River of Tawny and of Gold

Author Martin Symington shares his lifelong connection with the Douro and explains why a river journey is the perfect way to appreciate the wider region.

Over the decades since my birth to a British port-shipping family in Porto, at the mouth of the Douro, I have witnessed astonishing changes to the river and the scenic mountains through which it flows. In its natural state the Douro – or ‘river of gold’ to use its poetic Portuguese translation – used to rush headstrong between forbidding rocks and in torrents of white water in times of spate, especially in winter. Over the summer months the waters calmed to sparkling pools and sun-baked islands.

This was the Douro of my childhood. Then, in the 1970s and 80s, things took an extraordinary turn. I watched the building, one at a time, of five formidable dams. The resultant raising of the water level has made the Douro navigable, which is why our voyage aboard MS Estrela is possible. The purpose of the dams is to generate hydroelectricity and there is virtually no traffic on the river other than for leisure.

Dams notwithstanding, the upper reaches of the Douro remain wild and inaccessible. The further east you venture, the wilder and more beautiful the landscape becomes. From a ship, this is spectacularly exciting. Sailing through a gorge little wider than the vessel. All around vineyards hewn and terraced out of mountainsides are interspersed with patches of dark maquis foraged by wild boar.

These vineyards are on the quintas (wine-growing estates) which make the Douro valley one of the great wine-growing regions of the world. By wine, I mean of course port, that foremost of fortified wines. Port, and the history of how it came about, are intimately entwined with the twin cities of Porto and Vila Nova de Gaia and their mountainous hinterland.

My ancestors are among the ground-breaking British merchants, who from the 17th century braved their way into the forbidding upper Douro. The background to their arrival was England’s hostility with France, which cut off its supplies of wines from Bordeaux. Instead, these pioneers, looking for alternatives turned to Portugal, with whom England had an ancient alliance. In the upper Douro valley, they found the bold, alluring reds which by degrees evolved into the classic fortified port savoured by wine lovers around the world today.

One legacy of the British merchants – including many Scots as well as English, my Glaswegian great-grandfather among them – is the names of port shipping companies whitewashed in giant letters on the roofs of the ‘lodges’ of Vila Nova de Gaia: Graham’s, Cockburn’s, Warre’s, Dow’s.

Another remnant, with roots going back to the mid-17th century, is the so-called ‘Factory House’ association of port wine shippers (visited on the Porto tour extension). The misleading name refers to the ‘factors’ or British merchants who established a meeting place at which they represented their interests to the Portuguese authorities. (The better-understood word ‘factory’, as in manufactory, dates from the later Industrial Revolution).

In its present form the sumptuous, Palladian-style Factory House dates to the 1780s. It remains a club and association for the independent, British-owned port shipping companies. Ancient traditions are upheld in the formal ballroom and dining rooms amid chandeliers, Chippendale furniture, Spode porcelain and port-related artefacts. It is an extraordinary setting in which to contemplate the singular history of the British in Porto and its hinterland.

The upper Douro valley is the region demarcated in 1756 for the growing of grapes for port, putting in place a quality control system akin to the French appellation contrôlée which is the oldest of any wine-growing area of the world. Some of the Douro’s most prestigious quintas are around Pinhão including La Rosa, and Bomfim, which my great-grandfather acquired in the 19th century and which is still part of the family business.

At the Bomfim winery, vineyards terraced out of the slatey ground remain much as they were in my childhood, although modern methods of wine-making are now artfully applied to traditional viniculture. In the year following the harvest, the newly-vinified port is transported down river to Vila Nova de Gaia. Here it ages in shippers’ ‘lodges’ – another misleading term, derived from the Portuguese word ‘loja’, or warehouse.

No visit to Porto or the Douro valley would be complete without sampling the produce. There are opportunities for tastings at La Rosa and Bomfim and also at the Factory House and in the deeply atmospheric Graham’s lodge in Vila Nova de Gaia. Here, rich rubies mature in great vats; fine old tawnies ageing in smaller oak barrels; and peerless vintages spend decades in bottle, lining darkened cellars.

The river and region have undergone huge changes in my lifetime, but much of their heritage remains timeless.

Cruising the Douro will be running from 15 to 22 October 2026.