Porto - When it comes to drinking port, the British are considered connoisseurs. You can enjoy it happily in Porto, but seeing where the grapes are grown is the real treat.
Especially if you stay in the new Six Senses Douro Valley, which offers both comfort and cure — serving lashings of local wine and port alongside hearty massages, early morning yoga classes and hikes into the surrounding hills.
This sumptuous hotel, in a re-invigorated 19th-century manor house, is the first European outpost of the holistic Six Senses brand. It’s set in a spot overlooking the Douro river, which you can gaze at in the evening with a cocktail (the Gardener’s Choice featuring gin and fennel is excellent) or from the infinity pool.
It’s a two-hour drive from Porto — or you can take the scruffy, smelly but wonderfully scenic train from Porto to Regua, the nearby town, a trip which costs peanuts at around £6 (about R130).
Who ordered breakfast in bed? #RoomService
A photo posted by SixSensesDouroValley (@sixsensesdourovalley) on Feb 29, 2016 at 11:39pm PST
It’s romantic. There are “relaxation pods” in the forest, once a playground for the original finca owner and his family. And couples can have candlelit dinners overlooking the vegetable garden, which feeds the kitchen.
The scenery, undulating beside the river and striped with vines, is beautifully restful.
It’s as pretty as the Cote d’Azur, but without all the bling and flash. Quiet, calm and possessing a sense that things haven’t changed much in decades. But clearly they have.
You can eat Michelin-quality food at D.O.C on the river, for a start. The menu is top-notch and the delicious local sparkling wine goes down very nicely while the river glitters away below your table.
A cruise along the Douro is also an excellent way to acquaint yourself with the joys of the landscape.
If you’re wondering why great big signs advertising brands of port are allowed in this Unesco World Heritage-listed landscape, the answer is because they are historic. They enabled the boatmen transporting barrels to Porto to see where they should be picking up the goods.
If you tire of layers of green, then there is impressive architecture nearby in the cathedral town of Lamego, a 15-minute drive from the hotel.
A photo posted by SixSensesDouroValley (@sixsensesdourovalley) on Feb 19, 2016 at 7:30am PST
It has an extraordinary set of stairs, with statues gazing down on you from pillars, all leading up to the church — a flouncy baroque affair. There’s a wedding going on inside when we visit and the bride is dressed in perfect harmony with her surroundings.
At the bottom of the steps is the town centre, where you can grab a plate of jamon or look in on the cloistered courtyard behind the Se Cathedral.
The pasteis de nata — delicious Portuguese custard tarts — from the bakery in the neighbouring street are sinfully moreish.
But then this seems to be a theme in this particularly heavenly part of the world.
TRAVEL FACTS
Scott Dunn (020 8682 5080, scottdunn.com) offers three nights at The Yeatman in Vila Nova de Gaia including breakfast, followed by four nights at Six Senses Douro Valley, with breakfast as well as a private cruise on the Douro, a visit to a port house in Porto and restaurant reservation advice. From £1 750 per person.
Daily Mail