Living in Portugal has opened my eyes (and taste buds) to the wonderful possibilities that Portugal offers those in search of new tastes and flavours.
Every region of Portugal has its own culinary delights complemented by wines that perfectly match the food either from local quintas or home-made wines produced from grapes grown on the family quintal or farm.
In particular I love Sundays in Portugal. The church bells chime in villages and towns up and down the country and families in all their finery stream from the churches chatting in groups about the week’s news. The rest of the day is spent seated at large tables in busy, noisy, restaurants, elderly black clad grandmothers, elegant men and women, teenagers and babes in arms; the different generations at ease with each other as they linger over a long delicious lunch washed down with wonderful local wines.
A sense of community can still be felt particularly in the countryside around harvest time or the vindima when friends, neighbours and family gather to pick the grapes. I will always remember vindimas in Minho in the north of Portugal. The sound of excited chatter of the pickers carrying across the vines as the buckets are filled with bunches of plump grapes and carried off on trailers to the lagar. Lunch for the pickers was a wonderful treat. Great steaming platters of bacalhau (salted cod) and chicken, potatoes and vegetables drizzled with dark green extra virgin olive oil would be placed in the centre of long trestle tables along with flagons of red vinho verde and shots of aguadente, the local firewater. Then it was back to work !
So much of Portugal has vines, whether short stumpy ones like those in Douro and Tras-os-montes in the remote northeast or those trained up pergolas or even trees as in Minho ! In days gone by the grapes were sold to large cooperatives but now more and more producers are making their own wines and have enthusiastically embraced new technologies in wine making to retain the fruit flavours but at the same time remaining true to their native grape varieties.
With the Portuguese wine community undergoing a seismic shift in recent years I saw a real opportunity to bring Portuguese wines to the UK. What I found was that if you have a favourite go-to wine, whether its Malbec or Shiraz, Chardonnay or Pinto Grigio you will find that Portugal has a fresh alternative that offers great value for money.
Portugal is a fascinating country, full of interesting, deep full bodied red wines and sophisticated well-crafted whites. Portugal offers a whole new world of wines and flavours that will transport you to its sunny vistas.
