4-COURSE TASTING MENU PAIRED WITH VIEIRA DE SOUSA WINES
Join us for this special evening with Maria Vieira de Sousa herself
Our chefs have worked with the Vieira de Sousa vineyard to design an exclusive four-course tasting menu, paired with a selection of wines and ports from the Vieira de Sousa vineyard. Each course and wine will be introduced by both chef and the winemaker, making this an engaging and memorable evening of food and wine.
ARRIVAL – 6.30PM
Crispy goat’s curd stuffed olives
House bread, olive oil
Vieira de Sousa White Port and Tonic
STARTER
Skewered piri piri prawns, romesco sauce, samphire, sweet paprika
Alice Vieira de Sousa White
MAIN
Corneyside Farm beef two ways, whole chargrilled rump, braised featherblade in cocoa, dauphinoise potato, autumn greens
Alice Vieira de Sousa Red Reserve 2021 Vineyards Crima-Corgo
Alice Vieira de Sousa Red Reserve 2021 Vineyards Quinta da Fonte
CHOCOLATE
Chocolate and orange truffles
Salted caramel truffles
Vieira de Sousa 10 Years Tawny Port
CHEESE
Cashel Blue, sweet ginger, oat biscuits, celery leaf
Vieira de Sousa Late Bottled Vintage Port
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Sisters Luísa and Maria Vieira de Sousa have restored the family name and resurrected the production of Port wines that was started 5 generations ago. Vieira de Sousa had a good business selling their high-quality grapes to Churchill’s and Taylor’s traditionally. There was a hiatus after phylloxera hit the vineyards in the C19th that caused a financial freeze-up that lasted over 100 years, most notably the necessity of selling some of their vineyards and the family brand name. It was in 2009 that Luisa, helped by her father Antonio, decided to invest again in Port bottling and buy the family name back. They realised they had enough reserve wines to restart. Owning 5 farms comprising 60ha of vineyards, they could provide the high-quality grapes to gear things up, and their Cimo Corgo based Quinta homestead was ideally placed to process the output. Viticulture in the Douro is always a struggle with no easily deployed machinery, limited public services, low-yielding old vines and hard-graft maintenance. Yet from this difficult terrain, with a lot of work and dedication, they make beautiful still wine and benchmark Ports which, whilst remaining rustic, have a beautiful freshness, elegance and lower than usual levels of residual sugar. From the same hardscrabble slopes come their still wines showcasing the incredible quality of Portuguese wines in recent years using native grapes such as Touriga Nacional, Touriga Franca, Tinto Roriz, Rabigato, Viosinho and Gouveio.
