Apparently it is National White Wine Day so clearly a small celebration is in order. My small celebration entails enjoying a white wine from my recently purchased stash from Astor wines in New York. There will be more about Astor wines’ amazing selection and that stash later…. For now let’s focus on this white wine.

Since I have terrible melancholy from the fact that I can’t travel this year and the thought of not traveling until God knows when next year, I had to go to a wine from my favorite country, Portugal. Vinho Verde was on my travel list for this year. Insert sad face here.

All I want right now is to be wandering some Portuguese village street, and stopping for lunch and a glass of Vinho Verde. It’s my summer in Portugal lunch wine. No lunch is complete without it.

I fondly remember being in Lagos a few years ago, stopping in a place called Beats and Burritos for a quick bite. It was a tiny, laid back place, where you ordered at the counter from a menu full of burrito options (duh). Of course they had wine for like $2. It was 95 degrees that day and the Vinho Verde was perfect. It was thirst quenching and complimented my vegetarian burrito nicely.

Those days are temporarily over so I will have to enjoy this in my Philadelphia-suburb apartment sans burrito. Boo.

On the nose I get some lime zest and pineapple and some minerality. There is also this really nice light floral note – like when you catch a whiff of flowers in a summer breeze. It’s faint but it’s there.

Then you taste it: Lime, party of one. Like a tart margarita. Grapefruit joins the party as well. Like a nice, ripe ruby red grapefruit. Then even a little bit of orange. Its a citrus party. But a ripe citrus party. This wine is both fresh and dense with citrus – does that make any sense? It does to me. It has good acidity but it isn’t terribly high in acid.

I could easily drink this whole bottle over the course of a summer afternoon. And by “afternoon” I mean in like a full hour.

And now you’ll discover that I buried the lead: this wine cost $9.96. That’s nine dollars and ninety six cents. It’s under ten dollars.

God, I miss Portugal…