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Quinta do Vallado
Peso da Regua, Portugal · Independent · Accessible Luxury
The manor house here went up in 1733, and by 1818 it belonged to the family of Dona Antonia Adelaide Ferreira, the young widow who became the greatest landowner in the Douro and the closest thing Port wine has to a founding legend. Her descendants still run it, six and seven generations on. Five suites occupy her old ochre house, eight more sit in the schist wing Francisco Vieira de Campos added in 2012, and six wood-lined Eira Suites arrived in 2023. The oldest vines on the estate were planted in 1929.
- 19 rooms
- Opened 2005
- Architect: Francisco Vieira de Campos
About Quinta do Vallado
- Quinta do Vallado first appears in documents in 1716, which makes it one of the oldest named estates anywhere in the Douro Valley.
- Widowed young, Dona Antonia Adelaide Ferreira (1811 to 1896) turned her inheritance into the largest landholding in the Douro. The estate has never left her bloodline.
- Until 1987 the grapes here went into Port sold by the family's own house, Casa Ferreira. When that house was sold, Vallado started bottling under its own name.
- Three of the estate's directors are great-great-great grandsons of Dona Antonia, and the wine is made by Francisco Olazabal, who is also behind Quinta do Vale Meao.
History
Quinta do Vallado is first named in documents dated 1716, when the vineyard belonged to Josefa Taveira. Her family sold it in 1818 to Antonio Bernardo Ferreira, who was both uncle and father-in-law to Dona Antonia Adelaide Ferreira, the woman Portuguese wine still calls Ferreirinha. Widowed early, she proved a formidable manager and became the most prominent landowner in the Douro. Vallado has stayed with her descendants ever since and is now run by the sixth and seventh generations, including Joao Ferreira Alvares Ribeiro and Francisco Ferreira, with Francisco Olazabal making the wine.
For most of its life the estate existed to feed the family Port house, Casa Ferreira. That ended in 1987, when Casa Ferreira was sold and Vallado began bottling Douro wines under its own label. A new winery and ageing cellar went up in 2009.
The hotel came in stages. In 2005 the family opened five suites inside the ochre eighteenth-century manor house, built in 1733, that had once been Dona Antonia's. A second, eight-room building followed in 2012, designed by architect Francisco Vieira de Campos almost entirely in schist, the stone the region's soil is made of. Six Eira Suites, built mainly in wood and each with a private terrace, were finished in 2023, bringing the hotel to nineteen rooms.
The setting
The estate sits at Vilarinho dos Freires, just outside Peso da Regua, on both banks of the Corgo river close to where it meets the Douro. This is the Baixo Corgo, the westernmost and coolest of the three Port sub-regions and the first stretch of hillside the 1756 demarcation ever drew a line around. Regua itself is the working capital of the valley, home to the Douro Museum and the rail junction where the Corgo line once met the river line, and it is a short drive from the terraces and the pool here.
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