Today we spent a good part of the afternoon at one of our favorite places in San Antonio with Partick and Liz.  It’s a little pizza place off 410 and Blanco Road called Dough.  The feature at Dough is an 850 degree pizza oven that cooks pizzas in about 2 minutes or less.  Their food is delicious  and the service from from our waiter, Richie, was personable, attentive and very helpful.  We’ve been to Dough on a number of occasions, and if the wait time for a table is any indication of the popularity of a place, then this is a POPULAR place.  On a Saturday afternoon, well after the lunch crowd should have diminished, our wait was 45 minutes!  Ordinarily, a 45-minute wait would equate to a trip back to the Jeep and a new option under consideration, but time was on our side today, and we dutifully put our names on the list and grabbed a wine list for perusing.  Another thing that makes Dough so special is their wine list.  If you like Italian wines – this is the place!  Whites, Reds, Roses and Sparkling Wines grace their menu and with Richie’s help we selected this evening’s selection.

The 2011 Bianco della Campania IGT is blended from three distinctly different grapes, 33% Fiano, 33% Falanghina, 33% Greco.  This is a white wine that begs to be shared outside on a beautiful afternoon with good friends, and lo and behold, we did just that!  The nose of this little beauty was vanilla–yep, vanilla with a touch of citrus.  The taste was a very citrus flavor but it leaned more towards a lemon finish than anything else.  It was acidic but not so overwhelming that you couldn’t enjoy it. . .which we did.  We learned that the Fiano, Greco and Falanghina grapes are selected from vineyards in the province of Avellino, in the region of Campania in southern Italy, and while the winemaker suggests pasta or fish with this wine, we enjoyed an Antipasti appetizer that included prosciutto, salami, olives, mushrooms, two types of cheeses and flat bread.  It was a perfect combination of food and wine for a Saturday afternoon.  The wine retails for about $15 a bottle, but we suspect that you can find it for under this amount at your favorite wine shoppe!  Regardless, if you enjoy a crisp Italian white wine with a clean finish, the you should try this wine.  We’ll start looking for it now that we’ve enjoyed it.

Following the Antipasti, we enjoyed a special pizza from Dough with (in addition to hand made crust) prosciutto ham, carmelized onions, fresh rosemary and other delicious ingredients.  A pizza this good called for a red wine, but we’ll save that for another post – in fact we visited a couple more places today that we want to share with you – check back tomorrow.  As you wrap-up your Saturday and look ahead to Sunday, we hope you’ve had the opportunity to sit back and enjoy a glass of wine.  It’s one of the things that makes a weekend relaxing and spending time with friends even better.  Until tomorrow, Cheers!

Please remember to enjoy responsibly and recycle whenever possible!