Porto’s transformation

The opening of The Yeatman Hotel in Porto earned founder Adrian Bridge a Gold Medal from the city. Now, reports Treve Ring, there are even more plans afoot.

Vintage House Hotel
Vintage House Hotel

Sitting on the veranda of The Yeatman Hotel, which occupies a commanding hillside position on the south bank of the Douro River and overlooks Porto proper across the way, anything feels possible. At least that’s what it sounds like over afternoon tea with Adrian Bridge, managing director of the Fladgate Partnership and the man in charge of overseeing the famous Port houses Taylor Fladgate, Fonseca Guimaraens, and Croft. The Yeatman, located in the historic heart of Vila Nova de Gaia, where Port has been aged for over three centuries, opened in 2010 to great acclaim. The luxury hotel’s architecture echoes the terraces of the historic port vineyards 100 km or so up river in the Douro, affording all guestrooms a view of Porto. 

Port wine received its name in the latter half of the 17th century from the city of Porto (Oporto to locals), where flat-bottomed barcos rabelos that made the treacherous river journey would offload the barrels of wine to be aged before shipping to England and beyond. Many of today’s Port firms were founded by British merchant families, and some are still owned by their successors. Taylor’s has roots in the trade back to 1692. The Yeatmans, who entered the Port trade in 1838, were among the most enterprising of these Port families, and their descendants maintain this tradition today. Current Fladgate Partnership non-executive chairman Alistair Robertson, nephew to Beryl Yeatman, is Adrian Bridge’s father-in-law.

Adrian Bridge may not be a Yeatman by birth, but he could match any of the historic figures for vision. Not only is he responsible for The Yeatman Hotel – which he worked on for five years – but he has set a development plan in motion that will help transform and revitalise the region, bringing not only tourists to Portugal, but also recognition for its wines.

Point Porto

There’s no denying it’s prime time for Portugal. Compared to other countries in Western Europe, notably France, Portugal is viewed as a safe place to visit. With a steady economy, a large number of English-speaking inhabitants, a beneficial Atlantic coast location, and easy flights to North America, the foundations are in place. Improvements and expansion to Francisco Sá Carneiro Airport (Oporto Airport) and the investment of Ryan Air in connecting Porto to numerous points in Europe has positioned the city as an easy destination choice. The completion of the new highway connecting Porto to Vila Real has had an effect on Douro tourism, already a cultural destination thanks to its designation as a UNESCO World Heritage region. The A4 now has parallel twin tunnels running straight through the Serra do Marão, each almost 6 km in length. The Túnel do Marão is the largest road tunnel in Portugal, shaving considerable time off the drive to wine country and making the journey a much less treacherous one. With the steady rise in popularity of Douro table wine, prompting a lagging Port industry to work overtime to modernise, Douro wines of all styles have both momentum and a market.

“Tourism is booming in Porto because of The Yeatman,” says Bridge, with the confidence of a graduate of Sandhurst Royal Military Academy, a former UK peacekeeping officer, and successful banker. In the midst of the 2008 recession, Fladgate went ahead with ambitious plans to open the five-star property, with a belief that people coming into Porto were interested in wine, and that having a hotel near the Port houses on the banks of the river below was a wise investment in their future. “With 300 years of Port history in the region, it was time for someone to tell the story. We grew the pie so we could take a slice,” notes Bridge. The move proved a profitable one, with a near-full occupancy rate in 2016 and plans to build 26 more guest rooms on the property beginning in November 2016.

The success of The Yeatman prompted additional hotel acquisitions, including the repurchase of The Vintage House Hotel, 120 km up river in Pinhão. It was the first luxury property in the Douro when Taylor’s opened it in 1998, though they sold it four years later when the group finalised the purchase of Croft and Delaforce Port houses. “I was far too busy to spend that much time there,” recalls Bridge, well known for fingerprinting everything from carpet patterns to marketing campaigns. In October 2015, Fladgate completed the purchase of the property – which was showing its age – and spent three months doing a complete refurbishment, before opening to the public in early 2016.

Hugging the river, nearly all of the 50 guest suites have views of the Douro from their private veranda, and occupancy has been high since they opened the doors. “We are right next to the train station, can arrange boat tours, have bicycles available, and provide private moorage for guests,” notes Vintage House manager Paulo Santos. “In addition, we can easily coordinate with The Yeatman so guests can spend a couple of nights in Porto and a couple of nights here in the heart of Port vineyards.” The company has also purchased 14,000 square metres beside the property, with plans to open more activities for the offseason. Twenty-five additional rooms, another restaurant, indoor swimming pool and spa, and a museum of Port wine will be included in the expansion plans, with construction to begin in 2017.

