I have a long history of accidentally buying things while drunk. I’ll often get home from pub/bar/restaurant and buy things on ebay. This has ranged from the mundane such as clothes to the ridiculous, such as a pizza oven and a vintage Alfa Romeo. The pizza oven did turn out to be one of the best things I’ve ever bought. The car less so.

Last years London Wine Week was no exception to this trend.

We were being sensible. No, really! We’d been to a few places and had our £5 wine flights and decided it’d be a good time to go for some food. In Spitalfields Market there is an amazing Portuguese restaurant called Taberna do Mercado. I’d wanted to try it for a while, so we went there and ate.

See. Sensible.

With a fine selection of seafood, cheese and cured meats, we had a bottle of very good Alvarinho (because of course we did). Then it came to pudding. They do the most incredible nata tart. It’s not like the small yellow ones in the style of that bakery in Belem, that seem ubiquitous in London coffee shops at the moment. It’s big and a lot more like (the most amazing) custard tart. It’s one of my favourite things ever. They only make one. It’s first come first serve (if you go, order it when you’re ordering the rest of your food to be on the safe side). The exceedingly helpful waitress suggested a port with it. We had to, really. And then onwards to more wine week delight.

The next morning I woke up feeling a bit groggy and started to get ready for work. I got on the bus to the tube (I was living in Muswell Hill at the time, which is tubeless). I checked my email. I’d ordered… a crate of the port.

The port in question is a 2007 Morgadio da Calçada. It’s quite young for a vintage port and I guess in theory we were supposed to keep it for ages. The problem being it was way too good for my will power to allow me to do that. In fact two bottles of it are gone already. One at a specific port/torte party where I made a chocolate torte to eat with it. The other one went after we’d been to Dandelyan and were probably too drunk to enjoy it as much as we should have.

It was way to expensive for me to be able to keep it all. Half of it got sold to my drinking/dining companions that evening. Another three bottles went to my sister and brother-in-law at their wedding. This leaves me with one bottle. How long will it last? Who knows?

Lovely girlfriend and I went to said restaurant again the other day. We had the nata tart, and a glass of port. I did not buy another crate.

Taberna do Mercado
Old Spitalfields Market,
107b Commercial Street
London E1 6BG