HIGH on a cliff above the mighty Douro, a small chapel is testament to the days when the transport of pipes of young port wine down river was such a hazardous task that it was only attempted by men who knew that their womenfolk were on their knees praying for their safety.

The river has been tamed. The only traffic on it is a stream of passenger cruisers bringing tourists to enjoy the most spectacular vineyard scenery in Europe. And the wine trade has changed too.

As the demand for cheap sweet port has slowly ebbed away, so a new generation of winemakers are rediscovering the region’s potential to produce fine table wines. Their success has been such that the vineyard has grown by more than 50% in the last 20 years. Despite Portugal’s economic problems, the wine growers of the Douro would appear to be in fairly rude financial health.

Just below that little chapel are the cellars of the Quinta do Crasto, one of the Douro’s brightest and best producers of table wines. They jumped on the Douro table wine bandwagon in 1994 and have not had time to look back.

It has proven such a canny move that 90% of their considerable production is now table wine and the only port they make is high-end, high-quality, Late Bottled Vintage and Vintage wines.

Around 70 hectares of their stunningly beautiful estate beside the river at Gouvinhas is down to vine. It’s in the Cima Corgo sub-region, which has always produced some of the finest port grapes. Some plots are a century old, others are barely teenage.

The range and variety provides the winemaking team with a rich palette of flavours from which to craft an impressive range of wines. They have also bought and planted a lot of land further up the river, in the Upper Douro, remote country close to the Spanish border that holds great promise for the production of quality table wines. With a few long-term contracts and a few rented vineyards, they no longer have to buy in grapes and boast control of around 250 hectares of vines.

I was shown around Quinta do Crasto by Tomás Roquette, whose great-grandfather, Constantino de Almeida bought the estate almost a century ago. Tomás controls a talented team, which includes an Australian winemaker, Dominic Morris. They’re busy expanding the winery to cope with the surge of interest in their wines, including a valuable contract with Sainsbury’s, for whom they make their own-label ‘Taste the Difference’ Douro red, my wine of the week.