Portugal’s cuisine is as much influenced by the Atlantic as the Mediterranean and shares much in culinary practice with its neighbour, Spain.
Once a great seafaring nation, Portugal’s culinary repertoire includes many seafood dishes. Probably best-known is bacalhau, or salted cod. It can be turned into fish cakes, baked with red peppers or flaked and mixed with prodigious quantities of olive oil, salt and pepper.

There is next to nothing you can tell a Portuguese chef about seafood. Sardines and other small fish are grilled to perfection, squid and octopus are on every menu, and shellfish and the fruits of the Atlantic are all incorporated into the cuisine.
Roast suckling pig is another favourite dish. Basted in vinegar, red wine, onions and garlic and spit-roasted, it is simply delicious accompanied by a sharp red wine made from the Baga grape.
However, Portugal’s earthy peasant cuisine is also best explored with a dictionary to hand. ‘Papas de Moado’ is pigs’ blood cooked with sugar and dried fruits, for example. Many other dishes also have odd names – popular desserts made from egg yolks or whites and sugar are variously called ‘bacon from heaven’, ‘nun’s belly’ and ‘molotov’.

Since joining the EU in the mid-1980s, Portugal’s grapes and table wines have begun to find a wider market. Popular local grape varieties include Touriga Nacional, Touriga Francesa, Trincadeira, Loureiro, Alfrocheiro Preto, Gouveio, Periquita, Tinta Roriz, Tinto Cao, Rabo de Ovelha (which literally means sheep’s tail) and Encruzado, as well as the more familiar Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay.
With difficulties in pronunciation, Port-uguese wines are more difficult to promote abroad. Apart from Mateus Rosé and Vinho Verde, the average Briton is largely unfamiliar with Portuguese wine. The Douro valley, a demarcated wine region since the mid-18th century, produces more than 40 grape varieties, for example.

However, sales of Portuguese wine in the UK have been increasing (although Mateus Rosé and Vinho Verde are declining in popularity) and Britain is now the country’s biggest foreign market.
Wine-makers are now achieving better quality and more consistent quality wines than ever before. Sogrape, for example, has been diversifying and was the first to
produce varietals from native grapes. Among its newer wines are Vila Regia reds and whites from the Douro valley and Duque de Viseu (red and white) from Dao.

In an ambitious plan, the wine cooperative in the town of Peso da Regua in northern Portugal is investing $11.2 million in the construction of a tourist complex. Facilities will include a five-star hotel, swimming pool and tennis courts – and wine-tasting.
In the sun-scorched Alentejo region about 120km east of the capital, Lisbon, red and white wines have been the mainstay since Roman times. Wines produced here have high sugar levels, and one of the most important destinations for Alentejo wine exports is the UK.

It is in the Douro valley that one of Portugal’s most famous products – port wine – is made.
The vineyards wind round the steep slopes of the valley like ribs and the wine, once transported down the Douro river in small sailing barges, now arrives in Portugal’s second city, Porto, by road. Here, it is matured in dozens of port houses, including those of many famous British names such as Sandemann, Taylors, Dow, Warre, Graham and Croft. Portugal’s largest wine producer, Sogrape, most famous for its Mateus Rosé, is reported to be close to buying Sandemann.

Last year port sales totalled $517 million, the highest since 1988. But producers are now preparing to compete on the world market for top quality red table wines. They say table wine offers a quicker cash return than port, which takes at least five and as long as 20 or more years to mature. Two further reasons to diversify are that people are spending more money on table wine and port producers have excess grapes.