Starting over with a pizza

It has been a few days since my last post, and for that I apologize: a routine hernia surgery put me down for a few days, but more importantly, I was unable to drink of the vine and use the wonderful painpills the whitecoats prescribed me.
...that is until tonight. I actually worked for a few hours today and I have a couple of wine events scheduled in the next ten days, so I thought I might climb back into the saddle and have a glass (and skip the hydrocodone!) Now, I don't know about you, but when I have a real hankering for an easy glass of wine I think about pizza. After all, I have been making pizza for over 20 years and mediterranean wines pair so well with the ever versatile mediterranean meal we Americans have claimed as our own. On a regular evening I would have gone down into my basement and pulled a bottle of Sangre de Toro, or Renatto Ratti Dolcetto d'Alba, or any old Chianti to pair with a pizza, but since I am writing this blog and have recently added so many new labels to the store, well, I thought it my Merchant's Duty to select one of the new bottles and share. A good pizza wine, by my definition, is a red wine, dry perhaps, acidic enough to cut through the sauce, just fruity enough to bring out the tomato flavor, and a little spicy to give my meat toppings a "zing".
Oh, and the wine should be fairly inexpensive: cut off the price at 10 bucks, you're eating pizza folks, save the better juice for the better food!
Tonight I went Portuguese and drank a light, dry vinho tinto called Castello do Sulco Reseve Red. This blended red is part Tinto Nacional and Tinto Roriz, like most Portuguese vinho tinto's, but it also was 30% Syrah and that, along with 3 months aging in wood, gave it some spice and a nice finish. vinho tinto is always so light with bright fruit, maybe a little too tart, but PERFECT with a pepperoni hamburg pizza. The spicy fruit surrounded the pepperoni and made it last a lot longer in my mouth. And all that for $9.00. You'll find that Portuguese wines are very affordable and provide light easy drinking with surprising finishes.
So next time you think pizza, forget the beer, or the soda, and pick up an affordable red table wine and let your taste buds feel the pizza explode in flavor