“We are creating product in Pinhão, just like we did in Porto with The Yeatman,” says Bridge.

In addition to the investment in The Vintage House, the Group has extensively refurbished the hospitality centres at Croft’s Quinta da Roêda and Fonseca’s Quinta do Panascal. At Roêda, conveniently a short stroll from The Vintage House, the hospitality centre includes an option for guests to foot tread in the granite lagares during harvest season. With an advance booking, and for €22.00 ($23.30), visitors can experience foot treading, a guided tour of the vineyards, and a tasting of three Ports.

Six months after The Fladgate Partnership purchased The Vintage House Hotel, they completed the purchase of the luxury Hotel Infante Sagres in the heart of Porto. You can just make out the rooftop of the classic hotel from the veranda of The Yeatman, directly across the river. In the densely bustling streets of Porto Baixa, the heart of the city’s historic district, the property carries the faded grandeur of its past illustrious age (Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands and the Dalai Lama are among previous guests). Faded by time and muddled with numerous owners and design inspirations since opening in 1951, this landmark was once the top hotel in the country, and general manager Carlos Trindade has plans to rekindle that allure, aiming for a late 2016 close for refurbishment, and a summer 2017 reopening.

Bridge has long been preparing for a uniting of the two sides of the river. The company has created a rabelas ferry service from the old Croft bottling plant in Gaia across to the other side of the river, helping to offset bridge traffic and facilitate moving passengers back and forth. The 28-person vessels were due to start running in fall 2016 for a fare of approximately €3.00 and a passage of approximately three minutes.

“Most of the infrastructure for tourism is on the north bank, in Porto, though all the Port houses and cellars for Porto wine are housed here on the south bank,” says Bridge. He estimates that the investment of €650,000.00 will have a return in seven years, and the service will have capacity to carry around 200,000 people annually. With those numbers, Bridge is not just thinking about moving guests back and forth between hotels, however. He has that focus set on facilitating foot traffic for the future World of Wine.

Bringing the World of Wine to Porto

In June 2016, Taylor’s opened the doors to their fully renovated 300-year-old lodge in Vila Nova de Gaia. The working cellars, home to 1,500 casks of resting Port, abut the base of The Yeatman property, and is the first of the renovated facilities in what will become a World of Wine. At a cost of €1.5m, Taylor’s Port Cellars has been transformed into a modern museum of Port, with an interactive, self-guided audio tour, followed by a guided Port tasting, including Bridge’s pet project, Taylor’s Chip Dry White Port. Visitors can wander through in twenty minutes, or take a couple of hours and linger at each station, from soils, grapes and winemaking, to decanting and enjoying Port, to a detailed archive of the company’s history in the region. One of 17 such Port visitor centres in the city, and for a fee that doubles its competition at €12.00, the lodge has seen up to 500 people each day since opening. “I turned the business model on its head,” said Bridge. “The problem with the Port industry is their reluctance to do something new.” This is not surprising from the one who was behind the Croft Rosé Port, or “Port without rules”, as Bridge calls it, which now amounts for 1.5% of all Port sales. Or for a company that has seen great success with the Very Old Single Harvest 50-year-old Colheita Tawny releases, a move prompted by Bridge’s 50th birthday gifts of Armagnac from friends and family.

New is normal for the Fladgate Partnership now. In the spring of 2016, the company relocated all of their offices to the old Real Companhia Velha property adjacent The Yeatman and moved the bottling facilities outside of the city core, leaving an expanse of empty warehouses behind. Covering more than eight acres along the waterfront, this is the future site of the World of Wine, a collection of experiences that will include a wine school, numerous restaurants, a shopping area, a cork experience, and a museum dedicated not just to Port, but to all Portuguese wine.

Additional plans include a fashion/textile museum, an olive oil and gourmet foods centre, and a public square. Another new 90-room hotel property, developed in conjunction with IT partner Living PlanIT, is set to open in 2018 along the riverfront, bringing even more visitors and cultural tourists to the area. The budget for World of Wine is hovering around €100m, and has set 2020 as an optimistic opening date.

Bridge sees the project as contributing not only to Porto and the Douro Valley, but to Portugal and the wine world as a whole. “I am very positive about Port and very positive about Porto. There are lots of opportunities.” 

 

 

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