Opinion | Wine opinion: exploring the unique character of Portugal's Douro region

Wine people are often called upon to explain what makes a particular region unique, and because wine itself is difficult to differentiate with words - one person's plum is another's blackberry - the tendency is to fixate on soil, climate, landscape, grape varieties or even the winemaking if there's something to say.

Portugal's Douro region has all of these: a friable grey schist soil; an arid, almost desert climate suitable only for gnarled vines and olive trees; and an otherworldly topography carved out by the river for which it is named.

You like indigenous grape varieties? Douro has at least 40 - the inky touriga nacional is head honcho, flanked by its homeboys touriga franca and tinta roriz (Spain's tempranillo). Much winemaking is still done in granite lagares - essentially wide, shallow kiddy pools of grapes stomped by teams of the young and (initially) enthusiastic in an activity that we personally discovered more resembles a four-hour step class than a bacchanalian romp.

But what we often gloss over in describing a region is its people. Here it is the Douro Boys, a group of five quinta (wine estate) owners that embody the region, at least as much as any crumbling rocks or terraced hillsides do.

They first teamed up in 2003 to represent and inspire the region, a move which at the time was considered highly unusual. This year, they celebrated their tenth anniversary in grand style by auctioning a few hundred magnums of a table wine and a vintage port created from a blend of their individual 2011 harvests.

So how do the Douro Boys manage? It helps that they're all family. Many of the families used to make port, but now focus on making dry wines that are as important as port.