Exclusive Wine Tasting Experience: Lunch, José Maria de Fonseca, and Quinta de Catralvos

Overview

Our readers know we often do private winery tours. After having just returned from a wonderful winery tour in Cape Town South Africa, we were looking forward to checking out the wineries in Portugal. After touring Sintra and the Pena Palace with our Skip the Line Tour, we were excited to explore wine country from our Lisbon hotel. As we didn’t have a car and wanted to drink responsibly, we booked a private tour to explore the Setúbal wine region. One nice feature of private tours is that, many times, they will pick you up and return you to your hotel instead of having to walk or taxi/ride share to a central pick-up location. It was nice being directly picked up from the hotel. The main thing we liked about the private tour was the transportation and sightseeing. We didn’t care for their selection of the group wine tours.

Market Tour

We left from Altis Grand Hotel and proceeded to our first stop, the Mercado do Livramento in Setúbal, a market hailed as one of the Best Fresh Markets in the World by USA Today, according to the tour. We walked through the market with the throngs of locals doing their marketing.  The market had everything from freshly harvested fruits and vegetables, meats and cheeses, many desserts as well as many vendors showing off their fresh catch of the day. 

Coastal Scenery

After our market tour, we drove along the coastline with a number of stops to enjoy the scenery. The little towns were charming and the road quite curvy. We were glad that we had a private driver so we were free to enjoy the views.

Quinta Da Bacalhôa

Our first stop was at Quinta da Bacalhôa. There was a bit of a delay from when we arrived and before we started our tour so we wandered around the art in the gardens. As well as a winery, the owner is an extensive art collector. We toured two areas of their collection. One was a gallery of three different artists from the holocaust. The other was a collection of African Art. After our art tour, we experienced three wines which we enjoyed and then we headed off to lunch. 

Lunch and Tasting

We had a lovely lunch at Wine Corner in Setúbal and then went to our next tasting at José Maria de Fonseca, a short walk away. We toured the historic house, gardens, and cellars before finishing with our wine tasting. The grounds are well kept but the cellars were some of the dustiest I have ever seen. As the oldest winemaker in Setúbal, it looks like some of the cobwebs have been there since the installation of electricity. 

Quinta de Catralvos

Our final wine tasting was at Quinta de Catralvos where we toured their wine producing area and sampled many of their wines. It was lovely sitting on their patio relaxing in the sun enjoying a glass or two. It was disappointing that we were just poured wine without being able to understand what we were drinking. The group was too large to hear well.

Summary

We enjoyed our trip exploring wine country and visiting Setúbal, a small but lovely town.  The only disappointing aspect was, while we had a private driver, all three of the wine tours were crowded and not the private experience that the tour implied.

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Here’s is the tour we used for this private wine tour on Viator.

Here is the Guided day tour of Sintra we used on Get your Guide.