Newsletter
April, 2001
- Red Hot Italian Mamas
- The World Through Rose Tinted Glasses
- Highlights of Recent Tastings
- Food & Wine Advisory
- New Arrivals
- Wines of the Month
- Archives
Red Hot Italian Mamas
Ah southern Italy, land of the “mezzogiorno.” Why not, it gets hot there? The people are hot and some of the hottest wines of the land are coming from here. And they are hot values too, especially compared to those of northern Italy (like Barolo and Barbaresco). Actually, some of the northern winemakers have been consulting with the Italian southerners to turn things around. Amazing things have resulted. Check these out.
1998 Nero d’Avola, Forti Terre di Sicilia, $17.99—Of the excess of unknown grapes flourishing in Sicily, Nero d’Avola is thought the best and is compared to Syrah. I don’t quite get the comparison, but this is fantastic.
1999 A Mano Primitivo, Regularly $10.99/Sale $9.99—Some think Primitivo to be the progenitor of Zinfandel. And this tastes like a rustic, Italian kind of Zin.
1996 Salice Salento Riserva, Cantele, $8.49—These guys keep their wines longer than most before release. Thus, they are velvety and complex items.
1997 Salice Salentino Riserva, Taurino, $8.99—This maker, Cosimo, “Mimo,” Taurino, might take credit for starting the southern wine rush for Americans. His prices have risen, but his wines are very, very good. And worth 20,000 lire the bottle.
The World Through Rose Tinted Glasses
They say you have to be totally secure in your sexuality and social standing to drink rose. Though we might not meet those qualifications, we love drinking rose. Spring, summer and fall we drink it on the deck, in the mountains and in the parking lot of Mile High Stadium (it will always be that to us) before the Sunday afternoon Bronco battle. The wines seem to make the world look more livable. Normally we drink the dry roses from southern France and northern Spain. We also drink a couple from California that are made dry. Here are some that we have. The world is starting to look better already.
1999 Cotes du Rhone Rose, Guigal, $11.99—Big, complex flavors. Perhaps the best generic Cotes du Rhone rose we’ve drunk.
2000 Domaine de Fontsainte, $11.99—Zingy, fresh, puppy love. But legal.
1999 Syrah Rose, Vin de Pays des Cotes Thau, Hugues de Beauvignac, $8.99— Rich, with lots of body and flavor. Crazy stuff from the Herault department.
1999 Bandol Rose, Domaine Tempier, $22.49—The classic rose. Complex, a bit difficult, but great.
1999 Chinon Rose, Ch. Joguet, $15.99—From the Loire by Cabernet Franc. A store favorite.
1999 Bonny Doon, Vin Gris de Cigare, $8.99—This and Heitz’s Grignolino rose are our two “fave” California roses. There are some other odd-ball ones that are good too. But we forgot what they are.
Bugey-Cerdon, La Cueille, Patrick Bottex, Regularly $19.99/Sale $16.99—This is the “damned-est” wine out there. We’ve featured it before and it flew out. In short, it’s a sweet sparkling rose that will send you to the moon. Perfect spring delight.
Highlights of Recent Tastings
By Bob Elliott
1998 Oregon Pinot Noir Tasting For those of you who missed the Pinot Noir tasting it’s hard for us not to say Nah, Nah, Nah Nah, Nah. However, we will refrain from rubbing it in. I think this was one of our most successful tastings. Not only did the wines show well but there were various styles of winemaking evident in the sampling of ’98 Pinot Noirs. We had the opportunity to taste some excellent, highly allocated, wines including Domaine Serene, Evanstad Reserve; Evesham Wood; and St. Innocent, Seven Springs Vineyard.
The most popular wine, St. Innocent, sold out right after the tasting. Again, we won’t rub it in, but it was incredible and talk about complex! The bad news is that the 1998s are sold out; the good news is that 1999 promises to be just as good, if not better. So… if you’re interested in the 1999 St. Innocent, call us. We are keeping a list of people to contact when it arrives.
