Portuguese Wine Pairings For Christmas
If you can’t judge a book by its covers then maybe you can’t judge a wine by its label.
Here’s one that should leap off the supermarket shelves as you trawl the shops for your Christmas wine supplies.
It’s a colourful, quirky cartoon painted by a German street artist in Portugal and discovered by travelling winemaker Mauro Azoia.
The eye-catching street scene, bustling with life as a yolk yellow tram trundles its way through a narrow old cobbled street festooned with washing lines. A stout man in flat cap sitting kerbside outside his open door tends his smoking sardine barbecue as a hungry cat looks on.
The key, of course, is that the man is clutching a glass of red wine from a flagon at his elbow.. No meal in Portugal is complete without that essential ingredient.
Strict advertising rules dictate that no-one can look like they are enjoying themselves thanks to alcohol. So BBQ Man is straight-faced, as is the moustachioed tram driver and the crone pegging out her washing.
But the label slapped on every bottle of Porta 6 wine exudes life, vitality, community, tradition and fair weather. Very Portuguese.
At a wine pairing evening at the Casa do Frango restaurant in Heddon Street, within a twinkle of the Regent Street angel lights, we went through the card. Chardonnay. Pinot Noir. Syrah, all from the Porta 6 range of white, red and rosé wines produced by Vidigal Wines in Portugal.
We started from the lightest of gently bubbling dry sparklings, then a sparkling rosé, to fresh whites _ including the palest green Vinho Verde _ before hitting some fruity and robust ruby reds. All these to accompany the Christmas feast menu of the restaurant: grilled chorizo, bacalhau fritters, garlic prawns, fire roasted broccoli, charred cauliflower, piri-piri chicken, a handful of veggie sides plus Portuguese Carolino rice with chorizo, crispy chicken skin and plantain.
And, tah dah, to finish our feast a traditional Portuguese almond cake paired with an exquisite velvety dessert wine described as sherry meets marmalade meets young port. It was a 1982 vintage pudding wine packing a heady 16.5% vol. punch from the Lisbon region.
Roll on Christmas!
