, there are tasting rooms for wineries, where you don’t need appointments.  (To be honest, these are not the great ones you came to Bordeaux to visit.  Even in this region you need appointments for the big names.  But we have found a few that offer very creditable wine.)

St. Emilion (Photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

Perhaps the best reason to go wine tasting in Bordeaux is the effect of the experience.  Once having seen the endless vineyards, seen the chateaux, tasted the wines where they’re made, you’ll never open a bottle of Bordeaux wine with the same feeling ever again.  You’ve been there, seen it, smelled the grape-sweet air (and maybe stolen grape or two if you go in autumn) and the wine will have an impact on you that you’ll carry with you forever.

Sonoma and Healdsburg, in Sonoma County, are dissimilar in many ways but they have one feature that is very similar.  They each have a major town square, with inviting leafy parks that are the focal points of each town.  Today they are surrounded by restaurants, tasting rooms, galleries and boutiques that announce that these are towns for people who have made it, who have the means to live the good life in Wine Country.  As a visitor, you know that there is money there.

There’s another place in Sonoma County that also has a lot of history, with shops and restaurants too, but this place says something else: “I remember the old days, before Sonoma County became fashionable”.  That place is Railroad Square in Santa Rosa.  It’s actually a formally designated Historic District, and we like to think that that’s not so much because anything terribly historic ever happened there, but because it has retained its roots.

There’s a railroad station of course, but no railroads anymore.  However, the Web (http://www.railroadsquare.net/) says that there will be light rail trains stopping there again, beginning in the fall of 2016.  Trains notwithstanding, this is a section of town to be seen as a pedestrian.  No matter where you’re from, you get the sense that you’ve been here before, and that you’re welcome back.

 

The old Santa Rosa station in Railroad Square (photo courtesy of City-Data.com)

There’s the old Hotel La Rose that’s been there since 1907.  It’s the kind of railroad hotel that, in the movies, the new sheriff stayed in while the schoolmarm fixed him up a place of his own.  To be honest, we’ve never stayed at the La Rose.  You can’t use frequent flyer points there, alas.  But it is awfully pretty to look at.

Up the street is a favorite restaurant of ours, Lococo’s.  It’s a little Italian trattoria with red and white checkered napkins and with real Italians working in it.  The food is good, the prices are reasonable and the charm comes free.  Like we said, it’s homey.

Further up the street is Jackson’s, the latest establishment to occupy that corner spot.  It’s changed hands and cuisines every few years and right now it’s a frank and honest bar.  Oh, you can get food there, too, but it’s really the spot for a cold beer or a local wine, preferably on a hot summer evening.  With each change of ownership, the new proprietors have been smart enough to keep the art deco cabinetry that once again provides historic continuity.

Another good part of Railroad Square is the coffee shops.  Whenever we’re in Santa Rosa, which is pretty often, we get our morning joe (well, actually latte) at one of two places.  The Flying Goat is newly renovated, with black and white tiles and a lot of sunshine pouring in, a very modern look.  On the other side of the square, there’s A’Roma Roasters with its rustic style, little wooden tables and stools, old posters on the walls and a long row of dispensers of coffee beans, which they sell at retail. It smells of breakfast when you enter.  Both have a few tables outside where you can enjoy your coffee and watch the crowd.

The choice of coffee shops is a deeply personal one, but both of these offer the same thing: they’ve been there a long time, they’ll be there a long time and you’ll feel welcome whenever you get there.  Sure, there are tourists planning their wine tasting days (isn’t that what you’ll be doing too?) but there are a lot of locals as well.  It’s not infrequent that people will ask where you’re from, what you’re doing in Santa Rosa and ask how you found this particular place for a cup of coffee.  Just tell them you’re coming home.

Power Tasting doesn’t do restaurant reviews so this is not a restaurant review.  It is about a restaurant that is definitely a place worth a visit if you ever happen to be in Nipomo, California.  Actually, no one ever just happens to be in Nipomo, so we’re really saying that if you ever are wine tasting in San Luis Obispo County or nearby Santa Maria, make a pilgrimage to Jocko’s.

A visit there is not just about the steak although the steaks are very good.  It’s about the experience.  For one thing, you feel as though you have been transported to a Saturday afternoon western of your youth.  (You do remember Saturday afternoon movies, don’t you?)  The bar is wood-paneled, with the heads of various dead animals (deer and such, not cows) shown proudly.  Sorry, the door is just a door, not of the swinging variety.  Surprisingly for a restaurant smack in the middle of Wine Country, the list is not particularly impressive although you’ll surely find something to enjoy with your steak.

