Wine Tour in the Douro Valley

An Exciting and Dynamic Portuguese Region

October 22-26, 2008

Douro is one of the world’s most famous wine rivers. Here, in this dramatically beautiful landscape in northern Portugal, grapes are grown on steep, terraced slopes. The climate is dry and hot and the grapes are picked perfectly ripe. These grapes are made into port wine and increasingly into a full bodied, tasty red table wine.

As the demand for port decreases more and more of this red table wine is being made.. This mix of port and high quality table wine makes the Douro Valley a very exciting wine region to visit.

The tour starts in Porto, one of the largest cities in Portugal, on Wednesday, October 22.

Thursday morning we head into the Douro Valley by bus. We spend the following two nights in Alto Douro, the heart of the valley. Our hotel is the luxurious Vintage House Relais & Chateaux in the little town of Pinhão. Saturday evening we return to Porto for our last night.

Our visits are a mixture of big houses and small family producers, visiting between 2 and 3 producers every day. We focus both on port wines and on table wines.

Three lunches, some at wine estates and two gastronomic dinners at the Vintage House are included in the programme. We taste traditional Portuguese food and also discover the new more modern style of Portuguese high class cuisine.

BKWine TV on Portugal:

Special Portugal Book Offer

An excellent guide to visiting Portugal is Charles Metcalfe's and Kathryn McWhirter's book "The wine and food lover's guide to Portugal" (we use it ourselves!). As a special offer to you, reader of our website and perhaps also our newsletter, and potential participant on our Portugal tour, Charles and Kathryn have agreed to offer it to you at a reduced price. It's excellent value already at the regular price!

Read our review of the book here.

This is how:
1) Order the book on-line from www.innhousepublishing.com. Pay on-line with secure PayPal payment. Regular price is €30 (£16.75, $45). Pay the regular price through PayPal.
2) Send an email to Kathryn (her email address is on the contact page on www.innhousepublishing.com) and say that you have just ordered the book but would like to benefit from the special "BKWine offer".
3) You will get a €5 note delivered will the book as a discount (£3 in the UK).

(If you're in the US it is better to buy the book from the Wine Appreciation Guild. We don't have any special offer with them but it will be cheaper than buying it from the UK in any case.)

Programme

Preliminary program.

For more details, contact BKWine.

Wednesday, October 22

Arrival in Porto. Check-in to our hotel in the city centre (in the district of Ribeira).

For those who arrive early there is an informal get-together at a wine bar close to our hotel at around 6.30 pm. We will taste some wines and get an introduction to the wine region of Douro. The rest of the evening is yours to discover the old town of Porto.

Thursday October 23

We take the motorway to Vila Real and Peso da Regua. From there we follow the river somewhat more slowly, into the Alto Douro, the heart of the district. We visit producers like Quinta da Pacheca and Quinta do Noval.

We have lunch at the beautiful Quinta de la Rosa.

Late afternoon we arrive at our hotel, The Vintage House **** in Pinhão, an important town for the production of port wine. This 4-star hotel has a spectacular setting by the river.

Later in the evening we meet for an aperitif and a delicious dinner with Portuguese specialities.

Friday October 24

After breakfast we continue our tour along the beautiful river. We visit producers such as Quinta do Infantado in Covas du Douro, a small family vineyard with a lot of ambition and new ideas, or Quinta de Porto, owned by the biggest wine company in Portugal, Sogrape.

We lunch at Quinta de Portal in Celeiros enjoying the fabulous view. Often wine estates in the Douro are, like this one, situated on high altitudes to give the grapes more acidity and freshness

Late afternoon we return to The Vintage House where you can relax and maybe take a swim in the outdoor pool, weather permitting, before our dinner which, of course, will be rounded off with a glass of port.

Saturday October, 25

We leave The Vintage House in the morning and slowly begin our journey back to Porto. We visit producers like Quinta do Côtto in Cidadelhe, a pioneer in Douro in many ways: one of the first to make table wine and one of the first to use screw cap (quite revolutionary in Portugal where almost all natural cork in the world is produced …).

Quinta do Vallado in Vilharinho dos Freires is also a producer on our visiting list. It’s one of the top producers for table wines in Douro and owned by the famous Ferreira family.

Early evening we arrive back in Porto. Following check-in the evening is yours to discover some nice restaurant in Porto. We will be happy to give recommendations!

Sunday October 26

Departure.

