Today marks the 48th edition of Wine Blog Wednesday, an event that Lenn probably didn’t even realize would last so long, or have so much success, upon its inception. Four years later, this internet meme has become a staple of any wine blogger’s monthly posting schedule. It is also an event which has exposed wine bloggers to a variety wines and styles that they either may not have tried before or thought to explore. So for the 4 year anniversary, it is only appropriate that Lenn has asked us to head back to our roots and  look at what brand really made us first fall in love with wine, or as they say, “gave you that ‘aha’ moment” where you finally understood the joy that wine is.

For Gabriella and I, this is a bit hard for us to do. I remember my ‘aha’ wine being a St.Francis Zinfandel that I splurged on with my friend Elly. We read in a paper that it scored “huge points”, and not knowing what points were, we took it at face value to mean that the wine was the creme de la creme. And as the bottle was only a small stretch in our combined budgets, we purchased it, realizing then and there that wine was worth splurging on from time to time.

That said the wine that was my go to wine during college, the one I brought to parties to seem more sophisticated than the people who had their own 24pack of light beer, was Vendage Merlot. A 1.5L was around $8 at the time, thinking it was so fine and refined! Revisiting this wine approximately four years ago, I found that the …

Today, I have a treat for myself. I need a treat. It’s been one of those weeks that leaves you wondering why you even bother going to bed, since you’ll be up at back at work the minute you wake up again. Recently, my days have started to feel drawn out and full of ups and downs, and to be honest, I really didn’t want to participate in this month’s Wine Blog Wednesday even though the theme, Old World Reisling, is something I truly adore. I just don’t have the energy, but then I decided to change my attitude to become a little more relaxed and calm.

The reason I love Old World Reisling is for one simple reason, or rather one particular man, Terry Theise. If you’re not familiar with his name, please stop reading and go to his page at Skurnik Wines. Download all of his wine catalogs and start reading veraciously. I can wait. In fact, if you don’t make it back here, I excuse you, because these catalogs are too good to be true.

To be honest, I’m not much of a writer, nor am I much of a reader. And because I love them both, we call this a conundrum. I write here, and I read there, and I sometimes find myself feeling a little empty. Maybe it’s the content, the subjects or both. I’m not really sure, but when I went looking for information on one of my Reislings today, I found Terry.

Mind you, if it weren’t for this man, I wouldn’t be appreciating these bottles of wine right now. It would be equivalent to using the 100 point …

At this moment, Gabriella and I are traveling in Oporto, Portugal. Some may be jealous, muttering under their breath that we have a “rough life”, as we bound from one location to the next; but truth be told, it’s harder work than you think. Just to give context, we just returned from seven days touring La Rioja last week, only to work through our three day break before we head out to Oporto tomorrow. We’ll be there for five days, arriving back this Sunday night before we get up bright and early Monday morning and head to Alimentaria (a food and wine fair) for another four days. So basically, we’re saying that we will have spent three straight weeks on our feet, tasting wine, analyzing wine and talking about wine. In truth, we love it, but in reality, relaxing with a bottle of wine can seem exhausting to us at times. So when Joel stated that the theme of WBW #43 would be Comfort Wines and to “choose a wine, any wine, that you love to unwind to and tell us about not only the wine but what makes the experience special and relaxing for you!”, it took me some time to think of what I wanted to write.

In the end, I decided not to pick a wine, or even two wines, but to suggest that the greatest comfort wines I hold dear to my heart are the ones that are simple, straightforward and don’t demand a lot of my palate or mind. I love wines that are just good. This may seem too obvious, but let me explain. I don’t know how many times I’ve tasted wines with a …

Please bear with us as we’re making a little detour from Spanish and Portuguese wine to bring you another Wine Blog Wednesday entry. Spittoon is hosting WBW #42 with the eccentric caveat that all entries must describe an Italian red wine in exactly, seven words. Now although Italy is not Rioja (our featured region of the month), nor is it located in Iberia, there are several similarities to justify our entry: it’s been said that Rioja’s etymology stems from the color red in Spanish, Rioja is famous for their red wines, both Italy and Iberia begin with an ‘I’, and both countries are famous for their cured hams! Need I say more?!

Now keep in mind, finding foreign wines (wines sourced outside of Spain) even from our closest neighbors is like finding a needle in a haystack. For whatever reason, Spain likes to keep itself surrounded by its own grape juice, principally those from Rioja. Therefore, to participate in this month’s WBW our choices were to either make the two hour roundtrip hike into Barcelona, or walk two blocks up the street to our local supermarket, praying we’d find something red from Italy. Thankfully we did find two lambruscos; although we’re completely clueless as to why they stocked two cheap Italian wines among the shelves dedicated solely to Spanish wine. Weighing our two choices, we settled upon the more expensive CIV&CIV Lambrusco Grasparossa di Castelvetro for a whopping 1.85 Euro. You don’t even have to like the wine for this price. For those of you not familiar with Lambrusco, it is named after both a grape and a wine originating from the four zones in Emilia-Romagna and one in Lombardy, especially around the central provinces of Modena, Parma, …

The four wines we lined up on our dining room table were paired with a traditional Portuguese dish called, Portuguese Porco Alentejana. The result was, as always, delicious. I loved how the tender bits of pork and crunchy cubed potatoes married perfectly with the smoky paprika broth. I especially liked the sprig of parsley adorning the summit of my food. I have no idea what magical green power parsley has, but as it made its debut on my plate, the dish tasted even better. (Ryan’s note: I rarely like the parsley on a dish, but in this one, you NEED it. It really helps to add a contrast to the rich flavors.)

Technically, because this pork recipe originates from the Alentejo, we assumed that either of the Casa de Santar reds would pair well, as the Alentejo is known for their reds; however, to our surprise all three wines paired beautifully. I’d like to say all four, but the Casa de Santar Reserva 2006 was corked. So, we were left with one white, the Casa de Santar 2006 and two reds, the Casa de Santar 2004 and the Casa de Santar Reserva 2004. (Ryan’s Note: I would naturally gravitate to a white with this dish with high acidty, but personally found the lower priced red worked incredible well also. I would shoot for a wine with good acidity though, giving the food a bright contrast)

We had first tried the Casa de Santar 2006 at Sacramento one evening in Lisbon. Neither of us remembered we had tasted this previously, but having reread my tasting notes, it appears I walked away feeling as if the wine lacked on the palate. When tasting the wine a second time, I liked it much …