Today I co-posted with David who writes the food blog entitled Cocoa & Lavender. See his blog for one of the recipes mentioned in this post! We always harbor the hope that we will discover a good wine at a really reasonable (read: cheap) price. Who doesn’t? We’ve had some real duds in this quest—wines that wouldn’t even qualify as marinades and went straight down the kitchen sink—and we’ve made some terrific discoveries. The wines from Gascony and its neighboring appellations definitely fall into the latter category. Gascony, to be clear, is not in Provence, the familiar stomping ground of The Modern Trobadors. It lies about 300 miles (about 500 kilometers) away in what is called the Sud-Ouest (Southwest) wine region, of France. Sud-Ouest Wine Region. Taken, with permission, from www.winesofsouthwestfrance.com That’s a wine region? Yup. You know its neighbors, Bordeaux and Languedoc, but somehow this wine region of 30 or so appellations across 124,000 acres (50,000 hectares) of vines in some of the country’s lushest terroir has not yet established a regional identity outside of France. Southwest is fourth largest region in terms of volume, but very little of it is seen in the U.S. (although I [...]