World of Wine (WOW)
Our first week in Porto was actually spent at a charming Airbnb in Gaia (across the river from Porto) and we were only a few blocks from the World of Wine (WOW). It ended up being one of our most visited spots while in Porto.
WOW is a complex made up of seven museums; a dozen restaurants, cafes, and bars; shops, and more. It is very new (opened in 2020) and many locals don’t even know about it yet. While the restaurants and cafes that we visited were decent, the really unique part of WOW was the museums. We bought a five-experience ticket which allowed us to visit five of the museums over a few months. The museums we checked out were the Wine Experience, The Chocolate Story, Pink Palace, Porto Region Across the Ages, and Planet Cork.
Porto Region Across the Ages was the closest exhibit to a traditional museum. There was a lot of information about the history of Porto, Portugal’s relationship with England and Brasil, and Portugal’s role in the Conquista. It was well done but, in my experience, nothing particularly special.
The other four exhibits were very unlike a traditional museum experience and were remarkably constructed. Each of the exhibits focused on the product (wine, chocolate, rosé, cork), told the story of the product’s evolution, and its importance today. The unique part was how this was conveyed. The exhibits utilized all of the guests’ senses and shared information in different ways which was very effective. The same information would be presented as text, in a video, and through photographs or diagrams.
In the Chocolate Story, there was a section that focused on the harvesting of cacao and the room had cacao trees that you could touch, sounds of birds that exist in this ecosystem played, and the ground even resembled the forest floor. There was another area of this exhibit where you could smell different types of cacao beans. Toward the end of this exhibit, there was a staff member who provided the guests with chocolate samples. There were also people at work making chocolate and you could watch that happen in real-time.
The Wine Experience was similar to the Chocolate Story in terms of its layout and use of all sensory stimuli. The culmination of the Wine Experience is a lesson in wine tasting.
Planet Cork focused on the importance of cork, its history, and its innovative uses. There were a lot of opportunities for feeling cork trees and cork products. The experience did a fantastic job of explaining the significance and versatility of cork.
The Pink Palace was the silliest of the experiences as you can tell by the photos. It was pretty much a playground for adults. There was a lot of rosé sampling, a lot of photo opportunities, and opportunities to interact with various pink items (like the car and ball pit).
Each experience had its own gift shop and these were also very well done. For the edible product experiences, there were a lot of those items you could buy (tons of chocolate, wine, etc). For Planet Cork, there were a lot of cork products including yoga mats, flip flops, and sunglasses.
These four experiences were spectacularly done and I would absolutely go back and experience each of them again.
Worth noting: WOW did a great job of managing COVID. They limited the number of people in each experience, everyone was masked, and there was plenty of hand sanitiser available.
