Quinta do Vallado

Quinta do Vallado

The bar by the pool at Quinta do Vallado pours the estate's own wine, and from a sun lounger you can watch the vines that made it climbing the hillside above Peso da Régua. This is a working quinta founded in 1716, one of the oldest properties on the Douro, and it still functions as one: the cellar is open for tastings every day of the year, and staff will send you out on the river by boat or into the vineyards by jeep. Thirteen rooms are split between two buildings. Five suites sit in the original eighteenth-century Casa Tradicional, once home to the family of Dona Antónia Adelaide Ferreira, each with its own entrance through the garden. The other eight are in a 2012 addition built almost entirely from schist, the same stone that runs through the region's soil, designed by architect Francisco Vieira de Campos. A spa with a jacuzzi, Turkish bath and sauna sits near an orange orchard, and stays of two nights or more come with an hour of it included. There is a gym, a library, bicycles for hire, a chapel, and a picnic basket on request if you want the vineyard to yourself for an afternoon. Children have a playroom and babysitting can be arranged, though this is not a hotel built around a pool for kids to shout across. It rewards people who want to taste, walk and look rather than be entertained. Pets are not allowed. Peso da Régua's center, with the Douro Museum and Casa do Douro, is a few minutes away, but most guests do not leave the grounds until the boat is called. Quinta do Vallado has made wine on this hillside above Peso da Régua since 1716, and its thirteen rooms, split between an eighteenth-century manor and a schist-built annex, still feel like a working vineyard's guest quarters. Boat trips, jeep tours and daily cellar tastings happen on site.