Six Senses Douro Valley

The Douro is the oldest demarcated wine region in the world, and its terraced schist hillsides are a UNESCO World Heritage site. Six Senses took a nineteenth-century manor house at Samodães, above a bend in the river near Lamego, and reworked it into a resort without flattening the character of the original building.

There are seventy-one rooms, suites and two villas, most looking down over the vineyards to the water. The spa is the largest of its kind in the region, with ten treatment rooms, an indoor pool and the brand's usual battery of wellness screening, alongside an outdoor saltwater pool on the terrace. An Earth Lab handles the sustainability side, and there is a wine library for working through the region's ports and increasingly serious table wines.

Three restaurants cover formal and relaxed dining, with a summer garden operating in the warmer months. Days are easily spent on the river by boat, visiting quintas, or simply watching the light move across the terraces, which is a more absorbing pastime than it sounds.