Trust the Penny

In preparation for our transition to Spain, Jon spent a 14-hour “planes, trains, and automobiles” day to Madrid and back on July 28 to get a vehicle for the next leg of our family journey through Spain.

Having a vehicle for the past week was a nice change from all of the walking and gave us the ability to explore more of Portugal in our area aside from our more limited walking and taxi rides. Also, kudos to the Europeans who greatly prefer manual transmissions to automatics, especially with the varied terrain and narrow roads!

On Saturday, we booked a winemaker experience at Hotel Monverde which we were anticipating for weeks! We dressed up for the occasion and started the day by driving out around Amarante to explore the smaller towns in that area. While I was gassing up, Micheka spotted a Euro penny on the ground (yes, they still use cents to the penny here!), spawning the phrase “trust the penny” for our recent travels.

So, we trusted the penny and ended up in the town of Lixa, which had an amazing lunch restaurant, Mundo da Música with some good, authentic Portuguese food! Once finished, we headed to the nearby town centre and explored the shops and services before heading back to our Monverde wine experience!

Once we checked in, a golf cart came and whisked us away to a nearby outbuilding with a spectacular view of the vineyard. The girls got to ride on the back of the cart on their own and have been really coming into their independence since we arrived in Europe.

We were greeted by our guide, Sophia, who gave us a tour of the facility before getting to the winemaking. We first went down a spiral staircase with a couple of dozen scent samplers to give you a sense of the unique flavours people generally experience while drinking wine. The girls loved to smell them all and quickly discovered their favourites and their dislikes!

Also, to keep them engaged, the winery also had a juice-making experience for the girls with fresh orange, peach, and pear juices for tasting and mixing. I’m sure you can imagine the fun the girls had with that!

For Micheka and I, we started by filling our glasses with five local Portuguese white grape varieties – Trajadura, Loureiro, Avesso, Alvarinho, and Arinto. After explaining the characteristics of the varieties and how they balance each other in winemaking, Sophia helped us to experiment with test blends while we figured out something perfect for our palates! Perhaps the Kacaba winery may want to consider a similar experience in Ontario.

Once we set our minds to a blend, we used a beaker to measure out the proportions and fill our wine bottles. We then had the opportunity to cork, seal, and label our bottles. Similarly, the girls got to do the same with their juice blends and had a blast!

We then decided to finish the afternoon ahead of our dinner reservations at the hotel’s poolside lounge with some snacks and a proper glass of wine.

Completing our day back in Amarante, we took a walk along the Tamega River and then finished off with dinner overlooking the river. This was our last complete relaxing day in Portugal and to paraphrase Emmeline, Portugal as our first destination holds a special place in our hearts and we are grateful for having experienced this place.