Casa do Rio Wine Hotel (Quinta do Vallado)

The Douro Superior is the far eastern end of the valley, up towards the Spanish border, where the terraces thin out and the landscape turns harder and emptier. Casa do Rio sits here on Quinta do Vallado's organic vineyards at Quinta do Orgal, above an orange grove, with the river below.

Francisco Vieira de Campos, who designed the schist wing at Vallado's other hotel, built this one in timber and stone so that the main house appears to hover over the slope rather than sit on it. It won the sustainable wine tourism category at the 2016 Best of Wine Tourism awards and took first prize at the Portuguese national wooden architecture awards in 2019, and both feel deserved: it is a building that does very little and gets the siting exactly right.

There are ten rooms. That is the whole hotel. Each is quiet and simply finished, with air conditioning, a private bathroom, robes and slippers, and terraces looking at the river. One category has its own pool.

Meals are served in a small restaurant for guests only, by reservation, using vegetables and fruit from the organic garden alongside regional produce. There is a pool, a shared lounge, golf carts and electric bicycles for getting around the estate, and free bicycles for anyone wanting to go further. Wine tastings run on the property, and activities extend to the river.

Be clear about the isolation, since it is the point rather than a drawback. Vila Nova de Foz Côa is 13 kilometres away, and its Côa Valley archaeological park holds the largest known collection of open-air Palaeolithic rock art in the world, carved into the schist 25,000 years ago and worth the trip on its own. Beyond that there is very little nearby. You will want a car, and you will not use it much.