Grape Harvest Tours in Douro Valley in September

Does anyone have any information on dates this year. I understand the train services runs one but no dates for 2014 listed yet. Any help appreciated. I imagine there are lots of choices but I can't seem to find much information, or what I have found is ridiculously expensive.

Harvests happen at materially different times in different years due to the vagaries of weather. An early harvest can be substantially complete by a date which in another year it would barely have started. So they can't realistically schedule until rather later in the summer.

Are you talking about the "Historic train"?

If so, there's an official schedule, every Saturday between 5 July and 25 October.

I think we need to be clear what kind of a tour you are seeking. You can, as I have, merely travel through the region during the harvest and see what you might see as you go about. I didn't see very much. You might, on the other hand, want to actually visit some vineyards during the harvest and see what is going on. Most of them will be so busy they really won't want you there. But some will have made arrangements for visits by tourists at these times to take advantage of the interesting activities going on, as a method of making money, as a sales promotion venture, whatever. Since the famous vineyards mostly have their customer interface at Vila Nova de Gaia (ie the south bank in Porto), there tends to be less in the way of customer-facing arrangements at the vineyards, and indeed many of the houses don't even necessarily own very much in the way of vineyards, rather buying crop from independent growers. But I am aware that some vineyards do have customer-facing facilities at the vineyard itself. Some others might also make private arrangements for organised tours only, rather than having "shop front" facilities at the vineyards. I expect this last is the reason why some tours are expensive - you are entering a busy vineyard on a special arrangement.