After a night of luxury at The Yeatman, we swapped the city for the vineyards. At 9am the minibus pulled away from Gaia and headed east, following the Douro inland towards the heart of wine country.

Two hours later we arrived at Quinta de Casal de Celeiros, a centuries-old estate whose collection of buildings combines comfort with timeless elegance, set in the world's oldest demarcated wine region.

The star of the estate is its Visitors' Centre, and it's a striking piece of architecture. The building was designed to grow out of the vineyards and blend into the landscape, clad in schist and cork that shift in colour and mood with each season. Behind that skin, Port and Douro wines age slowly in a building conceived as a temple to wine and time. Even the roof is designed as an invitation to explore the aromas and flavours of the estate and of the Douro, which the Portuguese writer Miguel Torga famously called a "Marvellous Kingdom".

The estate is also home to The Manor House, a beautifully renovated house with 12 rooms and an outdoor pool surrounded by vines, plus seven more rooms in the neighbouring Casa do Lagar. It's a wonderful spot for anyone who wants to stay in the Douro rather than just pass through.

Our host for the morning was Andre Luis Martins, Market Manager for Fladgate's still wines, who guided us through the range with real passion and plenty of stories about each estate.

This was the part of the trip I was most curious about. For more than 330 years Fladgate made only Port, but in August 2023 it bought a group of estates from the table wine producer Ideal Drinks, in Vinho Verde, Dao and Bairrada, marking its first move into table wine. Today they sit under the Fladgate Family Wines banner, bringing together some of the finest and most sought-after wines from Portugal's key growing regions.

We tasted 13 wines, travelling right across Portugal region by region.

Vinho Verde

First, a myth worth busting: Vinho Verde isn't a style of wine, as many people assume, but a region, a lush green corner of hills in Portugal's rainy northwest.

Quinta da Pedra is one of the most historic properties in the Alto Minho, dating back to the 17th century. It sits in the heart of Moncao and Melgaco, where Alvarinho excels, and the mountains to the west shield its vineyards from the fierce Atlantic winds. The 53-hectare estate has the highest vine density in the whole Vinho Verde appellation, at 5,500 plants per hectare, on pure granite soils.

• Graca da Pedra Alvarinho 2022. A lovely start: fresh and zesty, with citrus, peach and a clean, mineral finish. Made for seafood.
• Quinta da Pedra Milagres Alvarinho 2021. A step up in richness and depth. Still fresh, but with more texture and complexity, showing how well good Alvarinho develops with a little age.

Paco de Palmeira, near Braga, sits between two important rivers and is one of the most magnificent estates in the Minho. It was originally built as a retreat for princes, archbishops and the region's aristocracy, and today its 24 hectares are dedicated to the native Loureiro grape.

• Royal Palmeira Loureiro 2020. Loureiro is known for its floral, lemony character, and Palmeira makes it to age. With a few years in bottle this one had gained extra body and depth while keeping its bright, crisp edge.

Dao

Encircled by mountains, with the Serra da Estrela at its heart, the Dao is often called the "Burgundy of Portugal" and is prized for refinement and longevity. Quinta de Bella is a 50-hectare estate at 380 metres, near the Dao River, on high-quality "noble" granite soils. Its wines are all single-variety: Bella Elegance focuses on purity and fruit, while Dom Bella wines are more structured, oak-aged and made only in exceptional years.

• Bella Elegance Pinot Noir 2023. Not a grape you'd expect from Portugal, and a real surprise. Fresh red cherries and wild strawberries, with dried herbs and a refreshing mineral finish.
• Bella Elegance Touriga Nacional 2019. Touriga Nacional is Portugal's star red grape, and this showed why: dark fruit, floral notes of violets and a smooth, elegant finish.
• Dom Bella Cabernet Franc 2015. With a decade behind it, this was a lesson in what time and oak bring: savoury and complex, with dark fruit, a herbal touch and soft, rounded tannins.

Bairrada

Bairrada has been famous for its sparkling wines for more than a century, and is now earning recognition for its still reds and whites too. It's a coastal region with a moderate Atlantic climate and gentle limestone and clay hills, and its climate and soils are often compared with Bordeaux.