Some of the other highlights were:
1998 Panther Creek, Shea Vineyard, $43.99—A bit closed now this wine shows promise for the future with deep layers of fruit and a touch of oak.
1998 Rex Hill, Willamette Valley, $24.99—Elegant and subdued in a lighter style with good acidity.
1998 Domaine Drouhin, $37.99—Rich red raspberry and bright cherry flavors flavors with a firm texture.
1998 Flynn Reserve, $59.99—Very elegant and full bodied with the capability to age.
1998 Montinore, Pierce's Elbow $26.99—A perfumed nose with black cherry fruit, a nice roundness and smooth tannins. More burgundian in style due to the influence of their French winemaker, Jacques Tardy. Drinking beautifully now!
FOOD & WINE ADVISORY
Eating and Drinking Wine in Rome’s “Enoteche”
Rome—The wildly expensive restaurants are for the legions of tourists. But, where do Romans prefer to do their quotidian eating and wine drinking? In the “enoteche.” “Enoteche,” plural of “enoteca,” is, in this town, a somewhat confusing term. This because there has been an evolutionary pattern going on for a couple of decades. First there were the “vini e olii” places that served neighborhoods by providing the necessary sustenance of life, wine and olive oil. Some of the proprietors of these shops would offer pasta, salami and other delectables to the people who delivered the wine and oil. After a time, an increasing number of these shops would offer this simple food to customers and “ecco” the Roman wine bar was born.
Simple enough, but today it’s all more complex. You have people creating dishes and importing wines from all over Italy. There is this fervor, near craziness. Just try getting in one of these places on Friday or Saturday night. Show up early or forget it.
Take Semidivino. It’s one of the most esoteric and, yes, divine of Rome’s wine bars. There, Farshid Nourai, presides over his esoteric and divine wine list. Pick any wine he has, from Italy's most northern Alto Adige down to the island of Pantellaria, just east of Tunisia, and Nourai has a story. “Well you must know everything about a wine to really appreciate it,” he shrugged. It also helps to sell a wine, which he does quite briskly in his enlightened operation.
He also sells food. In the fashion of the majority these are not lavish dinners, but salads, soups and cheeses. As he explains it, “We are not a restaurant, we are a wine bar. The food is here to complement and enhance the pleasure of drinking wine.”
Though Rome doesn’t stand in one of Italy’s blue ribbon wine zones such as Tuscany (Chianti and Brunello) or Piedmont (Barolo and Barbaresco), it doesn’t mean that Romans don’t appreciate good wine. Romans very much appreciate a good bottle of wine and these “enoteche” offer a wider range of selections than similar establishments situated in the blue ribbon wine zones. As the capital of Italy, is seems that Rome pays more attention to the whole of the country than to just its own local vineyards.
Rome’s wine bars take various shapes, but to simplify matters I noted two general categories. There are the ones where the operators actually go into the field and bring back gems that are new or have lived in relative obscurity. And there are wine bars that simply purchase wines that have been made fashionable by popular food and wine media, not all of which are Italian. “These guys just buy anything that has the top rating in a magazine. They don’t really know anything about the wine or seemingly care,” Nourai shuddered. Certainly the most interesting and enlightening for the visitor, particularly the foreign visitor, are the former wine bars.
Beside Semidivino, I found a handful of “enoteche" where the wine lists revealed the owners willingness to wander from the magazine kiosks and gather some of Italy’s lesser known gems on their own. These will shortly be detailed. But first it must be stressed that just because a wine receives a top rating in a magazine it doesn’t mean it’s automatically bad. Actually, most are good.
It just seems to me that it's almost plagiarism to compose a wine list exclusively of these wines. If not so extreme, it's at least extremely uncreative.
