After lunch, we left for our first official Port tasting of the trip, at Quinta da Roêda, which is owned by Croft, which is now under the same ownership as Taylor.

Again, I was glad I wasn’t driving the bus – the roads were not built for tourism!

The trip was short – only 15 minutes or so – and then we were at the winery.

Our guide showed us the crushing room; he was standing in one of the vats where they actually crush wine by foot during the harvest.

Port wine is a fortified wine; they use French brandy to fortify the local grapes. It’s stored in huge concrete vats.

They also grow olives and make estate olive oil here.

We saw one of their newer fields, about 16 years old.

The wine itself? Pretty good, and less expensive than it would have been in the US, but not good enough to schlep. At least not until we can try some others!

We pushed off from Pocinho a few minutes after 7.

I sat outside on our balcony after breakfast and enjoyed the river view.

We wanted to be on the sundeck to watch the ship go through the lock at Valeria Dam, but the area was closed for our safety, so we watched from the forward deck instead.

This lock has a bit more than a 100-foot drop – it looked a lot farther than that!

One of the other passengers pointed out that we were tied up to bollards that were being lowered along with us.

And then we were down, looking up at the sky far above.

Guess what? We saw a winery right away!

We’ll be docking at Pinhão soon for an after-lunch visit to Quinta da Roêda with a port wine tasting; later today, we will be going to Mateus Palace and Gardens for a tour and then dinner at Quinta de Avessada with more wine tasting.

I’m posting now because it’s going to be pretty late when we return from the tours – I’m glad I’m not driving!