Chargrilled endive, hazelnut crumble and Bayonne ham with white Bairrada

I’m having a bit of thing about Portuguese wine at the moment - it’s so great with food and such brilliantly good value. Especially on restaurant wine lists where it’s invariably underpriced in comparison to better known wine producing countries and regions

So I zoomed in on the Filipa Pato Enscaios Branco Bairrada 2012* when I spotted it on the Grainstore list the other day hoping it would go with the very different flavours and textures of the dishes we’d ordered.

It did but I think this was the best match: a warm salad of chargrilled endive, hazelnut crumble, prune vinegar (didn’t pick that up) and Bayonne ham with a nicely judged combination of sweetness, bitterness, nuttiness and umami which played beautifully with the lushness and richness (but dryness) of the wine, a blend of Arinto and Bical.

It was also good with my more raw-tasting starter of sprouting beans and seeds, miso aubergine and crispy chicken skin which I guess had a fair amount of umami too.

(The menu matches the endive dish with one of the house cocktails - a green tomato Margarita which I must say sounds unlikely. Maybe the numbers have slipped out of sync. Then again maybe not. I need to go back to find out - at least that's my excuse.)

*Happily it's available at Oddbins at £11.75

For my review of Grainstore click here though I did encounter a couple of less successful dishes this time.

Sushi and an oaked Luis Pato white

About the last thing you’d think I’d be recommending after 4 days in Portugal last week would be a wine pairing for sushi - but that was the outstanding match.

It was at a restaurant called Shis in Foz (prounced Shish and Fosh - Portuguese is famously difficult to pronounce), a resort on the edge of Oporto that bizarrely specialises in Japanese food, apparently prepared by Brazilian chefs. It was some of the best sushi I’ve had all year.

The wine was a relatively inexpensive Vinhas Velhas Branco 2009 from Luis Pato in Bairrada* which costs about 8-9 euros in Portugal and £13.50-15 here from merchants including Highbury Vintners and Roberson. It’s a blend of Bical, Cerceal and Sercialinho, aged in chestnut casks but the wood isn’t overwhelming. It was lush but light with a slightly nutty flavour and a streak of citrus. At least the second bottle was. Embarrassingly for my hosts who represented the cork industry the first bottle was corked or, as I am sure they would prefer me to put it, showed traces of TCA, cause unknown.

I’ve always gone for crisp unoaked whites with sushi but this worked really well with the innovative sushi that the restaurant serves. Well worth trying again.

* Though Pato uses the denomination Beiras, apparently having had a fallout with the Bairrada authorities

Roast suckling pig with Casa de Saima Bairrada Tinto

I recently went to a Portuguese food and wine evening in Bristol hosted by an enterprising wine merchant called Corks of Cotham. It featured the wines of a producer called Casa de Saima, the ports of Niepoort and an intriguing Barbeito Single Harvest Madeira which went exceptionally well with some classic Portuguese custard tarts.

The high spot though was the main course - a perfectly roasted suckling pig served with fine wafers of fried potato and a very good green salad (an accompaniment that’s too often overlooked these days).

Two wines were served with it - the basic Casa de Saima Tinto 2005 and the 2004 reserva, both based on the Portuguese grape Baga. Although the older wine was a fine match I particularly liked the juicy freshness of the younger one which paired perfectly with the delicate meat. (Subscribers can read more on pork and wine matching here.)

Apparently the estate, which is regarded as one of the best in the region, is a very traditional one where the grapes are still trodden by foot and left to ferment in lagares. As often with Portuguese wines I was struck by just how refreshingly different they were in style from the vast mass of international varietals but to give you a reference point they would appeal if you're a Cabernet Franc fan.