Luxury Hotels Atlas / Places / Portugal / Peso da Regua / The Wine House Hotel, Quinta da Pacheca
The Wine House Hotel, Quinta da Pacheca
Peso da Regua, Portugal · Independent · Accessible Luxury
Ten decommissioned wine casks stand out in the vineyard here, each one converted into a room with a round bed and a porthole window looking straight at the grapes. They won the Best Of Wine Tourism global architecture prize in 2020 and they are why most people come. The older half of the story is better: an eighteenth-century manor holding fifteen rooms, eight granite treading tanks from 1916 that guests still climb into at harvest, and a Pombaline boundary stone by the cellar door from the demarcation that invented the whole idea of an appellation.
- 25 rooms
- Opened 2009
About The Wine House Hotel, Quinta da Pacheca
- The estate takes its name from a document of April 1738 that calls it Pacheca, the feminine form of Pacheco, because Dona Mariana Pacheco Pereira was running the whole property on her own.
- A granite marker from the 1756 Pombaline demarcation, the world's first wine appellation, still stands at the entrance to the stone lagares. Those markers were declared of national interest in the 1940s.
- Vines have grown on this land since the sixteenth century, when it belonged to the Cistercian monasteries of Salzedas and Sao Joao de Tarouca. A 1551 document records them.
- The eight granite lagares were built in 1916 after a harvest of 2,565 hectolitres overwhelmed the old cellars. They are still in use, and guests are welcome to tread the grapes in them.
- Pacheca was among the first Douro houses to bottle table wine under its own name, and it opened to visitors in 1995, fourteen years before the hotel existed.
History
Vines have grown at Quinta da Pacheca since the sixteenth century, when the land formed part of the holdings of the Cistercian monasteries of Salzedas and Sao Joao de Tarouca. A document of 1551 records them. The estate is first called Pacheca in an April 1738 document, the feminine form of the family name Pacheco, used because the property was owned and run single-handed by Dona Mariana Pacheco Pereira.
In September 1903 Dona Jose Freire de Serpa Leitao Pimentel bought the quinta and carried out its first serious replanting, separating the vineyard by grape variety with wide working paths between blocks. Bastardo, Tinto Cao, Touriga Nacional, Tinta Amarela, Tinta Roriz and Tinta Barroca went in for the reds, with Codega, Malvasia Fina, Cerceal, Donzelinho and Viosinho among the whites. The 1916 harvest reached 2,565 hectolitres and forced the construction of new cellars and eight granite lagares, which remain in service. A later owner, Dona Eduardo Mendia Freire Serpa Pimentel, replaced older vines, experimented with Riesling, Sauvignon and Gewurztraminer in 1971, and began selling table wine. Douro table wine went on sale commercially in 1978.
Wine tourism began in 1995 with guided tours and a shop, and The Wine House Hotel opened in 2009 with fifteen rooms inside the eighteenth-century manor house. In 2017 the estate added its Wine Barrels: ten suites shaped like giant Port pipes, set among the vines, each with a circular bed and a round window. They took the Global Winner award for Architecture and Landscape at the Best Of Wine Tourism Awards in 2020.
The setting
Pacheca lies at Cambres, in the Lamego district on the left bank of the Douro a short drive from Peso da Regua, inside the first stretch of hillside the Marquis of Pombal demarcated in 1756. One of the original granite Pombaline markers survives on the property, by the entrance to the stone treading tanks. The seventy-five hectares of vineyard sit within the Alto Douro Wine Region, listed by UNESCO in 2001, and the estate keeps a chapel and a garden of centuries-old trees along with its olive groves.
Experiences
- Wine experiences — Wine experiences offered to guests as part of a complete stay at the estate.
Amenities
- Dedicated event planning team
- Personalized menus and estate wines
- Accommodation, spa treatments and wine experiences for event guests
- Curated live music sessions
Awards
- MICHELIN One Key (2026)
Open The Wine House Hotel, Quinta da Pacheca in the atlas for live weekend rates, photos, and the full folio.
More hotels in Peso da Regua
- Quinta do Pego — Independent · Accessible Luxury
- Quinta do Vallado — Independent · Accessible Luxury
- The Vintage House - Douro — Independent · Accessible Luxury
- Torel Quinta da Vacaria, Douro Valley — Torel · Accessible Luxury
- Quinta Dona Matilde — Independent · Near Luxury
- Quinta Vale de Lobos Douro — Independent · Near Luxury