PORTUGAL: The Douro Valley is SPECTACULAR!

If you like stunning scenery, beautiful weather, vineyards, hiking, boating, wine tasting and great food, you can't go wrong in the Douro Valley. 

It is the world's oldest demarcated wine growing region, which gave it the designation of a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2001. 

 

 

 

 

 

The Douro river runs through the steep hills and creates stunning vistas. 

What makes it amazing is that the steep hills are covered with vineyards, but because the terrain is so steep they have had to create terraces. 

 

 

The patchwork of terraced vineyards fascinated me. 

 

 

 

The area has stone walls, stone stairs and stone buildings. 

 

 

There aren't a lot of trees around, but there is a lot of stone, so the posts are made from stone instead of wood! 

 

Now I understand what they mean by "today's successes were built on the shoulders of others."

 

Lunches and wine tasting can be booked at the local "Quintas", which is the local lingo for wineries. (Languages are not my strength, but this is one of the few Portuguese words I can remember easily. That and "vino verde", "sangria" and "obrigada". Plus maybe a few other words.)  

 

Cherry,

 

 

fig, almond, orange, 

 

 

lemon, lime and cork trees grow in abundance. 

Cork trees have to grow for 25 years before they can be harvested and can only be harvested every 9 years. The bark is peeled off the tree in mid May to the end of August. The year it is harvested is marked on the trunk. A cork tree can live for up to 150 years and can be harvested 12 to 15 times.

 

 

We did several hikes in the Douro Valley. This hike started down by the bridge. Look closely for that little speck in the background to see how hard we worked!

 

I think we earned our visit to the quinta.