There’s a smattering of bottles of Quinta do Noval Late Bottled Vintage port from 2010 that might flare the nostril of a well-tuned hyperosmiac (if that is the term for someone with a highly sensitive nose). 

Was there a certain je ne sais quoi in that glass, a quality that nudged the port a smidgeon beyond the usual excellence expected of that great port house a few miles from Oporto?

Well, yes. For one morning in 2003 I found myself stomping about in the trough of that very establishment, whose estate comprises a group of handsome buildings with terracotta tiles and white-washed walls: offices, tasting rooms, warehouses and the vine press, all amid very steep slopes.

With about a dozen others I walked about a huge vat of red grapes, my feet and toes gently crushing the fruit. I was clad in shorts, others had their trousers rolled up high. The juices coloured our skin and we walked about, seemingly aimlessly. If you didn’t know there were grapes below the belt you might think we were dazed in-patients of some rural asylum going nowhere fast, getting some exercise.

After a while of plodding about someone decided to liven up proceedings. There’s a game they play in the vats that keeps up the spirits and causes considerable merriment. They chose me to be to be ‘it’. I had to hold my hands behind my back, palms up. Then, with my eyes tight shut, someone would walk past and slap my palms hard. The moment that happened I could open my eyes and try to identify the culprit.

The most accomplished “slappers” had poker faces, showing no hint of smug glee at having stung my hands and they either walked past or on by or slid to the back of the group without my being able to finger them.

I remained “it” for a while before I luckily picked the villain. It was then his turn to be slapped and I, the novice, immediately took revenge for the pain inflicted on my palms by being the first to whack him. He of course immediately identified me and I was back in the victim’s role, much to the amusement of everyone else in the trough.

Such japes killed a good hour, which was needed as pressing grapes by foot gets exhausting after a while, becoming boring and monotonous.

I soon escaped the trough and went back into the sunny Portuguese sunshine keen to explore the estate and learn more of the vines from which the squished grapes had come.

“Can I see the harvesting?” I asked. “Head up there and listen for the accordion,” I was told.

I walked up from the quinta looking back to admire this handsome property, one of the oldest of all the Douro valley’s port houses, founded in the 18th century, famed for rare declarations of vintages when others couldn’t in the early 20th century, and bought, rather less glamourously, in 1993 by a branch of the French insurance giant AXA. 

Today it remains a much-sought-after port, and rare in the business, makes the majority of its fortified wine from its own vines.

I soon found some of them, indeed as the sound of an accordion grew closer. To soothe the pickers a man was working his squeeze box at the top of a steep slope whose ground was covered in a stone scree. Quite how the grapes managed to fight their way through this seemed miraculous, but then the grape is an extraordinary fruit.

It works its way south to find water, and – sometimes – the harder it has to work, the sweeter the grapes.

Port remains unfashionable: too big, too bold, too sweet too strong; so often taking the blame for a hangover whose foundations were laid in the hours that led to that final glass.

But as it’s not trendy a great bottle proves excellent value compared to many wines. A late bottled vintage of Qunita do Noval, in which the juice stays in barrels for four to six years, is a favourite of mine at Christmas: fresh, lively and with a subtle hint of ‘pied à Sitwell’ it proves a perfect foil for a far stinkier Stilton.