Then there are the folks who assemble there.  Ten gallon hats and boots are much in evidence.  Everybody is a regular or, more likely, they treat everyone as though they were regulars, which is even better.  You’d better have a reservation as Jocko’s is quite well-known locally and seems always to be crowded.  Not that you’ll actually get a table at the time you reserved, but it will put you in the running to get a table and give you time to enjoy the bar.  Then, when it is your turn, you’ll hear your name bellowed out to overcome the din.

The dining room is a large, open space with cinderblock walls and Formica covered tables.  This is not a restaurant for gracious, elegant dining.  It’s for seriously committed carnivores.  Oh, they give you salad and vegetables, too, but the raison d’etre of Jocko’s (not that they’d ever use a phrase like raison d’etre) is enormous slabs of meat, mostly of the bovine variety.  There are some fish items as well, but really, why bother?

The firepit at Jocko’s.  Photo courtesy of A. Rios on Flickr.

So now you’ve ordered your dinner.  You can go out back and watch them cook it in a great, wide open, wood fired barbecue pit.  There are dozens of steaks and ribs and chops being cooked at any one time and at least one of them is yours.  The fellow tending the grill must be able to stand the heat, because he’s staying in the kitchen.

Go to Jocko’s for the experience.  Don’t worry, if you’re a meat-eater, you’ll love your meal.

California is, as everyone knows, the apex of wine making in the United States.  There are now, according to Wine Spectator, wineries in all 50 states and some are making wine that has promise.  Napa and Sonoma counties have already realized that promise and are even still continuing to improve, with many vineyards producing products of world class caliber.  The regions are easy to visit from San Francisco.

Then there are other areas in the Golden State that are cracking into the big time, notably in Paso Robles and Santa Barbara, the so-called Central Coast, which stretches so far that it’s hard to call it a single wine-growing region.  It’s at least a two-hour drive from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara and a minimum of three hours from, well, anywhere to Paso Robles.  In other words, if you want to visit these regions it will probably mean at least one night in a hotel, not a day trip.

Then, if you’re in Southern California, you also have a destination for wine tasting.  San Diego is a wonderful city with perhaps the best climate in the United States.  If you go, drive north on I-15 to the Temecula Valley, about an hour away, to experience the local Wine Country.

Photo courtesy of Temecula Wines.org

Don’t expect the same level of quality that the great Napa and Sonoma vineyards produce, nor the glorious vistas you can see in the northern and central parts of the state.  But it is very definitely Wine Country that you’ll be in, with all the attendant opportunities that go with such a region.  What’s most amazing is that the local grape farmers have used the popularity of wine drinking in America to make the desert bloom.  This is not the sort of Wine Country with the lush verdure of, say, Russian River nor with the grand chateaux of Bordeaux, Burgundy or, in its way, Napa Valley.  Part of the allure of Temecula is that you have a chance to see it and taste it before it becomes famous, which is a good reason to go.

If you are among those that think that the quality of a wine comes exclusively from the skilled hands of the farmer and the wine maker, then Temecula has a chance at making it big.  If, however, you are like us and think that terroir – the soil and the climate – are the dominating factors in a wine’s character then it may just be that Temecula is reaching its apogee.  Of course, don’t take our word for it; taste for yourself and make your own evaluation.

Two of the wineries we like best are conveniently closest to the Interstate.  If the name Callaway is familiar to you, you must be a golfer.  The club maker and the winery owner are the same folks.  Depending on your perspective, they are either the best or the most pretentious winery in Temecula Valley.  They are the only one there with a wine, the Owner’s Private Reserve, that runs $175 per bottle.  Is it worth it? Only your mouth can tell.

Just next door is Hart Family Winery.  It is one of the oldest wineries in the valley, going back to 1970.  The Hart family are farmers and winemakers, with no corporate empire behind them.  A visit to their winery, even today, brings back thoughts of what Napa Valley was before Robert Mondavi and other pioneers brought that region to the forefront.  And they are still among the few who will let you drink a glass of wine and take the logo-engraved glass with you.

A very nice feature of a visit to Temecula Valley is that many of the wineries have restaurants, running from Meritage at Callaway, which is similar to a sophisticated urban restaurant, to salads and flatbreads at Lorimar’s Pairings bistro.  Flower Hill is at Miramonte; there’s Café Champagne at Thornton (guess what the specialty wine might be); and Avensole has a “restaurant and marketplace” of the same name.

