Wine Number 29 or "The Portuguese Get Me Back in the Race"

What race? Why... the race to complete the quest, my boy!

2005 Xairel Ribatejano:

Portugal, famous for their Port, brings us things crazily inexpensive red wine from the Ribatejo region in central Portugal. And I mean crazily inexpensive. Anyone drinking Yellowtail... Sutter Home... Dancing Penguin or whateverthefrick for the sole reason that it's inexpensive and drinkable, should take a serious look at this wine and others from Portugal. On a tip from Vaynerchuk about Portugal's value I discovered the Portuguese section of my local Bottle King.

The cheapos, running anywhere from $3 to a staggering $6... quickly filled my arms. The concensus? These wines won't wow you, nor will they disgust you. They are serviceable and noticeably not up to the par of your more expensive and higher quality wines. But seriously... if you're drinking less expensive and lower quality wines already... what's to lose? Seriously... the price of a cup of Starbucks and you've got yourself an entire bottle of wine. Give it a go.

We could probably take care of this quest with just a couple bottles of Port... but we got going again with this bottle, featuring two grapes not on my Wine Century Club sheet and hopefully they are not clones of another grape, which I did cursory research and found not to be the case. The Castelao, Trincadeira, and Preto Martinho grapes were featured in this wine. Supposedly I haven't featured a Portuguese wine yet... so check off lucky number 13.

Coming very soon... my first venture into Pinotage.

Wine Count: 29; Grape Count 29; Country Count: 13.