About the wine estates we visit

We want you to experience the best and the most interesting estates. Therefore, we put a lot of effort into finding really good producers to visit. Contrary to what one might think, the most exciting wine producers are not always the "famous names". Often the passionately engaging visits happen when you meet the winemaker or the owner himself (or quite often herself) and his family.

Frequently detailed discussions get underway where a true understanding of how things really “work” develops, we may even stay and have lunch at the winery (unlike in the US many of these do not have purpose-built restaurants). This is also why our trips do not have large numbers of visits on the programme. Even so, we regularly run short of time due to conversations lasting a lot longer than intended and where more and more wines are brought out to taste, somehow time flies.

Our trips are usually a mixture of small family producers and larger, well known wine estates - carefully selected to give you the unique wine experience.

What will you remember the most: the charming winery staff guide with perfect English, or the passionate winemaker who won't let you go until you've tasted yet another of his wines?

To give you a flavour of travelling with BKWine

(Click on the button at the bottom left, with three small squares, and you will get a menu with more BKWine videos.)

See more wine videos on our YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/bkwine.

Facts

Dates: October 22-26, 2008

Price: 1050 euro

Single room supplement: 150 euro

Included in the price are:

All our producers on this trip speak English.

Not included in the price:

You go to Porto on your own (we are happy to give you advice on how to get there) and you arrive in the evening of October 22, at the latest.

Tour organiser: Britt Karlsson of BKWine

Britt is of Swedish origin and based in Paris. Since 15 years she works with wine, wine education, wine journalism and organises wine tours. She has over the years arranged a large number of wine tours (a couple of hundreds actually) and has an extensive network of contacts in the wine regions and a deep knowledge of recent developments to make sure that our visits are exceptional. She visits some 200 wineries every year and is frequently called on to participate as a wine judge in international wine competitions.

Our wine guides: Many of our tours are led by Britt herself, with fifteen years experience of wine travel, wine tasting and wine writing, and living in France since 1990. Some tours are led by our highly skilled collaborators. Our wine guides are enthusiastic wine people with a thorough knowledge of both wine and local culture and gastronomy. Plus, of course, language since some of the visits often are in the local language (those visits are often the most interesting ones actually!) and we will then translate to English.

Our wine cellar tours are usually planned around a long weekend (Wednesday evening to Sunday morning) so that you can plan your holiday to also include other activities, such as visiting cultural sites, play golf – or why not drop in to a few more wineries while in the region (we’ll be glad to give you a few names to our preferred vineyards!).

From a gastronomic standpoint, our tours always include some gourmet highlights with local culinary specialities – we often plan at least one gourmet lunch at a winery or vineyard together with the winemaker.

Plan your wine country vacation with BKWine and we can guarantee you an unforgettable wine experience.

Book this trip

Please register for this trip not later than July 15, 2008

You book by contacting Britt Karlsson, BKWine:

Call me on Skype: bkwine, or by clicking the button to the left (What's this?).

Registration is confirmed by paying the registration fee of €200  (Full payment details following registration by phone or email). Full payment should be received at the latest one month before the departure date. Payments should be made by bank transfer to BKWine’s bank in Sweden. Details will be sent to you when you register.

Important

We always travel in small groups. The maximum group is usually around 20. This is to ensure that our visits are of high quality and that we receive a personal welcome.

For this trip to take place we must have 10 participant registered at the date of book-no-later-than.

You organise your travel independently to the destination but on location we take care of everything.

BKWine is a Swedish registered travel organiser. BKWine has a bonded travel guarantee deposit so that you can feel safe booking with us. We comply fully with European and Swedish travel guarantee regulations. British travellers may be familiar with the ABTA (Association of British Travel Agents) protection scheme which is a similar model. BKWine follows the code of conduct and financial safeguards defined by the Swedish Consumer Agency and The Legal, Financial and Administrative Services Agency ("Kammarkollegiet", with a history dating back to 1539). Read more about this in our Booking Terms and Conditions.

Read the BKWine Booking Terms and Conditions here.

For more inspiration

Newsletter on wine

Subscribe to our free wine and travel newsletter, the BKWine Brief. Each month it gives you news from the world of wine, restaurant recommendations, tips on our favourite wine producers and much more. And keeps you updated on upcoming wine and food tours.

Custom Tours

PS: We also do custom tours if you want to choose different dates or want something different.

BKWine AB
51, rue du Chevalier de la Barre
92130 Issy-les-Moulineaux
France
Phone: +33 (0)6 80 45 35 70
email: info@bkwine.com
www.bkwine.com 

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