We enjoy visiting Temecula because we enjoy outings in Wine Country, wherever it may be.  We have tasted some pleasant wines but nothing that has ever excited us.  Your experience may be very different in that regard.  So come for the experience, keep your mind (and your mouth) open and have wonderful day so near to San Diego.

There are plenty of wine stores in Manhattan and no lack of specialty food stores either.  But Di Palo’s Fine Foods on Grand Street and Enoteca Di Palo next door are something special.

There is a long and wonderful history for the food store.  Starting in 1903 as a store for dairy products, the store is run by the fourth generation with the fifth working there as well.  Aside from the wonderful smell of cheeses, dried meats, sausages and prepared Italian specialties, Di Palo’s exudes a sense of place and time.  This is Little Italy, now greatly reduced in size from its height in in the first half of the 20^th century, still alive and real, even considering the incursions of New York’s Chinatown.  The three Di Palo’s (Lou, Sal and Marie) preside behind the counter over an empire of foods that are uniquely chosen in their many journeys back to Italy.

Sure, you can buy prosciutto and mozzarella elsewhere.  But where else is the mozzarella made every day in the back of the store?  You can see them bringing out trays of freshly made balls all day long.  The sheer amount of prosciutto sold here ensures that what you buy will definitely be fresh.  And in case there was any question, they will always give you a slice up front.  In Lou’s book, Di Palo’s Guide to the Essential Foods of Italy: 100 Years of Wisdom and Stories from Behind the Counter, he writes that it’s only fair to give the customer a chance to taste before he or she buys.

Lou di Palo giving a customer a bit of Piave cheese (Photo courtesy of dipalos.com)

What differentiates Di Palo’s is the connection they have established between the Old World and the New.  The members of the family are acquainted not only with the major producers but also – and especially – with the farms that keep the old traditions alive in their food in a way that only individual hand crafting can achieve.  You sense that the Di Palo’s know not only every farmer in Italy, they know every cow!

So here you find speck from the Alto Adige; pecorino cheese from a specific dairy in the hills outside of Florence; truffled cheeses from Tuscany and Sicily; select olive oil from the Musso family in Sicily; balsamic vinegar from Giusti, the oldest in Modena; Spinosi pasta, well worth waiting for; ravioli made not by the Di Palo’s but by a cousin…and on and on.  Every few weeks, whenever it’s a good day for a walk or if we’re running out of parmigiana, we go for an Italian or a Chinese lunch and a pilgrimage to Di Palo’s.

And when we buy what we want, we always ask Lou, “What wine should we drink with this?”  For Lou’s son Sam has opened a wine shop adjoining the specialty store.  Again, you won’t find the big producers here, no Bolla or Frescobaldi or Antinori.  In their place are unusual finds like La Salette, Filinona and Tiburzi.  You may not always think these are the best but the selection is certainly the most unique.

They often host wine tastings at Enoteca Di Palo, where you get a chance to meet the owner/winemaker of what you are sipping.  For example, they just held a tasting of wines from the Colli Orientale of Friuli, where Giorgio Colutta poured wines from his vineyard.  We don’t know Friuli very well nor Signore Colutta’s wines but that’s exactly the point.  Here you get a chance not only to taste and buy wine but to get an education in Italian wine, which was certainly the case for us.  Our appreciation for the wines of Italy came late and was largely gained by the tips we got at Di Palo’s.

 

Everybody knows the wine from Montalcino.  It’s Brunello, pure Sangiovese, always grown in the authorized confines of this small village in Tuscany.  Its earliest appearance was at the Tenuta Greppo, home of the Biondi Santi family.  The house still stands in the outskirts of Montalcino and so do their wines.

You approach the village up a winding road, just off a two-lane “highway” and somewhat further from a real autostrada.  As you approach Montalcino, you’ll see plenty of inviting villas where you can stop for a degustazione of that winery’s production.  No one would blame you if you only travelled to Montalcino for wine tasting, but you’d be missing out on a very charming corner of Italy if you didn’t carry on into the town.

We have to admit that parking is a bit of a problem.  If it’s a cold, rainy day in December you might find a place to park right by the town walls, but on a beautiful day at harvest time, you must park quite far down the hill and walk.  It’s a pleasant stroll, albeit with a lot of climbing up and down the narrow streets of the village.

Among the major attractions of Montalcino, much as you might imagine, are the wine shops and restaurants.   We had been advised to dine at Il Grapplo Blu and warned that it would be very difficult to find.  Naturally enough, it was the first taverna we came upon and so were way too early for lunch.  Il Grapplo Blu has no view over the valley, so we went looking for another place that did.  Even in mid-September, the indoor temperatures were so hot that we passed these up and went back to where we had been recommended and had a memorable meal.

