For centuries, wine has flowed out of the Douro — first by
boat, then by rail and road. It’s only recently that tourists
have started to travel in the reverse direction in substantial
numbers, looking to discover the region’s scenery, its
villages, its wine. Working quintas, formerly closed to the
public, have begun to open their doors, inviting guests
in for tours and tastings. An entire tourism industry is
springing up around it all.
“Tourism has provided more opportunities in the valley,”
says Fernando Sequeira, who’s working his first season with
Magnifico Douro, one of the small boat cruises that run out
of the riverside town of Pinhão, in the heart of the valley.
The converted rabelo wooden craft would once have spent
weeks transporting precious port wine casks along the river
to Porto. Now it glides past the sculpted terraces several
times a day, packed with a cargo of tourists.
“When there’s only wine, there’s more uncertainty,”
says Fernando. “If it’s a bad year for grapes, it’s a bad year
for everything; people don’t build, they don’t spend. But,
Covid-19 aside, tourism is more stable.” As we drift along
the water in the honeyed evening light, past striped ridges
of vines and olive trees, Fernando tosses me a juicy orange
he harvested that day by the riverside.
I survey the town of Pinhão, shrinking into the
distance. There’s Quinta da Roêda on its banks, home
to Croft Port, where you can picnic among 100 -year-
old vines. Next door at Quinta do Bomfim, another
Symington property, a new restaurant with rumoured
Michelin aspirations. Further along is The Vintage House
Hotel, my base for the night. It’s a grand, old-world pile
where lazy morning coffees are taken on sun-drenched
terraces overlooking the river.
And yet, despite talk of the new tourist rush, there seems
to be plenty of undiscovered corners. A few steps from
the riverfront, swallows nest under sagging town centre
balconies. A ghostly yellow building in a plum position by
the water awaits redevelopment. Compared with a decade
ago, tourism may be booming but, even still, this is a far cry
from glossy Napa Valley or Bordeaux.
The slow life certainly still prevails at Casa Lapão, a
bakery in Vila Real, the main city within the Douro wine
region. In the town’s cobbled old centre, stuffed with
churches, Rosa Cramez makes pastries the same way her
family has for 100 years. Her crista de galo, a half-moon
pastry stuffed with a sweet egg-yolk centre, is the stuff
of local legend. To keep up with demand, her small team
make about 700 every day, by hand.
“The day they tell me to industrialise is the day I will
close,” says Rosa, as she swiftly rolls out rounds of dough
so thin they look like sheets of stained glass. Her knack
ensures that each sugar-topped pastry, cut with a fringe
to resemble a cockerel’s comb, emerges from the oven
impossibly light and crisp. The process is art as much as
science. There’s no exact recipe; the quantities of butter,
flour and water change by the season. Rosa is led by the feel
of the dough; she knows by touch whether it’s right.
“Many years ago, women would go to the convent to
learn how to be good wives, and their families would
pay for their board in sugar and eggs,” says Rosa, as she
dollops the buttercup-yellow filling onto the pastry and