Text Ilkka Sirén

Finding a decent bottle of Portuguese wine in Finland is easier said than done. When I first started to shout about the wines of Portugal here the selection was very tiny. Nowadays the selection has grown but it’s still quite small. In the monopoly shop’s “basic selection” there is approximately 22 different Portuguese red wines, 9 white wines, 2 sparklings and 1 rosé. There’s a bit more wines in the special selection but most of the people never use it or doesn’t even know it exists. There’s not a lot to choose from. I’m happy that people are getting more interested and now some wines are even sold out because they have received good reviews.

I went to the nearest monopoly shop and grabbed the first Portuguese wine that was unknown to me. It was Caves Velhas Cabeça de Toiro Reserva 2010 from Tejo. Caves Velhas belongs to the Enoport United Wines which is a group of old Portuguese wineries such as Adegas Camillo Alves, Caves Dom Teodósio, Caves Moura Basto and a few others. The wine itself was a 50/50 blend of Touriga Nacional and Castelão. The bottle came in a cardboard box which was covered in pictures of medals and other achievements that this particular wine has received. It looked a bit omnious.

Tasting the wine I thought that the Touriga Nacional and Castelão combination works quite well. Castelão brings down a bit of the floral aromatics of the Touriga without losing any of its intensity. As the label suggests it’s a beefy wine. Full-bodied with some ripe fruit and earthy oak aromas. I was expecting something even heavier but luckily it wasn’t. Still a wine with some cojones but perhaps together with some food it could be just what the doctor ordered.

So, I had to get myself a big steak. I can usually cook a pretty good steak, rare of course, but somehow I managed to overcook it. Distracted by the glass of wine in my hand the steak cooked through and the end result was well done. Damn! I was still hungry so I had to think of something. An idea of a spicy tagliata-esque sliced steak popped into my head. I also mashed up a chunky guacamole and voilà, lunch was ready. It was pretty good too if I say so myself. But the most surprising thing was how well the wine went with this sort of spicy food. It’s obvious that it pairs well with steak but a steak with chili, lime and cilantro. Who would have thought. Even if I managed to mess up the food the wine managed to save the day.