Wine and Heritage in Porto

Student Reflection by Haimie Getenga (C’27 W’27, German target)

Over the summer, I had the wonderful opportunity of participating in the GRIP Wine, Culture and Heritage summer internship program located in Porto, Portugal as a Business and Hospitality Intern. I worked with Churchill Graham SA, a family-owned boutique Port and Douro wine company located in Vila Nova de Gaia– an entrepôt located in Porto. As an intern, my main responsibilities were offering tours of our wine cellars and lodge for tourists visiting the company and guiding them through wine tastings. Before beginning my role, I was trained for a week, shadowing the other tour guides in the company, and studying about the company’s history and wines. My day-to-day involved standing for the better part of the day and receiving clients and interacting with them first hand. It wasn’t a typical Monday-to-Friday job as we had 2 off-days per week on any day of the week. On these days, my fellow interns and I traveled to other cities such as Lisboa, Braga, Sintra, and Aveiro and countries nearby, making the most of our time in Europe.

Being my first college summer, I was searching for an experience that was more of a celebration of a new culture before entering the 9-5 corporate world. I also wanted to do something a bit more adventurous, memorable and unique that I could easily bring up in a random conversation. This was the perfect opportunity to do so as I was going into the world of port wine, learning firsthand about Portugal’s history and culture while also gaining professional experience and skills. Going in, I had no prior knowledge of Portuguese or any interest in the port wine industry – but I left with passable knowledge of both. This experience gave me exactly what I was looking for: a professional experience intertwined with embracing foreignness, learning a new culture and gaining independence through traveling abroad.

I am immensely grateful to the Huntsman Program for giving me the opportunity to immerse myself in Portuguese culture through my GRIP internship at Churchill’s, a boutique Port and Douro wine producer in Porto, Portugal. Although German is my Huntsman target language, as a freshman at Penn, I sought a summer experience that would push me beyond my comfort zone: one where I could immerse myself in a new culture, pick up a new language, and build meaningful connections. At Churchill’s, I worked as a Business and Hospitality intern, leading tourists through lodge tours and wine tastings. This hands-on experience, different from a traditional corporate internship, sharpened my soft skills while deepening my understanding of the port wine industry. More importantly, it sparked my interest in knowledge dissemination and client-facing roles. This culturally immersive internship reinforced my love for language learning and laid a strong foundation for my future career in the corporate world.