Following the Douro: Portugal's Wine Country Beyond Lisbon

The Douro Valley is one of Europe's oldest wine regions — and one of its most dramatic. Terraced vineyards drop steeply down to a river that winds through schist and slate for 200 kilometres east from Porto.

Most people visiting Portugal spend their days in Lisbon. The Douro rewards the ones who go further.

Arriving by Train

The train from Porto to Pinhão takes just over two hours and follows the river almost the entire way. It is, without exaggeration, one of the great train journeys in Europe. The old azulejo tile panels in Pinhão station alone are worth the trip — they depict the harvest in extraordinary detail, painted in 1937.

The Quintas

A quinta is a wine estate — but in the Douro, it's also a way of life. The estates I work with here are mostly family-owned, some of them for five or six generations. They farm steep terraces by hand because there's no other way to do it. The wines they produce from those terraces — Touriga Nacional, Tinta Roriz, Tinta Barroca — are some of the most distinctive in the world.

The Table

One evening at a quinta we're served bacalhau à brás on a long table on a terrace overlooking the river as the light drops. A bottle of their unfiltered white. Then a very old tawny port, poured generously, with a sliver of aged queijo da serra.

I have eaten that meal in memory many times since.