Wine harvest in Portugal´s Douro Valley
A hotel in Portugals Douro Valley is offering guests the chance to to harvest, then tread, the local grapes. Christopher Middleton puts his best foot forward.
Midday in the Douro Valley, and as we grape-pickers toil beneath the Portuguese sun, the sound of children’s laughter comes over the fields from the hotel across the valley. It’s a handsome old building, with a traditional bell tower and courtyards, but upmarket modern additions, too, such as a glass lift that goes up and down its outside wall, and an elegant swimming pool with aubergine-coloured sunshades and sofas. Not that it’s any of our business what facilities it has: our job is to pick grapes, as many as possible, as quickly as possible, and to fill the empty plastic crates that stretch the length of the vineyard terraces. So, apart from the odd grunt of discomfort as we strain to snip a particularly hard-to-reach bunch, we carry on our work with eyes down and no envious comments about people lounging by the pool while we’re slaving in the fields.
However, while my fellow-workers are mostly local folk who wouldn’t countenance paying £280 for a night at a hotel like the Aquapura, I am slightly different. Because I am actually staying there. From where I stand, I can see my room, and, rather than being faintly curious as to what lies behind its arched windows, I know for certain it has a walk-in shower, a sunken bath and a giant, raised-on-a-plinth bed with six huge, feather-filled pillows.
So how is it I’ve made the crossover to the other side of the valley? The answer is, that as well as offering guests the chance to have their hands manicured in the palatial in-house spa, the hotel also offers them the chance to get their nails dirty, by helping with the annual wine harvest, which runs from the end of September to the last week in October.
Which is why I find myself not lying by my fellow guests, waiting for a facial scrub, but standing shoulder to shoulder with a wiry woman called Isabella, who has the ability to spend hours bent double and not let out so much as an ooh-my-back when she stands upright again.
Having exchanged initial Anglo-Portuguese pleasantries, mostly involving the names of famous Portuguese footballers, we find we don’t have much to say to each other, but get by quite happily in unspoken, agricultural tandem. She demonstrates with crystal clarity that while grape stalks are all right to put in the crates, grape leaves are not. And when I start trimming the grapes that have gone a bit raisin-like, she indicates in no uncertain terms that if I start doing that, we’ll be here all day.
And she will be. As for me, I find that although I am booked in for the full eight hours, the four-hour morning shift is as much as my lower lumbar can take. So instead of rejoining my comrades after lunch, I scurry down the road to another vineyard, where Aquapura guests are invited to participate in the jolliest part of the whole wine-producing process, namely the grape-treading.
At the grand, white Quinta da Pacheca, rows of men in short trousers spend pretty much the whole harvest up to their thighs in purple grapes. Watching them at work is like witnessing a cross between the Tiller Girls and the front row of a Welsh rugby scrum. With arms around each other’s shoulders, they move imperceptibly forwards through the heaving swamp, at each step raising a knee above the surface.
“The men say you are too tall and heavy,” calls out Maria Serpa Pimentel, the head winemaker and great-granddaughter of the vineyard’s founder. “You are crushing the grape seeds, and that makes for a bitter flavour.”
So it’s an early bath for the outsize Englishman, and even after a quarter of an hour’s immersion, there’s a hard-to-remove mauve colouring to my lower limbs. As for the full-time treaders, they look as if they’re wearing permanent purple stockings. However, while they’re returning to their wives and families, I am on my way back to my five-star hotel; first for an aromatherapy foot massage, and then for a five-course dégustation menu, accompanied by matching wines in the Aquapura’s dramatic dining room.
While overdoing the mood lighting a little, this is a hotel that can’t be faulted in terms of visual impact: wildly modern furniture pieces, boldly soaring ceilings and an overpoweringly commanding view of the Douro and its vineyards. Opt for the Harvest Experience package, though, and you get an insight into the deeper workings of the region – not least that even in this apparently prosperous part of Portugal, most people need two jobs to survive.
As for my fellow workers, there was amusement but no antipathy to the idea of someone like me paying for a half-day peasant experience. Which being the case, you can’t help thinking this kind of holiday will increase in popularity. After all, we all visit other people’s countries, but few of us get the chance to experience other people’s lives.
Getting there
Exsus Travel (020 7292 5050; www.exsus.com ) offers two nights at the Aquapura Hotel, near Peso da Régua, a two-hour drive from Porto, from £845 per person. The package includes breakfast, a day of grape treading and picking and a five-course supper for two, including drinks, flights and transfers.
