Yay! It's time once again to indulge (and imbibe) in Lenn's creation (a take-off of Alberto's luscious IMBB events), the still relatively newWorld Wide Wine Blogging Wednesday, or WWWBW. This month's vintage hosted by none other than Alder of Vinography: a wine blog.

The theme: Spanish Reds . For this tasting, I picked a familiar wine (to myself at least), that I choose the very first time I tried it based only on the label. Not what was written on the label as some people are likely to do...no, I'm not that easy. It was what was drawn on the label that attracted me a few years ago to this very wine. I mean, come on, look at it. Doesn't it just look like happiness and peacefullness incarnate? I could just imagine myself on that chair, sipping the wine, staring out at the gorgeous blue and pink horizon. It was almost as good as travelling to Spain to drink the wine. Well...okay, as good as trekking up to the cottage to drink it. Once I saw this bottle, sitting on the LCBO shelf under the SPAIN sign I knew it was meant to be: I'd had it before so it was familiar...it was red and Spanish, therefore fitting the requirements of the WWWBW (unlike last time), and it was within my budget - $9.00 CAD.

Appearance:
A beautiful, deep burgandy. The colour of jewels and riches, to be honest. Perhaps the colour of a king's robe or a queen's rubies. But I wax poetic. It was completely opaque as a good red wine should be - no cloudiness and no sediment.

Aroma:
I stuck my nose deep into the wide bowl of the glass and breathed. Pepper (I think I smell pepper in everything these days). Freshly cracked black pepper -- so much so I sneezed upon removing my nose from the glass (just in time!). Then at the back of my throat as the scent travelled down my pharynx to my throat I caught the distinct smell/taste of richness...something I can't describe exactly. Burnt wood -- but not in a bad way, if you know what I mean.

Taste:
My tongue detected the pepper, although it tasted more like those delicious canned, poblano chilis that taste like a cross between peppers and something dark and sticky, like molasses, but not like molasses. Like burnt sugar! Yep. Burnt sugar...yum. Like caramel and pepper mixed together. as my nose had hinted at. Melon as well, which I had been expecting. The wine was somewhat bland, but really nice and soft going down. It had little tendency to linger but begged to be drank nonetheless.

I remembered then why I enjoyed the wine so much the first time I bought it; it was a great summer red. Hardly bold and bossy like many reds, and very little tannins (which I tend to react to with all my histamines getting up in arms) or aftertaste which also usually come with red wines. Mellow and tasty but hardly something you wouldn't want to drink on a warm summer's evening.

I drank this light but memorable wine with...honestly? A Harvey's hamburger and fries. I was starving on my way home from work and thought "why not" and tripped into Harvey's. It held its own next to the sirloin burger and spicy mayo and worked well with all the black pepper I had coated the fries in. I also cooked my most recent IMBB (poached tenderloin) in it and it was fantastic. In the poaching liquid it picked up the flavour of the black peppercorns and garlic as though they were made for each other.

All in all a delicious, light red wine, nice for sipping with red meats or a really robust fish like salmon.