Quinta Colinas de Sao Lourenco is Fladgate's flagship property here, in the small village of Sao Lourenco do Bairro, right on Bairrada's limestone fault line. Its 61 hectares are planted mainly with Cabernet Sauvignon, Touriga Nacional, Merlot, Petit Verdot, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Arinto and Sauvignon Blanc, and the entire vineyard is dry-farmed.

• Colinas Cuvee Reserve Brut Nature. Colinas sparkling wines are made using the traditional Champagne method. "Brut Nature" means no sugar is added, so this was bone dry, with fine bubbles, crisp citrus and a light toasty note.
• Calcario3 do Principal Reserva Chardonnay 2022. "Calcario" is Portuguese for limestone, and you can taste it: creamy and rounded, but with a fresh, chalky backbone.
• Calcario3 do Principal Reserva Tinto 2014. A mature red now in its drinking window, with red fruit, earthy notes and silky tannins.
• Principal Tete de Cuvee Rose 2020. A serious rose, pale and elegant, with delicate red berries and real length. Proof that rose can be a fine wine.
• Sao Lourenco Branco 2022. A crisp, mineral white with citrus and orchard fruit, very much a wine of its limestone soils.
• Sao Lourenco Tinto 2020. Fresh and balanced, with ripe red and black fruit and a lively finish.
• Principal Grande Reserva Tinto 2012. The grand finale, and the wine the whole estate is built around. Made from Touriga Nacional and Bordeaux varieties, it's made using gravity-flow winemaking and released only after extended ageing, with the aim of standing shoulder to shoulder with the world's great reds. Adrian Bridge believes it has the potential to be "the Vega Sicilia of Portugal". Deep and polished, with layers of dark fruit, spice and a long, elegant finish.

We then walked over to lunch at Casa das Pipas Restaurant, which sits near one of the entrances to The Manor House and is open every day to hotel guests and visitors alike, and Joao re-joined us at the table. Chef Milton Ferreira's cooking celebrates the flavours and traditions of the Douro, combining authenticity with creativity, and the terrace looks out over the vines.

Lunch began with a greeting from the chef, followed by a velvety vegetable cream soup. The main course was sea bass with sweet potato puree (clearly the fish of the trip, and no complaints from me), and we finished with a milk cream crepe with caramel ice cream, a lovely nod to the Portuguese classic leite creme.

Best of all, the wines from the morning's tasting came with us, so we got to try them again with food, and it was a great way to see how differently they show at the table.

After lunch we headed to Quinta da Nogueira Winery, and if the morning was about Fladgate's new world of still wines, the afternoon was all about Port, made on a scale I hadn't imagined.

Taylor's makes its finest Ports from the grapes of its own quintas, but it also buys grapes from partner growers, and those wines are made at Nogueira, near the town of Sao Joao da Pesqueira. It's a clever location, with easy access to the best parts of the Douro, the Cima Corgo and the Douro Superior.

What surprised me was how Taylor's chooses its growers. Rather than buying from hundreds of small producers, it works with just 22 partner growers, professional farmers who own very high-quality estates across the Douro's key sub-regions. It's an unusual approach in the Douro, but central to keeping quality high across the whole range. The relationship goes both ways, too: growers can draw on the knowledge of Taylor's team and receive regular advice bulletins through the year, while Taylor's gets a consistent supply of top-quality grapes. 

And the timing of our visit was perfect: with the harvest in full swing, the winery was alive with activity.

Grapes arriving

Our first stop was the reception area, where freshly picked grapes come in from the vineyards. When they arrive, the winemaker assesses them and they're checked on a sorting table before the stems are removed. Watching the team pick through bunch after bunch by hand, it struck me how much care goes in before a single drop of wine is made.

The robotic lagares

This was the moment I'll remember. Having missed the foot treading, we got to see the next best thing, and it's a brilliant piece of innovation.

Taylor's still treads by foot at its own estates, because its research shows that, although expensive and hard work, treading remains the best way to gently extract everything from the grapes, giving wines structure, depth and balance. But treading on this scale isn't possible, so Taylor's own winemaking team designed fermentation tanks that recreate it. The prototypes were developed at Taylor's research winery at Quinta de Vargellas, and the tanks use mechanical pistons that work in an uneven pattern, set by the winemaker for each batch. They keep the grape skins in constant contact with the fermenting wine, so colour, tannin and aroma are extracted gently but thoroughly. There are 32 of these tanks, in different sizes, so the winemakers can keep each vineyard's grapes separate and preserve the individual character of every wine.

