Traveling to Portugal's Wine Country and HipSilver travel style!
JANET FORMAN'S "PORTUGAL'S DOURO WINE LANDS: THE COGNOSCENTI'S SECRET
This dazzling swath of mountainside vineyards became the world's first officially demarcated wine region in 1756; a province so traditional that family dynasties still control the wine estates from their centuries-old manses, and so well preserved the entire valley was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2001. Harvesting machines are largely useless on these steep slopes, where most crops are handpicked and often crushed by foot. Yet beyond the wine connoisseurs who come for the new wave of cult table wines, tourists are few, since until just a few years ago those ravishing but hair-raising mountainside roads made Portugal's Douro Valley nearly inaccessible.
A lively new generation now leads the old families: They call themselves The Douro Boys, although their dynasty was launched by an exceptional 19th-century woman, Antónia Adelaide Ferreira, and they are by no stretch of anyone’s imagination still ‘boys.’ From vineyards that once produced stately Ports, these winemakers have created a portfolio of table wines that have become wine critics’ darlings. I called on all five Douro Boys Quintas in December, stayed at both of their boutique wine hotels, including the outlying Casa do Rio and visited the private cottages at Quinta do Crasto that can only be booked with the owner’s permission. (Harrison Ford was one of the lucky ones.) Yet beyond safer roads and locks on the river, the region looks much as it did a century ago: A diminutive train skims the Douro’s shoreline, Pinhão station still harbors its jewel box dining room, and the undulating mountain vineyards continue to produce heritage Ports along with a generation of new Old World wines.