On another occasion, we chose to sit outside in one of the two main piazzas, this one right in front of the village’s major church.  It was called Bacchus, understandably.  A selection of local dried hams and sausages there is well worth a try.  Of course, in both restaurants, we had to order a bottle of Brunello.  This can be a mighty expensive wine, but most wine lists have relatively affordable bottles to choose from.  Now, knowing the names of all those Brunellos is quite another matter, but we were quite satisfied with our choices.

All around Montalcino you’ll find wine stores offering tastings, usually for a fee and always from the producers that shop represents.  We chose to save our tasting time for the wineries themselves but others we know have whiled away their afternoons on the piazza in front of the stores.

Like all destinations favored by tourists, Montalcino has its souvenir stores and gimcracks aplenty.  But it also has many little boutiques with fashionable clothes and more exquisite (and expensive) handicrafts.  They provide something to do other than eat, drink and mellow out under an umbrella in a piazza.

Perhaps Montalcino’s greatest treat (other than the Brunello) is the views you can have from around the exterior of the town.  You’ll find your heart in your throat and your camera in your hand, for sure.

While Portugal has some excellent table wines, its glory is in the dessert wines, from grapes grown along the Douro River in the north of the country.  The grapes have names that are strange to American ears: Touriga Franca, Tinta Roriz, Tinta Barroca, Touriga Nacional, Tinto Cão and Tinta Amarela.  The name of the wine they are made into comes from the city at the mouth of the Douro, called Porto.  Hence the wine famous around the world for its richness, depth and high alcoholic content is called Port.

But if you are in Lisbon you are three hours south of Porto. So if you want to taste Port, where do you go?  The answer to that question is very simple: the Instituto Dos Vinhos Do Douro e Do Porto (the Institute for the Wines of the Douro and of Porto).  It’s located at 45 Rua São Pedro de Alcântara, in the district called the Barrio Alto or the “high neighborhood”.  The building is an elegant old palace on a street that winds its way down the hill towards the River Tagus.  The Instituto is the august body that determines if a winery’s top production in any given year is good enough to be merited as a vintage Port, so they know their way around this delicious beverage.

The Instituto operates an elegant tasting room called the Solar, where admission is free.  The first thing you notice upon entering is that it is very dark.  Once your eyes adjust, you see that it looks very much like a club room, very hushed with large easy chairs for you to sink into as you sip your Port.  And oh, the Port you have to choose from!  There are more than 300 of them from more than 60 producers, ranging from simple ruby Ports to mature vintage Ports.  Prices range from a few euros to twenty-plus per glass.  The low end is a real bargain; the top end is also a bargain for what you get.

Photograph courtesy of the Instituto Dos Vinhos Do Douro e Do Porto

For the most part, the best Ports are sold only by the bottle, so you need to be with a group to savor these extra special wines.  It’s quite a show if you do.  Your server arrives with the bottle cradled in his arm, wiping away the accumulation of dust.  He lays it gently into a cradle that has a small crank.  In order to avoid pouring sediment into your glass, he uses the crank to gently tilt the bottle so that only unsullied liquid gets there.  He’ll serve you a plate of almonds to accompany your selection.  You are now officially in wine-lovers’ heaven.

If you want to taste by the glass, you are hardly left out of the fun.  You can try all sorts of combinations, such as the range from bottom to top of one producer.  This is best if you already have some knowledge of Port and have a favorite Port house.  Or to gain some knowledge of which houses you like, try tasting similar wines from multiple makers.  So for example, you can sample late bottled vintage (LBV) wines from Grahams, Taylor Fladgate, Dow and Fonseca side by side or one after the other.

Another good tasting is to try a vertical of tawny ports that contain a variety of well-aged wine from various vineyards (or quintas).  You can compare one winery’s 10-year, 20-year and 30-year tawnies.  Needless to say, the older the wine, the more it costs.  There are even some 40-year old tawnies that are quite pricy but are an exquisite experience.  Steve once tasted a 40-year old Burmester there and has never forgotten it.

Once you leave the Solar, turn left and walk a hundred or so feet.  There’s a little park with the best view overlooking downtown Lisbon and the Alfama hill across the way.  Don’t miss it.

The Solar is open until midnight, opening at 11:00 am on weekdays and 3:00 pm on Saturdays.  It’s closed on Sundays and holidays, of which there are quite a few in Portugal.  We recommend that, since the days are so lovely, you shouldn’t spend them indoors.  Go see the sunset over Lisbon and then taste in the evening hours.