On a sidestreet in Rome's old Jewish quarter, sits one of the finest and friendliest wine bars in the city, LA BOTTEGA DEL VINO (9 Via Santa Maria del Pianto, open for lunch, Tuesday through Saturday). The creation of Anacleto Bleve 31 years ago, "La Bottega" is a wine shop with high shelves packed with bottles. Tables are scattered about and lunch is served everyday, but for Sunday. And busy lunches these are. I've never seen it without every table being taken at some point over a two hour lunch. For an "enoteca" it's kind of unique how you eat here--you select your dishes from a glass encased counter with about 20 platters of various delectables. Your selections will be delivered to your table. The options are fairly wide. There are things like cherry peppers stuffed with anchovies and capers, potatoes mashed with cheese and truffles and tasty "involtini," rolled, stuffed slices of ham or salmon that are stuffed with cheeses and pastes like celery root. I particularly like the six cheese plate that comes with a variety of soft, hard, dry and blue cheese. They put a dollop of honey on the Gorgonzola and two dabs of marmalade to awaken the dry cheeses. This the perfect thing to finish the last glass or two of the bottle of Barolo and Amarone you might have ordered.
There are over 1,500 wines for sale and the prices are reasonable. I drank a bottle of 1996 Clerico Barolo, Ciabot Mentin Ginestra, that was the finest wine of the visit and cost only $70.
A long time favored enoteca for me and Romans (come early on Friday and Saturday night) is 313 CAVOUR (313 Cavour, lunch and dinner Monday through Saturday). It has a strategic location on Via Cavour, not far from the Forum and the Coliseum. But the attraction is the wine list and the food that seems to have improved over the years.
Several hundred wines (I didn't make an exact count) are offered by the bottle. A couple dozen wines can be tasted by the glass. The list is deep and imaginative, and the prices are admirable. This means they are lower than what you would pay in an enlightened wine store in the United States.
I like to get there right at the start before the crowds come and set up in the back room. I pick a glass of white wine off the chalk board by the bar at the entrance and peruse the wine book, searching for some big red. And, boy, they have them by the hundreds. They have the great '96 Barolos and Barbarescos and the good '97 Tuscan wines, and more and more. With these, one of the half dozen salads starts things off. Oh they have carpaccio and salami platters too. But I like a salad to begin and then one of the cheese platters to finish. There is one of primarily Piedmontese cheeses that is divine. With that it is hard to convince me to leave.
The only complaint is the wooden benches you must sit upon. It's hard to get comfortable. Otherwise 313 Cavour would be the best "enoteca" in Rome.
CUL DU SAC's (Piazza di Pasquino, 73, open for lunch Tuesday through Sunday and everyday for dinner) 500 or so wines are scattered over diners heads on rugged scaffolds. It's most entertaining to watch the staff search for particular bottles and snatch them away with long pincers. These people seem to be a cynical, yet fun-loving bunch who smoke cigarettes and drink wine while they work. The smoking and drinking takes place at mid-restaurant where the waiters and waitresses congregate. So you can avoid their smoke by sitting at either end, preferably by the door (the customers like to smoke too).
The establishment prides itself on homemade pates and they are something to be proud of. On my last visit I opted for a salad and a pheasant pate. They have an extremely sensitive "by the glass" list of thirty options that allowed for a variety of superb wines to be tasted. I began with a glass of Ca del Bosco Franciacorta spumante which is for me among three or four best Italian sparklers. With the pate I had a Pieropan Reciotto which was the paragon of sugar/acid balance. It was, however, a bit delicate for the pate. Perhaps a richer Anselmi Reciotto would have been more appropriate. I couldn't resist trying a glass of the 1993, Barolo, Annuziata from Bovio. A little plate of four cheeses helped it taste sublime. Before heading out to view the fountains on the nearby Piazza Novana, I embraced a glass of Moscato rose from Abbbazia Annuziata before going out the door. It was rather dark red and not too sweet. Perfect for hitting the road.
Perhaps the best, or at least the most sophisticated, food I've eaten in a "enoteca" has been at IL SIMPOSIO (Piazza Cavour 16, open for lunch and dinner Monday through Saturday). When you see the pretty dining room with banquettes in front of tables that actually have damask tablecloths you can guess that this is really more restaurant than winebar. The elevated grape vines let you know they have good wine.
It should have good wine because it is the progeny of one of Rome and Italy's best wine stores, Constantini. Il Simposio's twenty wines by the glass are listed on a chalkboard above the entryway bar. And I'd estimate there are five hundred wines by the bottle. It's all very intelligent. The only complaint is that you must keep walking out to the bar to see the list of wines by the glass.
