The Douro River Valley is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is filled with wineries and olive oil presses. It makes for a lovely day trip from Porto. We had a wonderful time touring the valley, learning about the wine and olive oil industries in Portugal, and drinking wine from morning until night. This tour was a relaxing break from the city life of Lisbon and Porto on our two-week trip. Here, we’ll show you where we went and what we drank.
Touring the Douro Valley
One look in Trip Advisor will tell you that touring the Douro River Valley is a very popular stop on the typical Portugal itinerary. If you like wine, you should do it. We ended up taking this tour through Touch Tours, which is very well-rated and well-run. It included three wine tastings, lunch at a family farm, and a boat tour on the Douro River. It is a small group tour, which takes you into the valley in a little black mini-van. There’s only room for eight plus a tour guide and you get to know your fellow travelers quite well throughout the day.
D’Origem Winery & Olive Oil
Our tour guide started the drive asking if everyone had eaten breakfast, because, he said, we would start drinking at 10:30am. After an hour and a half of driving, we ended up in the Douro Valley with views of the river and wineries all around us.
Our first stop was the D’Origem Winery and Olive Oil press. Here, we sat on a porch with a wonderful view of the valley below and tried two different types of olive oils and three different types of wine. Most of the little wineries in this region also had a few rooms that you could stay in and D’Origem was no exception. We ended up loving the olive oil and took one home with us (a nice way to avoid some of the new US tariffs, I might add).
We also had a nice tour of the operations, including the old oil press equipment and a talk about how olive oil production has changed over the years.
Douro River Boat Tour
After our first stop, we drove down to the Douro River and climbed onto a boat for a 45-minute scenic boat ride through the various wineries and olive groves. I’ll let those pictures speak for themselves.
Port Wine & Lunch
The following stop was lunch and though we’d had snacks and bread along the way, I was quite ready for lunch. Casa dos Barros is a hotel, historic building, and winery. We a great time eating outside under the shade of some giant walnut trees. The food was delicious and the wine was plentiful. We got to know our fellow travelers quite well after everyone had had a few glasses.
After the lunch, we walked across a gorgeous courtyard and into the port wine cellar. Here, wine casks were labeled with years (the oldest one I found was 1935). We got to try 10-year, 20-year, and 30-year aged Twany Port wine. Each one, better than the last, in my opinion.
Portugal is so full of history, you can’t help just walking into it sometimes. Across the street from Casa dos Barros is Magellan’s boyhood home. A simple plaque announces its history, but other than that, it stands there quiet and unassuming, just as it always has since the 15th century.
Amarante
Our final stop was in a village called Amarante. It was rather larger than I expected, but we swooped in and parked near a literal hole-in-the-wall restaurant filled with soccer banners, ham hocks, and a few locals. Here, we got to taste two kinds of green wine: one red and one white.
I grew to love green wine while in Portugal. Green wine comes from two distinct regions in Portugal where the grapes are harvested a bit early. White green wine was my favorite and we grabbed a couple in the Duty Free store in Lisbon on our way home. Those bottles are already gone.
We arrived back in Porto early evening. Like most of the meals in Portugal, we were not hungry, but also not over-full. We felt lucky to have had excellent weather and a wonderful day in the Douro Valley.
