Douro Valley

 Saturday morning, our guide Sarah picked us up in Porto and drove us out to Pinhão to tour around the Douro valley. It’s about an hour and a half by car from Porto so some people come here as a day trip or there are cruises that go up and down the Douro river. Our first stop was Quinta da Foz for a winery tour and tasting. It is a small family owned vineyard that still crushes grapes by stomping on them. We tried a few port wines and a few standard wines. They also had really great olive oil. 

After Quinta da Foz, we went into the town of Pinhão and got on the train that goes along the river. We got off a few stops away and were picked up by a Jeep to drive us up a mountain to Quinta do Crasto for our second tasting and lunch. The views around the valley are so beautiful it is like looking out at stock imagery. Lunch was really good. Sarah was excited for the duck rice. We really liked it and Sarah said it wasn’t as good as her grandmother’s. We tasted several wines and a port wine. What was funny about that wine tasting is that they used larger than normal wine bottles. After we finished lunch, the jeep took us to the river where we met a boat for a brief boat tour. 

Our boat captain took us down the river and pointed out some of the other vineyards and gave us some history of the river and the valley. It used to be significantly lower and narrower but with the help of dams it’s deeper and wider now. It sounds like it used to get dangerous because of the rocks before the dams. The river was used to transport the wine in barrels to Porto. The boat dropped us off back in Pinhão right in front of our hotel but we did one last wine tasting before checking in. 

The winery next to our hotel is owned by the Symington family which is in their 6th generation of ownership and they were originally from Great Britain. Sarah knew that I preferred white wines so this time we got to try more whites including a white port. We liked several of these so I ordered some to be shipped home. Even though the winery is next to our hotel, Sarah drove us because it is so hilly.

We checked into our hotel: the Vintage House which is lovely and went out to a restaurant a few blocks away that we wanted to go to. They don’t take reservations but we were advised to go early. They open at 730 but around 7 people started arriving to get tables. They did take our order early because they had big groups coming. The food was really good. We had veal carpaccio, caprese salad, salmon and steak. After dinner, we walked back to the hotel to settle in. 

This morning we are getting picked up at the hotel to go hiking.