I've eaten here twice. The dishes I remember were an artichoke puree with prawns, a sheep cheese salad, "bacala" mashed potatoes. The most interesting wine match was "Tortino caldo di cioccaloto salsa di pepe e semifreddo di torrone" (versions of what I've seen called in America, "Chocolate oblivion.") with a wine called "Ala" from the Duca de Salaparuta in Sicily. It's a wine flavored with cherries. It's not too sweet and is just crazy with "Chocolate oblivion."
For sincerity and simplicity, it is hard to beat IL GOCCETTO (Via Bianchi Vecchi, lunch Monday through Friday, dinner Monday through Saturday). Here you drink out of Riedel crystals in a dark, small space not much more comfortable than a bear's den. But, oh when the people come and the wine is pouring what a lively den it is.
Alone, I sat at the tiny bar with three or four stools. It was a strategic place next to the display cooler stuffed with cheeses, sausages and other temptations. You don't really eat a whole meal here, but snack. But you snack good. The cheese selection had the Italian classics (Parmigiano, Pecorino, Gorgonzola, Taledgio and many more) and it had superb French cheese (St. Marcellin, Epoisse, Pont L'Eveque, Crottin de Chavignol, Laguiole and more). And they were all in perfect condition, "a point." And then there were the "salami," all from the Macelleria Falorni in Greve, Tuscany.
The wines? About 15 are poured by the glass. About 650 can be ordered by the bottle. During my one short visit (I was heading for Simposio for lunch), I tasted a glass of 1999 Sauvignon Blanc from Schwanberg in the Alto Adige that was "interesting," a touch sweetish and a mammoth, impressive 1997 Barbaresco from Albino Rocca's Bric Ronchi site.
Overall, an impressive place that doesn't seem to swim totally with current. Owner, Sergio Ceccarelli, is finding some good stuff on his own.
Getting back to the best, SEMIDIVINO ( Via Alesandria, 230, lunch and dinner Monday through Saturday). So why is this the best? Simply knowledge and passion. Farshid Nourai is an accredited sommelier which is, of course, not an absolute guarantee of knowledge. But he does have knowledge and more important he has passion.
Currently, Nourai is studying and assaying the wines from Marche, Umbria, Sicily and the Bolgheri region of Tuscany. "These are four places where some interesting things are going on in Italy today," he beamed.
To prove his point, he went to his shelves and picked out a cluster of bottles to taste. There was a suave Marche Rosso made from the Canailo grape that Farshid noted is very difficult to obtain deep color from because the skin of the grape is thin. There was Rosso Conero from Marche that was as dark as night. The standout in the selection was a 1998 Morellino de Scansano from Pupile. It offered autumn leaves and tobacco on the nose. The flavors were mouthfilling with soft tannins.
Farshid expanded on the maker. "The winery is owned by Elisabetta Gappetti. And she is helped by the Umbrian oenologist, Riccardo Cotarella. Beside her traditional Morelino di Scanso, she also makes a wine called Saffredi which is comprised largely of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. It is particularly popular with the wine press, but I prefer the traditional Morelino."
So goes a visit to Nourai's Semidivino. He provides a tutorial in Italian wines. He studies the wines, hones his palate. And, better yet, he provides damn tasty wines. For this Semidivino is my favorite Roman enoteca.
OTHER TOP "ENOTECHE"
Il Piccolo, Via del governo Vecchio, 75. Open every day for dinner except Tuesday. The late night scene often extends to 2 a.m.
Spiriti, Via de Sa Eustachio, 5. Open for lunch and dinner Monday through Saturday. Cozy spot, but somewhat loosely managed. Big lunch scene.
Enoteca Ferrara, Via del Moro, 1/A. Serves lunch and dinner on Monday and Wednesday through Saturday. Offers most of Italy's currently fashionable wines.
Trimani, Via Cernaia, 37/B. Lunch and dinner Monday through Saturday. Huge list. There is a feeling of contentment here amid the chaos.
