Flaming wheelbarrow steak
A Douro Valley winery lunch takes an unexpected turn
I am standing in a backstreet in Alijó, in the Douro Valley watching a lady in a pastel-yellow tabard and sandals cook steak on a barbecue made from a wheelbarrow. She whacks at the exuberant flames with a tea towel as winemaker, Fernando Brás, flips the hunks of meat over, sometimes with his bare hands. It’s a bizarre sight. As they step back from the flaming wheelbarrow somebody comments that it looks like a Fall album cover. We four British journalists stand agape. We’ve been around the block but steak served from a flaming wheelbarrow is a new one for all of us.
Back inside the winery, we rejoin the party. A long table is covered in a patchwork tablecloth, and another table, this one round and covered in a blue, shiny cloth, is pushed up against it to make more room for guests. We’ve been invited here by Pedacos Winery, a very small family producer helmed by Fernando that’s making fantastic wines in Douro. I have stepped into my long-held fantasy of joining someone’s bacchanalian family lunch somewhere in Europe. We sit and eat and slurp our way through their collection while surrounded by barrels full of wine at different stages in its development.
The table heaves with food. We’ve already eaten charcuterie, cheese, salt cod (bacalao) croquettes and bola de carne. The latter is a sort of focaccia stuffed with *checks notes* chicken, pork, veal and sausage. It has a golden crust reminiscent of a doughnut because it’s been brushed liberally with olive oil before baking in a hot oven. A meat doughnut. What more do you want from life?
Every meal we have had so far in the Douro has started like this - a substantial lunch in itself. But then comes the fish course, and the steak, and the dessert. Perhaps it’s because we are invited guests and each meal is a celebratory one, kind of like having a succession of Xmas dinners, or perhaps this is just how it is here. The Portuguese love food and it’s a pity their cuisine is somewhat overshadowed by that of Italy, France, and neighbouring Spain.
When you think of the Douro, certain wines come to mind, namely big tannic, fruity reds. So a glass of rhubarb-scented pet nat is a refreshing start to our meal in more ways than one. These are the new breed of Douro winemakers. They are keen to show us how things are evolving. The lively pet nat goes down well with a teaspoon or two of milky Serra da Estrela (meaning star of the mountain) sheep’s cheese, scooped from a wheel in the middle of the table and served with a sweet pumpkin conserve. The Bordaleira sheep graze on local herbs, giving their cheese its distinct flavour.
After the meat bread, charcuterie, cheese, and so on, comes a surprise sausage course. Fernando proudly shows us a plate of different types of local bangers before sending them off to be cooked. There is alheira, a porkless sausage apparently invented as an alternative for Jewish diners. Due to the addition of bread, the spicy has a paste-like texture - think sobrasada in chinos - punctuated with shreds of chicken, veal and beef. We enjoy this type of sausage a few times around the Douro with varying degrees of chilli heat. They vary in recipe across the country. There’s also a red wine-marinated pork sausage, even headier with garlic than the first. The cured meat is so coarsely ‘minced’ it will give you a jaw like Johnny Bravo. A local black pudding completes the sausage trio before it’s time for the wheelbarrow steak.
We’ve been enjoying some fresh, elegant whites so far. God know what the grapes are, the winemaker says, the vines are too old for them to have been identified yet. It’s something the Portuguese are working on, with around 250 grapes officially named and the real number probably a hundred or so higher according to another winemaker we meet on this trip. But these intensely flavoured sausages require a glass of red to stand up to them. A velvety gran reserva - made from another miscellany of local grape varieties - works a treat.
The enormous flame-grilled steaks are served with ‘punched potatoes’. Small spuds that have been oven baked under a blanket of coarse salt. They are unearthed one at a time, placed on a wooden board and crushed with a balled fist. It looks cathartic. The steak is cut into two-inch thick slices and served simply in its cooking juices. A simple salad of lettuce and beef tomatoes brings levity and colour to the plate.
But there’s more. Pudim casaeiro da avó, made earlier by Fernando’s wife, is carefully upended from its fluted aluminium mould as everyone holds their breath. A whoop goes up at the table when it shimmies out, fully formed onto an etched glass plate. This yolky beauty’s caramelised sauce is made even more delicious with the addition of Moscatel wine. Another egg-rich dessert is unrolled from a piece of tin foil, dusted with sugar and decorated with orange slices. A box of ravioli-esque sweet biscuits with an amber yolk and sugar paste filling is passed around too. These from a local patisserie remind me a little of the gazelle-horn pastries of Morocco. We’re told the rooster crest shaped biscuits, crista de galo de vila real, have been named “one of the seven sweet wonders of Portugal”. To accompany dessert, there is sweet and floral Moscatel, and a late harvest botrytised wine.
Much of the furniture and fittings in the winery are made from upcycled ex-wine barrels. Shelves, tables, chairs, all crafted by Fernando - his daughter Marta tells us with a proud smile. Edison lightbulbs hang on lengths of thick rope. Long tree trunks run as beams along the ceiling.
The word ‘immersive’ is bandied around a lot these days and half the time the experience is anything but. But not only was this experience as close to immersive in wine terms as if we’d hopped into one of the barrels for a bath, we felt as if we became part of the family. It’s unlikely we’ll get a share of the family port barrel, like, but we got to at least feel like we belonged in that world for an intoxicating few hours.