The research behind this began at Vargellas in 1995, when a team of winemakers, technicians and engineers set out to closely mimic the motion and proportions of foot treading. Looking down into the tanks, full of dark, purple grape must, you can see exactly why they're known in the trade as "Port Toes".

The brandy that makes it Port

Back outside, we were shown a row of giant stainless steel vats towering over the yard. These hold the grape spirit, often called brandy, which is the secret behind every bottle of Port.

Partway through fermentation, while the wine is still full of natural grape sugar, it's mixed with this clear grape spirit, at around 77% alcohol, roughly one part spirit to four parts wine. The spirit stops the fermentation in its tracks, which is what gives Port both its natural sweetness and its extra strength.

It's easy to think of the spirit as just a functional ingredient, but Taylor's treats it as anything but. Its winemaking team works closely with the specialist distillers who supply it, to make sure the spirit is of the very highest standard. That matters because the spirit doesn't just sit there: as the Port ages over the years, the spirit and the wine slowly come together, adding to the subtle complexity you find in a fine mature Port.

From oak vats to ageing lodges

From the winery we moved into the ageing lodges, and the contrast was striking. One building is lined with old wooden vats, darkened by decades of use, while the other houses towering oak vats alongside row upon row of casks stacked high.

Historically, Port was always taken down to Vila Nova de Gaia to age, to protect it from the Douro's dry summer heat, which can make wine age too quickly and develop roasted flavours known as "Douro bake". Today, modern insulation makes it possible to age wine up here, and Nogueira's ageing lodges sit on the windy uplands near Sao Joao da Pesqueira, kept cool and humid by fine jets of water mist sprayed from the walls. Seeing these enormous vats, each holding thousands of litres, gives you a real sense of the patience behind every bottle of aged Port.

The cooperage

Our final stop was a corner most visitors never see: the cooperage, where old oak staves are stacked and stored, ready to repair and rebuild the vats and casks. Nothing goes to waste, and wood that has held Port for decades lives on in the next generation of casks. It was a fitting end to the visit, a reminder that Port is built on craft as much as on technology.

Joao shared an interesting detail as we walked through: Taylor's casks aren't simply sold off to other drinks producers when they're finished with. Port casks are highly prized by whisky makers and other distillers, who use them to give their spirits rich, fruity flavours, but Taylor's prefers to keep its casks in its own care, repairing and reusing them for its own wines. On the rare occasions a cask does go to a spirit producer, Joao explained, it's as part of a special partnership, and one that doesn't come cheap. Once you've seen the care that goes into these casks, it's easy to understand why.

The final leg of the day took us east, deeper into the Douro, as the landscape grew wilder and the hills steeper. Our destination was Quinta de Vargellas, and for anyone who loves Port, there are few more special places to arrive at.

Vargellas is regarded as the leading wine estate in the Douro. It sits in the wild, hilly eastern reaches of the valley, has been prized as a source of the finest Ports since the 1820s, and today ranks among the great vineyards of the world. Taylor's bought the estate in 1893, and it is now classified as a Class A vineyard, the highest grade in the Douro.

The setting is breath-taking. The original estate forms a vast, north-facing amphitheatre of terraced vines towering above the river, with the house and winery clustered at its centre, along with the estate's very own railway station. On the steep slopes to the west are the oldest terraces, part of the "Vinha Velha" or Old Vineyard, held up by dry stone walls. Further downstream is a second great sweep of vines, the Sao Xisto vineyard, and between the two, on a ridge jutting out into the river, stands a pagoda-like structure called the Ruby Folly. It was built to mark the ruby wedding anniversary of Taylor's Chairman, Alistair Robertson, and his wife Gillyane.

A rare invitation

What made this stay so special is that Vargellas isn't a hotel. It's the Douro home of the Robertson and Bridge families, the family behind Taylor's for generations, and staying here as their guests is a rare privilege. From the chequered marble hallway to the drawing room with its grand fireplace and family portraits, it feels exactly like what it is: a much-loved family home.

