Douro Valley Tour: Wine Tasting, River Cruise and Lunch From Porto

The Douro is the oldest demarcated wine region in the world, and it looks like nowhere else: schist terraces cut into slopes so steep that the vines are worked by hand, running for miles above a river that turns back on itself again and again. This is a full day out of Porto, into the valley and back.

The road up leaves the coast and climbs inland, and the valley opens gradually rather than all at once — the first proper viewpoint is usually where the day turns from a drive into an outing.

At a working wine estate you taste what the terraces produce. Port is the wine the region is known for, but the Douro also makes serious table wines from the same grapes, and a tasting is the quickest way to understand why the two coexist. Someone from the estate walks you through it.

Lunch is included and is taken in the valley — the food of northern Portugal, unhurried, in the middle of the day as it is meant to be.

Then the river. A cruise on the Douro shows you the terraces from below, which is the angle that makes the scale of them clear: from the deck you can see how far up the walls climb, and how much of the hillside was rebuilt by hand to grow anything at all.

It is a long day with real driving in it, on roads that wind. The valley is at its most spectacular in autumn, when the terraces turn, and hottest in high summer. Tell us at booking if you do not drink, so lunch and the estate visit can be arranged around it.