Direct wine pairing recommendations for all our signature menu courses. Expertly curated by our editor.
🍽️ Portuguese national fish cod, and with octopus or squid in red wine sauce
At producer wineshop
🍷 Suggested wine: Red wine, especially Baga / Bairrada, is surprisingly good with fresh tuna. And red Vinho Verde can seriously go well with grilled sardines. But Portuguese whites are the best for salmon and sea trout. And you can try a dry rosé with swordfish.
Texture: White Wine Light, refreshing, fruity whites Characteristics The cool, hilly, verdant north west of Portugal is the main source of a unique style of white wine with lowest alcohol and high, fresh acidity: Vinho Verde (vinho verde, ‘green wine’, and means ‘young wine’). Many also have a slight prickle of fizz, once a remnant of the carbon dioxide of fermentation, now often added at bottling time. Vinho Verde may be made from numerous grape varieties, some aromatic, some not, often a selection blended together. It may be dry or medium-dry.
Yes, it is true that white wines are usually the first choice with fish and seafood. But some sauces on white fish can negotiate a marriage with red wine; cooking fish in red wine also solves the problem. Red wine is a local favourite with Portuguese national fish cod, and with octopus or squid in red wine sauce; Red wine, especially Baga / Bairrada, is surprisingly good with fresh tuna. And red Vinho Verde can seriously go well with grilled sardines. But Portuguese whites are the best for salmon and sea trout. And you can try a dry rosé with swordfish.
🍽️ Red Meat and Game Meat
At producer webshop
🍷 Suggested wine: Red wines with a lot of tannin are difficult to match with food. Tannin has that bitter, mouth-watering taste when, for example, you chew a grape seed. Some food ingredients make the tannin taste more bitter: egg yolks, cream, melted cheese, spinach, celery, dill and many spices. Therefore, it is better to choose a white or rosé wine.
Texture: Lovely, fruity and fresh alternatives to crisp dry whites, most rosés slip down all too easily and you might do well to choose your beach or summer barbecue bottle from the lower end of the alcohol scale. Dry, fruity rosés are good with a whole array of light-flavoured food, including sushi, vegetable and salad dishes, thanks to their gentle (even if consciously imperceptible) sweetness.
Rosé Wine
Characteristics
Like white wines, rosés tend to have crisper acidity, lower alcohol and lighter body when grown in cooler places, which means places with maritime influence or high altitude. There’s not really a particular geographical place in Portugal that is famous for making rosés – although as far as drinking is concerned, rosé is predominantly a seaside wine, also much exported. Every imaginable red grape, Portuguese and foreign, is made into rosé.
🍽️ White meats (if you want to drink red) and simply cooked red meats may be better with softer or lighter reds.
Add-on platen: €35
🍷 Suggested wine: Try a smooth red from the Alentejo, a light and relaxed Ribatejo red, an elegant Palmela, Algarve or Alenquer, a light red from Óbidos, or a good mature red from almost any region. The lively acidity of a Dão red can pleasantly compensate for the fat of some meats.
Texture: Red Vinho Verde goes well with freshly-grilled sardines, and with the often rich or fatty meats, offal and charcuterie that are popular in these parts. It tends to come in a tall, lean bottle, like white Vinho Verde. Give it a try! If it won’t come to you, you may need to take a trip to the North West.
Red Wine
Light-bodied, tangy, fruity reds
Characteristics
The vineyards along Portugal’s windy Atlantic coast (the ones that make light, fresh, fruity whites) also make some of their reds in a similar light, tangy style, with alcohol typically nowadays around 11%. This includes the cool, often rainy Vinho Verde region in the north west. To people outside Portugal it’s a fairly well-kept secret that around 40% of all Vinho Verde is red, its deep red colour, unusual for such a cool region, coming partly from the red flesh of the local Vinhão grapes, as well as their skins.
