We were recently “tagged” by Enobytes in an internet meme circling the web that requires participants to list six things that most people don’t know about them, and then in turn, “tag” six more people (in our case, wine bloggers) to continue the meme. For those of you who don’t know what a meme is, think of it as chain mail without the added guilt. Invitations to participate on a theme are send to X number of people. If those people want to be a part of the meme, they will continue the “chain mail”; if not, fortunately, life moves on without condemning the the invitee to blogger hell.

But what don’t you know about us? What have we not divulged to you over the past 4 years writing on this site?

1. How did Ryan and Gabriella meet?

We met in the third week of March in 2001. At the time, I was working in a sushi bar, when a customer and friend, wheelchair bound for years, asked for my Reiki services at his home. Yes, your residency Iberian wine expert is also a Reiki Master, an alternative healing practice which is actually quite popular here in Spain. Under the pretense that my services would be paid with a bbq at his house after the session, I happily agreed to the terms and arrived a week later with an empty stomach. What I didn’t know was that the food, my payment mind you, was not being cooked by the person receiving the services, but by someone else. Halfway through the session, Ryan walked through the door with a briefcase filled …

Since day one, I’ve wanted a map of the wine regions of Spain and Portugal. Seems like a simple request, and if I couldn’t have one of Iberia, at least you would think that there would be one of Spain and another of Portugal. You would think. You would also be wrong, sort of. Announcement

Interestingly, there are no good maps of the peninsula we call Iberia, or at least as it relates to wine. Wines of Spain, the bureaucratic agency in charge of promoting Spanish wine, does have an outdated map, but you can’t get a copy of it. I had a prominent tour guide friend of mine once ask to buy a few copies to give to her clients, all of which were on wine tours, and she was told it was not possible. Hence, I’m not sure why they made it. We had to steal a few copies from a regional government’s office, and while we use them occasionally, in truth, they are worthless.

That said, Portugal is no better, and I have yet to find a map that accurately sums up the many nuances in a very confusing set of regional wine laws. And considering that there is little consensus among differing governmental maps, it is clear that one concise and accurate map was desperately in need to be created.

Enter the DeLong wine company, creator of such treasures as the Wine Varietal Table. Having encountered way too many inaccurate regional wine maps around the world, Steve decided to fix the problem by making his own map. Smart guy! The best part for us is that …

Not a great deal has been written on what is admittedly the relatively new area of pairing international wines with Chinese cuisine. Or should that be Chinese cuisines? This vast country, now in the grips of the Olympics at last, boasts an incredible array of provincial and regional dishes, embracing just about every cooking technique under the sun – many of which, of course, were either ‘invented’ or developed in China itself.

So, if you want to explore Chinese cooking and try your hand at matching your favorite wines with different dishes, how can you get started? And what dishes might partner well with Iberian wines, an equally diverse world of flavors and textures?

China’s rich culinary heritage is hugely complex. But, put simply, four overall groups dominate: Lu (Shandong), Yue (Cantonese), Chuan (Sichuan) and Huaiyang (Jiangsu). What wines match with these groups? Given the innate diversity of these cuisines, Chinese gourmets will find this question bizarre: a bit like saying, ‘What wines can pair with French, Spanish, Norwegian or Austrian food’? The answers can seem endless, but we have to start somewhere.

Below are some specific examples from each school of cooking matched with one or more Spanish or Portuguese wines. There are certainly enough wine-styles and types of wine-making in the Iberian Peninsula to offer some great matches with Chinese dishes from different traditions.

And, if some of these cuisines are not all that available outside China, the great Cantonese Diaspora has at least meant that what passes for Chinese …