Wine: Vina Borgia

I want to tell you about the most wonderful wine Jeff and I drank last night.

I should preface this wine recommendation by saying I know very little about wine. "I don't know much about wine, but I know what I like," you'll hear most people say when the subject of wine comes up. I am actually one step below this. I sometimes don't even know what I like. A connoisseur friend of mine will open an expensive, sought-after bottle of wine, and everyone in the room will be going into ecstasies of rhapsody about its mellow flavors of orange blossom and brown butter when what I'm tasting seems to be mouse-poop soaked in vinegar and grain alcohol. "Something's wrong with me," I think. "I should really like this. I guess it's okay. I like it. I do, because I'm a sophisticated person, like these people, with sophisticated tastes. I really am. Gulp."

If I'm coming to your house for dinner, please don't break out the good stuff on my account. Just start me off with a couple strong cocktails and then fill my glass with that stuff that comes trickling from a spout out of a box. I'll drink that and be perfectly happy while the grown-ups are sniffing corks and swirling hooch around in their mouths to release the delicate aromas of velvet, peach stone, and cigar box.

Anyway, having said that, I'd like to recommend a great wine to you. It's called Vina Borgia: Campo de Borja, 2004. It is from the wonderful, beautiful, wine-loving, liberal, sunny country of Spain.

We found it at Green's liquor store on Buford Highway here in Atlanta. The bottle is totally nice and the label is pretty, too, so I bet the company is totally legal and legit and you could find it a lot of places.

It was only $7.99 and it came in a giant bottle, twice the size of those puny little micro-sippers wine connoisseurs are so fond of. (Don't they know ANYTHING? Jeesh). We opened it on Sunday night and then stored it in the fridge corking it with one of those wine stoppers where you can suck all the air out of the bottle with a little manual pump. I actually thought it tasted better the second night.

It has a delicate aroma, subtle yet bold, with the slowly developing flavors of, er, velvet, earth and, um, deer? Just kidding. It just tastes yummy. The kind of yum that warms your belly and brings a blush to your cheeks, as if you've had a sip of the Spanish sun on a cold winter's night. You may not believe me after I fessed up about how little I know about wine, but trust me on this one. Get some, you'll love it.