New Arrivals
1999 Shug Chardonnay, Carneros, $19.99—Wow, we’d never identify this as a California wine. And that is just what the maker, Walter Shug, wants. His goal is Burgundian style wines. He’s done that here. It’s stylish, complex and fine. No baby fat on this one.
1997 Marche Rosso, Colonnara, $6.99—Marche is one of the fast evolving wine zones in Italy. Much of this newsletter will be devoted to those zones and their wines. An enchanting nose of red fruits and tobacco lead you in the door. The flavors are solid and pleasant. It’s a dandy food wine. A deal. Snag it for daily drinking.
NV Nino Franco Prosecco, Regularly $14.99/Sale $12.99—Robert Parker calls this the greatest sparkling wine value in the world. We concur (we have been carrying it for years before his rather tardy pronouncement). Don’t miss a value like this one (are we sounding like the normal, bullshit wine newsletter?). But no one pays us to say this. Darn it.
1998 Riesling, Dr. Pauly-Bergweiler, $12.49—To get a wine of this quality at this price is hard to believe. It’s dry with mineral and apple essences. So delicious, it’s hard not to “snarf” a bottle by yourself. It’s particularly good with Thai food with which we tasted it. Or we’d drink it all alone.
1999 Fat Bastard Syrah, $10.49—For us, the name harks to a comment made by Marco White (London’s finest chef), who called his customers “fat, ugly bastards.” The wine is a kick in the mouth of Syrah flavors. If you like feral Syrah this is for you.
1999 Fat Bastard Chardonnay, $10.49—Oh, I forgot to say that the above wine, like this, is from Languedoc. This is pretty fat too. There is noticeable oak. When you compare it to similarly priced California Chardonnays it looks pretty good.
1999 Chablis, Chartron et Trebuchet, $19.99/Sale $14.99—We really like some of the wines from this Burgundy “negoce.” The purity of the Chardonnay fruit throws us into paroxysms of pleasure.
1998 Pinot d’Alsace, Beblenheim, Bott-Geyl, $9.99—What a delightful wine. It’s silken in texture with honeysuckle, lemon and flower essences. Perfect for spring.
1998 Riesling, Grafenraben de Zellenberg, Bott-Geyl, $14.99—Boy, is this nice. The pure Riesling flavors are stunning. There are lemons, limes and minerals in the nose. It’s long and satisfying on the tongue. It shows why Riesling is likely the finest white wine grape.
1999 Renwood Zinfandel- Sierra Series, $11.99—Renwood Zins are always unique and usually much more expensive than this one. Rich, deep flavors make this a standout at this price!
1999 Henry Estate, Umpqua Cuvee, Pinot Noir, $12.99/Sale $11.99—A lighter style with darker, blackberry flavors. Not overly sweet and fruity which pleases us. It’s nearly impossible to find good Pinot Noir at this price- we can't get any more of this so buy it while you can.
1999 Merryvale Chardonnay, $18.99/Sale $17.99—Green apple flavors in a frame of light oak with a bit of creaminess. A refreshing style.
Wines of the Month
1999 Macon-Solutre, Les Clos, Domaine des Gerbeaux, $12.99—Too much to believe, particularly at this reasonable price. It is a single vineyard Macon with a village designation (Solutre). It has a captivating Granny Smith apple nose and refined, dry Chardonnay flavors. Overall, it’s a pure wine with style, grace and complexity. Decidedly not for California Chardonnay fans.
1999 Valpolicella, Allegrini, $9.99—This I believe to be the last Valpolicella from Allegrini...they’ve left the appellation. All the mediocrity was bringing them down. Yeah, this ain’t insipid Bolla “Valpi.” This is stuff with character and depth. It’s mouthfilling and full of verve. The lovely cranberry nose is its best point. We think it a perfect transition wine...from heavy winter reds to lighter summer wines. Drink it by itself or with lightish foods and it will shine.
COALTRAIN
Wine & Spirits
330 W. Uintah
Colorado Springs, CO 80905
719-475-9700