Douro Valley Wine Tour

If you are unsure about which tour to book, or if you should book any tour at all, allow me to assure you that this is the right decision. After a few bad experiences I am staunchly anti-tours. But while planning this trip with my family we realized that if we wanted to see the Douro Valley during our time in Porto, it would be more convenient to let a tour company handle the logistics. On your own, you are renting the car, you are planning the driving route, you are the one getting lost or turned around, you are the one choosing which wineries and restaurants to visit, you are responsible for booking the river cruise. Or, you could click 'Book' with Cooltour Oporto and they will take care of all of the above. On the day of our tour we were picked up at our hotel's front door and driven to Sabrosa, the birthplace of Ferdinand Magellan, for a short pit stop of coffee and pastry. It was here we first saw we made a good decision. For one, if you are planning your own day trip would you know it was possible to stop in the birthplace of Magellan? Would you know to order your coffee with smell (cafe com cheirinho), a coffee with an added shot of spirit? These were a few of the interesting things our tour guide planned for us that we would never know to do if left to plan our own trip. We then went on to tour two wineries where we bought multiple bottles of their fantastic port wine and some gorgeous olive oil. We had a beautiful lunch al fresco at a delicious restaurant, and of course the picturesque river cruise through the valley. My six year old daughter even had a good time as one of the wineries had two friendly farmhouse kittens that allowed her to pick them up and pet them. At the end of the day, our tour guide drove us back to the front door of our hotel. We had such a brilliant time that we still talk about it a year after the fact. To Cooltour Oporto, and especially our great tour guide João, sorry for such a late review (almost a year later). João your tour was one of the highlights of our trip to Portugal. Thank you so much for making our trip to Porto so memorable and special. Hopefully our paths cross again sometime. And remember, if you're ever in Taiwan we'd love to be able to give YOU a tour. To Cooltour Oporto, your man João is a 5-star tour guide. Do whatever you can to keep him happy ;)

Our driver Antonio was great! The wine tastings were small and intimate and quality was good to great, nothing bad. I would have liked to have someone give us background of the area, large estates and wineries we were seeing on the boat tour but that was the responsibility of the boat captain in my opinion. Overall loved it!

Great guide, good attention to detail, well thought out plan and you could have asked more about any topic, religion, architecture, history… what ever you wanted.