Portugal’s Douro region is famous for its port, but also produces fine, good-value reds and top nosh. Perfect, then, for thirsty foodies like our writer
The Douro river is wild and tamed, fertile, rich and dust poor. She is the heart, soul and life force of the region she gives her name to. For 900km, from central Spain to Atlantic Porto, she pushes and runs, fat, green, inexorable. The Douro region is about the size of Suffolk but, unlike East Anglia, has barely a metre of flat ground. Instead, dizzying mountain slopes are creased and folded and combed with the millions of vines that make those juicy Douro table wines and its celebrated ports.
Visitors have been welcomed here for centuries but it’s taken until just now for the Dourense region to cotton on to eno-tourism, that happy marriage between travel and tippling. Though frequented mostly by cashmere-and-smart-slacks travellers, the Douro is also a fine destination for the thirsty but thrifty.
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