“Time takes time,” says Felipe, the broad-grinned manager of Casa do Rio – an exclusive boutique wine hotel deep within Portugal’s Alto Douro Valley.
It is a local saying fitting for a wine region that has been growing grapes for 300 years in a landscape that has been thousands of years in the making, where a good Port can spend 50 years maturing in a barrel. It also feels entirely appropriate when you have just taken an accidental one hour and 49-minute detour because your husband has put the wrong address in the GPS.
