Douro Valley holidays, Portugal

Making wine is a true labour of love in the Douro Valley, but a relaxing holiday here certainly isn’t.

Arriving by train into the heart of the Douro Valley, I experienced a series of false starts – the hills rose up around the curving river, I spotted my first terraces – were we already here? But as we drew further upstream, the hills got even higher, the terracing even tighter. At last, we were in an unmistakable landscape of high hills, corrugated by thousands of years of wine production.

The Douro Valley has been a wine region for longer than nearly anywhere else. The Romans were here long before English merchants settled to ship Portuguese wine to England. The area is divided into three wine regions, from west to east: Baixo Corgo, Cima Corgo and Douro Superior, closest to Spain. Cima Corgo is where you’ll find the most typical landscape; further east you’ll find the Douro International Nature Park, with its high plateaus and circling vultures, a great place to start a cycling holiday.

The Douro is a region of extremes of altitude, heat and cold, 40°C in summer, frosty in winter, with hills that climb from the riverbank, terraced all the way up to create seemingly empty, convex amphitheatres. The valley’s vineyards are built into rocky mineral rich schist soil, so full of stones that landscaping it often used to involve dynamite.

It’s a landscape that’s not only hand-carved, but hand-labelled: looking out across the hills, you see the names of port producers propped up on the hillsides like Hollywood signs, announcing their different domains, from Sandeman to Taylor’s.

And not only hand-carved and hand-labelled, but hand-harvested too. It’s so steep here that often machinery cannot be used, and grape harvesting is done by human labour – a massive feat for such a vast wine region.

At first glance, there doesn’t seem to be a square metre of flat ground in the Douro region, but our holidays have found the perfect routes, so you don’t have to worry about making up the time if you choose to stop for a tasting or pause for a picnic. Expect routes that coast downhill to banks of the Douro or explore the plateau of the Douro International Natural Park, close to the Spanish border.

As the valley heats up through spring, the urge to be closer and closer to the water grows. A series of dams, built since the 1970s and not without controversy, have turned the Douro from a wild river prone to flooding into a tame flow that is navigable, not just by the tourist boats you see shuttling up from Porto, but by kayak, too. And as the river flows all the way across Portugal, our kayaking trips follow it downstream, staying in traditional accommodation along the way.

A far more elevated affair than the tourist boats that do day tours down the river, on multi-night river cruises there are plenty of opportunities to stop at local quintas for port and wine tastings, plus fantastic traditional dining experiences. You can embark on a round trip from Porto on our week-long Douro River cruise holiday – reaching into the Douro Valley as far as the Spanish border, before returning via Regua, then passing under Porto’s famous seven bridges to disembark in the centre of the city again.

From the tiled interior of Porto’s Sao Bento station you can take a direct, slow train into the heart of the Douro Valley. The little diesel trains have bright, retro interiors and doors that the foolhardy can open whilst the train is moving. Pulling you into increasingly attractive landscapes – for long stretches of the journey, the tracks go right along the riverbank – you’ll pass many little stations before you alight at Pocinho, in the heart of the Douro.

There are some big wineries in the Douro Valley, including famous port brands like Sandeman. But there are also smaller businesses. “We partner closely with local guides and smaller wineries, ensuring that a greater share of tourism revenue directly benefits the community and helps preserve the valley’s unique traditions,” explains Carlos. Trips include visits to family-run vineyards, and restaurants that prioritise produce from local farmers.

“Normally we don’t stay in hotels, we try to run away from the conventional,” says Sergio from 7 Rivers. They use locally owned accommodation when they can, basing their kayakers in a traditional village for the first few nights of the kayaking trip. “The owner has restored five houses there and we can get to know the way that people used to live in these houses, they are integrated into the village and community,” says Sergio. If you want to stay in a quinta, you might get free board if you offer to help with the harvest.