The Lencastre family is of royal Portuguese lineage – descended from Antonio Pinot Garces Mandureira, who was named the First Barão da Varzea do Douro by Portugal’s Queen Maria II on July 16, 1846. The family’s royal residence is Vila Nova, near the town of Penafiel and close to the eastern border in Portugal’s Vinho Verde wine region – about a 30-minute drive east from Oporto.

Milagros Figuero has long been the heart of her family. As a young woman in the 1960s, she was at her husband’s side helping to run the family farm on a plateau along Spain’s Duero River in the now-famous Ribera del Duero region, where the main crop is the Tempranillo grape.   

One of the most mineral-rich areas in the United States is California’s Sierra Foothills. It’s no wonder that it was ground zero for the fabled California Gold Rush of the mid-1800s. 

Spring officially begins on March 20. Depending on how brutal the winter has been, here in St. Louis there may be few signs of the season of renewal aside from the start of major league baseball. 

But, in Rioja, one of the best-known and most highly regarded wine regions in Spain, spring is quite evident in nature as the warmer climate sparks leaves peeking out from juniper bushes, almond and olive trees, and the first buds appearing on the grapevines that cover much of the valleys and hillsides in the northern part of the country.

When people talk about the good life, they’re often envisioning sitting on a terrace with a glass of wine in one hand, a plate of fresh bread and cheeses nearby, looking out over a bucolic scene with the sun starting to set. It’s a beautiful image, one that can be doubly appreciated by us right now as we slog through another St. Louis winter of freezing temperatures and, more than likely, a few feet of snow.

Italy is probably the longest peninsula in the world and certain the only one shaped like a boot. The heel of the boot forms another much smaller and thinner peninsula of its own called the Salento. It is the southernmost part of Puglia, bordered by the Ionian Sea to the east and the Adriatic Sea to the west.