Lady Gaga meets Dom Perignon over a glass of port at this new cultural hotspot
If you didn’t know already, Lady Gaga once wore a cork dress, a fetching little number adorned with gold and silver-plated cork, embroidered beads and metallic threads.
The image of Lady Gaga and her cork dress is an exhibit at Cork Planet, one of seven tech-enhanced museums and experiences, restaurants, retail outlets and a wine school that comprise WOW, the Best Cultural District, a multi-faceted attraction which is shedding fabulous new light on Portugal’s second largest city, Porto.
At WOW, what’s old is new again in a part of the city that was once the home of wine and port producers with names like Cockburn, Croft, Graham, Taylor and Sandemann, English and Scottish merchants whose spirit-fortified wines found a home in the boozy gentlemen’s clubs of London in the 1700s.
Vila Nova de Guia’s old wine warehouses have been given a new life as WOW Porto
Traditionally, the wine produced in northern Portugal’s Douro Valley was aged in warehouses in Vila Nova de Guia, across the Dom Luís I bridge from Porto’s old city centre, but when ageing and storage was achieved without the need for the wine barrels to be transported to Porto by river boats, the warehouses offered the opportunity to launch an urban regeneration project.
Classified as a Project of National Interest in Portugal, WOW, The Best Cultural District embraces everything from a museum celebrating Porto‘s rich history, to a unique collection of ancient drinking vessels and a chocolate experience, which is a must-visit for both adults and kids.
What WOW Porto does so well is wrap up a wealth of knowledge in a fun package.
WOW, the Best Cultural District, is part of an urban regeneration project in Porto.
Naively, I imaged the economy of the cork industry must be ready to pop given that most wine bottles these days are sealed with aluminum Stelvin caps. Not so.
Cork is being used in the constructions of surfboards and skateboards, for artificial turf in football stadiums, for fashion, and for building solutions – Lisbon’s Cruise Terminal uses a special composite, combining cork and concrete, resulting in a 40% lighter structure.
The movie industry loves cork. Remember, those earth-shattering explosions in Mission Impossible and Total Recall? They were produced with cork, a product the film industry uses to simulate explosions, falling debris – as in Ghostbusters – and the impact of bullets hitting various objects.
Cork and wine have been close friends ever since they were introduced to each other by Frenchman Dom Perignon, a partnership that continues today with 13 billion cork stoppers produced globally – that’s two corks for everyone on the planet.
The Wine Experience Museum takes visitors through the production of wine and port in the Douro Valley, guides them around wines and wine producing regions throughout the world and finishes with an aroma sniffing experience and a wine tasting.
Want more? The Pink Palace celebrates everything pink – particularly rose wine. Here, visitors can pose for selfies in a pink Cadillac or jump in a magenta ball pit.
Kids having fun in the Pink Palace at WOW Porto
Elsewhere, The Bridge Collection is named after the collector and WOW boss Adrian Bridge and showcases 9,000 years of drinking. Bridge is CEO of The Fladgate Partnership which invested US$117 million over the course of five years of WOW’s development.
Ana Maria Lourenco, public relations executive at WOW Porto, says, “WOW keeps a strong online presence and is developing new ways of communicating with visitors through technology.
“In each museum, the content is narrated using different platforms: explanatory panels, videos, documentaries, video mapping, interactive games, aroma rooms, and customisation of corks.”
In a word, it’s a WOW experience.
