Solar do Vinho do Porto (port wine / wine bar) February 21
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The Solar do Vinho do Porto (So-LAR doo VEE-gno doo POR-too) is — on a par with Vinologia — one of our favorite places to enjoy port wine. It is a comfortable bar operated by the Instituto dos Vinhos do Douro e do Porto (Port and Douro wines Institute), the state agency that regulates the port wine industry. This means two things. First, on the upside, it is one of the very few places where service is both deeply knowledgeable on port and absolutely unbiased about which producers are best. Second, on the downside, it is not an “in” place; rather a quiet, old-fashioned wine bar where you focus on the wine. We think the pros more than compensate for the cons. Besides, the bar is installed right next to the Museum of Romanticism, in a lovely XIX century mansion perched on a slope overlooking the river — and there is outdoors seating when the weather is nice.
The Solar do Vinho do Porto has the widest and most consistently good selection of port available in town. Moreover, it has excellent selection for all price points, from no-frills tawnies and rubies to four-digit vintages and colheitas. Since it attracts many people willing to try out port and know a bit more about it, there’s always a good number of vintages and LBVs waiting to be poured any given day (these wines have to be consumed within a few days of opening the bottle, so that most places don’t have many choices at any given time).
The staff consists on the most knowledgeable port sommeliers you will ever find. These are the same people that judge wines in the mandatory blind tastings by an official state-appointed panel that precedes any decision on the part of producers to decide what to label (and how much to price) their port wine.
If you didn’t know, it’s not up to the producers to decide, for instance, what gets labeled a vintage, or an LBV (late bottled vintage), or a 10-year old blend. Producers submit to the Institute samples prepared by their in-house wine makers. The Institute organizes a blind tasting of those samples by a panel of experts and, based on the panel’s recommendation, issues a binding decision on whether the producer can indeed turn the wine in question into, say, a vintage, or whether it must settle for the less prestigious LBV label.
Contrary to what happens in the port wine cellars across the river (and in wineries around the world), the sommeliers here have no vested interest in pushing any particular brand on you. In fact, they have themselves selected the wines on offer at the Solar do Vinho do Porto. The process works as follows. Every year, port wine producers are invited to submit up to five wines for consideration to the Institute. These are tasted blindly, according to each category (ruby, tawny, 10-year old, 20-year old, 40-year old, LBV, vintage, colheita, etc.) and divided into price ranges. The tasting panel then selects up to three wines from each brand to sell at the Solar do Vinho do Porto. They are offered by the glass and also for sale, so you can satisfy your wine-shopping needs here too.
Besides port wine, the Solar do Vinho do Porto has very little on offer — as it should be. There is mineral water, a few options for kids, crackers to cleanse the palate between tastings, and an excellent Serra da Estrela, the king of Portuguese cheeses, served in two varieties — hard and soft.
The decor is a bit dated, but everything from the lighting to the sofas is very comfortable. The small garden is delightful and the view is excellent, extending from the port wine cellars to the river mouth.
Whenever we have foreign friends in town and want to introduce them to port wine, we head to the Solar do Vinho do Porto after dinner and ask the somellier to pick a good choice for one of each of the following: a ruby, an LBV, and a vintage (all wines aged in the bottle); plus a tawny, a 10-year old, a 20-year old, a 40-year old, and a good colheita, like a Krohn from the fifties or sixties, when they had were several good years (all wines aged in wooden casks). We place all he glasses on the table in two rows — ruby-type and tawny-type wines. Then we start with the least expensive ruby and pass the glass around, working our way up to the vintage. We pause for a bit and do the same with the tawny flight, workng our way up to the colheita. Then, if you want to punish yourself a bit, ask for a second glass of the cheaper wines and see how they suddenly seem much worse than they did before you tried out the better wines.
Price point: port wines by the glass 3 euros and up; 10 euros and up by the bottle.
Address: Quinta da Macieirinha - Rua de Entre Quintas 220, Porto.
Website: http://www.ivp.pt/
Opening hours: Monday through Thursday, 2:00pm to 8:00pm; Friday and Saturday, 2:00pm to midnight. Closed on Sundays and public holidays.
Reservations: not needed; call (+351) 22.609.4749.
Getting there: getting to the Solar do Vinho do Porto is tricky by car; getting back after a few glasses of port is even trickier, so we strongly recommend taking a taxi there. The staff will be glad to call a taxi for you on your way out — or you can climb the very steep street as a way of working all that port out of your system. Note that although there are signs point toward the Solar on the main streets, the way there is through narrow winding streets more appropriate for medieval ox carts than to twenty-first century highway drivers. If, however, you insist on driving, it should be easy to park the car right outside the Solar. From downtown Porto, go up Rua de Ceuta. Enter the tunnel, from which you will exit on the last exit, towards Rua D. Manuel II. Follow the street until you see a large gated garden on your left. Continue going down slowly, trying to get to the left lane. As the street ends you’ll see a bowl-upside-down shaped building on your left, inside the gated garden (it is the Palacio de Cristal, an exhibition center). Most of the traffic will turn right at the end of the street. Don’t follow them. Stop on the traffic light on the center of the street — your left lane — and when possible start going down the narrow cobbled stone street that is very slightly to your left — Rua de Vilar. Once in Rua de Vilar (cobbled stone), turn on the first street that will appear to your left. This is the very narrow Rua de Entre Quintas and after a few turns it starts going steeply down the slope. Just follow the street to the end — it has no way out. It literally ends at the gate of the Museum of Romanticism, through which you gain access to the Solar. Go through the gates and park right there. The Solar is to your left when you are facing the Museum house. If you’re not driving, a taxi should take 15 minutes from downtown.
