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Lovely little hotel in beautiful old house in the centre of the village. Great service lovely lunch and beautiful rooms and bathrooms. Very clean and lovely pool. The staff are amazing and the atmosphere is great we only stayed a night but wished we had stayed longer.

We had a short but excellent stay. Good service and sympathy , especially for the girl Veronica, professional and very sympathetic. The suite is fabulous and the new hotel , all right!!!!

We had booked three nights at this hotel but cut the trip short and just stayed for two. Firstly the location is poor - I know I am contradicting some earlier reviews but this is as we saw it. We thought we were in the Douro Valley area, we were just on the edge. Alijo is a town that seemed to have moved on from the wine business, a lot of buildings were fairly new and not in keeping with elsewhere. The outlook from the hotel is over a school which is noisy at times and a park area. One wonders whether vineyards were taken up to build these. The hotel itself is a handsome building with a great terrace and a (not very clean) pool in its grounds. There does not appear to be any connection with Baron Forrester, strange choice of name for it. There has been some refurbishment, there was a great bar and most of the public rooms were great. Our bedroom was good with a Juliet balcony overlooking the terrace (and the school, one morning they had a VERY loud event starting at 7.30am, that was the last straw for my husband) however the bathroom was dingy, with a gruesome shower curtain and mould around the edges of the bath. In the room there was no safe, tea/coffee making facilities, no fridge let alone a minibar - just the space for it?! Old fashioned hair dryer in the bathroom. Air conditioning wouldn't be switched on 'until Monday' despite it being 30 deg. This was the fourth Pousada we had stayed in on this trip and was a big disappointment. We had driven through the Douro Alto on the Tua road to get there and had high hopes as to what it would be like. We did discover it is 'franchised' to Pestana rather than owned and run by them. We had dinner there the first time which was not good, tasteless under seasoned lump of veal for me, undercooked rabbit for my husband. Breakfast was fine and lunch on the terrace very nice. Staff generally were great though sometimes hard to find. We couldn't face dining there a second night and had scoped out places in the town which looked a bit basic... to be told that chef had Covid and the restaurant was closed. Possibly because of that they did not charge us for the last night when we checked out in the morning. Husband was told the printer was u/s so they couldn't print off the receipt. You couldn't make it up...

In the restaurant, the first night we ordered the set dinner tasting menu, it was average. The second night, we ordered from the a la carte menu for the fish and octopus, they are sooooooo good! Thus, I recommend ordering from a la carte. I also love the service in the restaurant, the head chef will take ur orders, and his colleagues will help delivering. The orange juices during breakfast are freshly squeezed from the oranges in the yards, very delicious. The restaurant is likely the best thing in this quinta. I lived in the maker rooms, the rooms are average for its price. The wine tasting is definitely a rip-off, they gave you some recent year cheap wines. I can get similar wine tasting at a similar price in Florence Italy wine region with delicious wines from 1800. I do not recommend doing wine tasting in this quinta. They created some circuits or paths for you to tour around which is nice, but the notations and map are not updated. You may get lost, but you should also be able to figure your way out so no big deal.