Joao and Andre stayed with us at Vargellas too, and they were the perfect hosts, keeping us well looked after and thoroughly entertained from the moment we arrived until the last glass of the night.

Time to unwind

After a long and fascinating day, we had time to settle in and relax. For most of us, that meant heading straight for the pool, tucked among the gardens and terraces below the house, with the vineyards rising all around.

Sundowners on the terrace

We gathered on the terrace for sundowners: Taylor's Chip Dry and tonic, the drink that started it all on Day 1, now enjoyed looking out over the very valley it comes from. As the sun dropped behind the hills and the light turned gold over the river, it was hard to imagine anywhere better.

At 8.30pm we sat down to dinner on the patio with Joao and Andre, and we were joined by a very special guest: David Guimaraens, Technical Director and Head Winemaker of The Fladgate Partnership.

David is Port royalty in the truest sense. Born in Porto in 1965, he is the sixth generation of the Guimaraens family to work in the Port business. He trained in winemaking in Australia, California and Oregon, studied oenology at Roseworthy Agricultural College in South Australia, and returned to Portugal in 1990 to join the Taylor's and Fonseca winemaking teams. Today he oversees winemaking across the Taylor's, Fonseca and Croft estates, and he's regarded as one of the most gifted winemakers in the Port industry. He's also the man behind the 2024 Vintage Port we'd tasted in Gaia the day before.

After dinner: the winery with David

After dinner, David took us down to the Vargellas winery himself, and this was one of the highlights of the whole trip. Hearing about Port from the person who actually makes it is something else entirely.

This is home to the traditional granite lagares where, every harvest, Vargellas's grapes are still trodden by foot. This is also where the early harvest caught up with us: by the time we arrived, the treading had finished and the lagares had been scrubbed clean for another year. Even empty, though, the room tells a story. On the wall is a beautiful tiled panel showing harvest at Quinta de Vargellas, featuring the real people who worked on the estate: the pickers, the treaders in the lagar, and the team who brought each harvest to life. Among them is David's own father, Bruce Guimaraens, who was Taylor's head winemaker before him. Standing beside the panel with David, it was a reminder that at Taylor's, Port really is a family story, passed from one generation to the next.

David talked us through his role and the winemaking process, from the vineyard to the lagar to the cask. It was fascinating to connect the dots with what we'd seen at Nogueira that afternoon: the robotic lagares there began life right here, with prototypes developed at Taylor's research winery at Vargellas. Research led by David has produced new winemaking technology that has dramatically improved the quality of wines made from partner growers' grapes.

Working with Antonio Magalhaes, Fladgate's head of viticulture and a world authority on mountain viticulture, David has helped create an award-winning sustainable vineyard model that's set to become the standard for environmentally responsible Grape growing in the Douro.

The wines made here are something special. Vargellas Ports are elegant and finely built, known for their complex fruit, their distinctive scented character and their smooth, well-integrated tannins. They're bottled on their own as Quinta de Vargellas single estate Vintage Ports, and in declared years they also help shape the classic Taylor's Vintage Port, blended with wines from Quinta de Terra Feita and, more recently, Quinta do Junco. Having tasted the Vargellas 2019 in Gaia the day before, it was wonderful to stand in the very winery where it was made, with the man who made it.

Rooted in schist: how the vines survive without irrigation

One of the things that struck me most at Vargellas is that the vines are never irrigated. In a region as hot and dry as the Douro, where summer temperatures soar, that seems almost impossible, until you understand what's beneath your feet.

The answer is schist. The Douro's steep hillsides are made of this rock, and over centuries they've been carved into the stone-walled terraces that make the valley so famous. Schist is made of thin layers stacked like the pages of a book, and those layers do something remarkable. During winter, the rain soaks into the cracks between them, and the rock acts like a natural sponge, storing the moisture deep underground. Then, through the blistering summer months, it slowly releases that water back to the vines.

To reach it, the vines have to work hard. Their roots push down through the cracks in the rock, sometimes many metres deep, in search of water. That struggle is part of what gives Vargellas grapes their concentration and character: vines that have to fight for every drop produce smaller, more intense fruit. It's a perfect example of how, in the Douro, the land itself shapes the wine.

And then, finally, bed, in the heart of the Douro, in the home of the family that has shaped Taylor's for generations. Not a bad way to end a day.