WoW stands for World of Wine, also the exlamation, wow! It is a huge wine complex in Portugal, on the hillside overlooking the river. The city is called Oporto, Oporto, on a hillside above the port in Portugal, easy to remember. But that's not the only place to find a wine museum.
After the London Wine Fair, where I saw the stand of Georgia, which claims to be the birthplace of wine, I started thinking about wine museums. Some have supermarket size shops and restaurants. Others have cellar doors offering tastings, sometimes free food, other times platters of food if you have a group and book and pay - and mini-shops, and vineyard visits, with self-guided or guided tours.
I have visited Vineyards all over the world, and I have been to the memorable wine museums in Cyprus and Italy.
Italy
Italy has huge mosaic floors from Roman villas, showing the Gods of wine, and the Romans reclining and drinking.
The one in Torgiano, Italy is in Umbria, next door to and west of Tuscany, not far from Florence.
France
Paris has a wine museum.
Beyond Paris is Rheims in the Champagne area. There numerous Champagne houses offer tours and tastings.
In France, the port of Marseilles was established for the ships carrying wine.
Bordeaux has a huge modern museum of wine. The name Bordeaux means border or edge of the water, meaning waterway. Wine drinking and export dates back to the time before air travel and even proper passable roads. Then travel was mainly by boats down rivers and in ships across seas.
Portugal
In Europe the biggest range of museums and gifts such as wine stoppers and socks was in WOW in Portugal. A series of museums on a hillside, like Disney, kept us busy all day.Videos, tastings, and a plastic tumbler to take home included in the price.
The Douro museum, along the river Douro, included a sniff section. The large ground floor shop entertained me with wine soaps and novelties.
Museu do Douro, Portugal. Photo by Angela Lansbury.
USA
California has many wineries, vineyards and shops attached. We drove along, up north from San Francisco. As we got further from the big city, the price of a corkscrew got lower and lower. One of the vineyards had a train tour, but we arrived too late.
I saw lots of great gifts. In addition to wines, corkscrews, wine racks, bottle covers. Books for keeping a record of wine you've tried and liked. Books for storing bottle labels.
Websites of Wine Museums:
- Vino Versum Poysdorf, Austria
- Wine Museum (Pleven), Bulgaria
- Wine Museum, Ehnen, Luxembourg
- Wine Museum and Enoteca, Brazil
- Cyprus Wine Museum, Limassol District, Cyprus
- Macau Wine Museum, Macau, SAR China
- Musée du Vin (Wine Museum of Paris), France
- https://www.bordeaux-tourism.co.uk/cultural-heritage/wine-trade-museum.html#:~:text=Discover%20the%20history%20of%20the,better%20understanding%20of%20Bordeaux%20wines. Bordeaux, France
- Museo del vino (Torgiano), Italy
- Douro Museum, Portugal
- WOW (World of Wine), Porto, Portugal
- Drăgășani Wine Museum, Romania
- Yilan Distillery Chia Chi Lan Wine Museum, Taiwan
- https://www.wineinvestment.com/learn/magazine/2021/05/seven-wine-museums-to-put-on-your-travel-bucket-list/
- Other wine museums are in Georgia, and South Africa.
- https://www.wineenthusiast.com/culture/travel/best-winemaking-history-musuems/?srsltid=AfmBOoqzqokP-8sps2EpFXIhSY0DOMgXWFRycZtFFHAO1WKp6bNWtsJy
- California Wine Museum Antique Shop, USA
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