I spent the day at WoW today - from around 11 am to 6 pm - and I thought it might warrant a bump to this thread.
Dad and I were welcomed by Richard Bowden, WoW’s marketing director, who gave us a small guided tour and revealed a few surprising numbers to us - 55 000 (the square meters that comprise WoW), 1000 (the number of people who worked at the site during the final phase of construction), 15 (the number of minutes that elapsed between the end of formal work on construction and WoW’s opening - all in order to fulfill Adrian Bridge’s pigheaded wish to stick to the opening date of July 31st, pandemic be damned). The multi-million euro investment is even more apparent than I thought: having expected a more linear organization of the overall space, I found instead a dizzyingly varied, opulently scaled, self-contained ‘village’, which I only hesitate to compare to a theme park since the term might be a disservice to the scope and ambition of what’s going on there (the one exception being a café constructed in the imitation of a Portuguese plaza and equipped with a gigantic LED screen. I predict it will be fully booked for the Champions League final).
Not everything is quite open yet at WoW: their fine dining restaurant, 1828, will open only next week - although we got to visit the kitschy dining room - and the wine academy won’t get started before Fall, with what I understand will be a mixture of formal WSET with non-formal, though still intensive and far reaching, education on Portuguese wine. There are also some modules, such as the ‘make your own chocolate bar’ at the chocolate museum, which aren’t active yet. Angel’s Share, which is the biggest wine bar I’ve ever been to, was about to open at noon. All of these spaces have a privileged view over Porto and the D. Luiz Bridge.
After Richard left to continue his work, we visited the museum dedicated to the history of Porto, with a look at the region’s History from the Bronze and Iron Ages to the current day. I especially appreciated the documentary styled visual content dedicated to the Napoleonic Invasions and to the Siege of Porto during the Portuguese Civil War, both of them narrated in English and with a 2006 History Channel sense of drama and pace.
Lunch was at VP, which at WoW’s diverse roster of restaurants is where you get unfussy, straightforward Portuguese food at fair prices - the most expensive main course being 16€. I have had far more interesting versions of duck rice, a national staple, than I did today, but it did pair well with Quinta do Perdigão 2013 Jaen, a budget Dão which hasn’t yet nudged out of its youth and shows plenty of future potential, illustrating how excessively conservative the recommended drinking windows of national critics are.
We then went to the Wine Experience museum, which is dedicated to wine making in all of its different stages - viticulture, vinification, varietals, etc. The museum is an interactive take on the concept of a wine crash course, and even includes a series of electronically activated aroma samples, and an actual wine tasting at the end of the route, as well as video content on the Portuguese wine regions. There is virtually nothing in the entire exhibit for the experienced wine lover to learn from (unless you’re unfamiliar with Portuguese varietals or the process of making Port), but I feel it’s a terrific visit for those who are curious about wine but have little knowledge and experience. Next week we should be visiting the chocolate museum and Adrian Bridget’s private glassware collection, with over 1000 items going back to 7000 B.C… Cool stuff!