Tag Archives: wine

Needs no translation…

Posted on by
Reply

Sign seen in the restaurant last night:

MENO INTERNET
PIU CABERNET
ANONIMO
(SCRITTO SU UN MURO)

I’d trade a bit less internet for a bit more cabernet indeed!

And the restaurant? La Piola Sabauda: vino e cucina del piemonte dal 1966. It’s heartwarmingly authentic with an incredible wine list of Italian wines. One of the most unusual (and good!) meals we’ve ever had–but it was tricky. We had three of the only four items on the menu that have no mammal meat (cows, pigs, lambs, rabbits, etc.). This is definitely a restaurant for meat-eaters.

Vienna – the unexpected market

Posted on by
Reply

From the Belvedere, we headed over to Linke Wienzeile, where our guidebook said we might find a couple of remarkable Art Nouveau houses.

Wienzeile itself looked like an interesting street on our map. It was shown as two (Linke, or Left, Wienzeile and Rechte, or Right, Wienzeile) roads that run closely parallel to each other, divided firmly block after long block by what might have been–what? A railroad track? A park?

Curiosity is said to have killed the cat. I don’t know about that, but it can certainly exhaust the tourist. We had to go see what it was.

And that is how after another mile an a half of walking, we emerged onto Rechte Wienzeile exactly at Roni’s Wine, Cheese, and Delicatessen shop. Just what we needed!

sm01 IMG_1763

After a pause for sampling wine and cheese, we headed down the middle area between Linke and Rechte Wienzeile and found… block after block after block of the most beautiful outdoor market!

I just love markets. I love the visual beauty of the merchandise. Herewith, some pictures that need no explanation.

sm03 IMG_1773 sm04 IMG_1793 sm05 IMG_1776 sm06 IMG_1771 sm07 IMG_1799 sm09 IMG_1800 sm10 IMG_1801 sm11 IMG_1804 sm12 IMG_1802 sm13 IMG_1805 sm14 IMG_1798 sm15 IMG_1806 sm16 IMG_1807

 

 

 

Vineyards of Mendoza: Sottano

Posted on by
Reply

Dan assures me that in some ways Bodega Sottano was the most interesting of the four vineyards we visited. I missed many of the points our guide made, as I was struggling to keep the contents of my stomach where they belonged (see lunch, previous post). So here are Dan’s observations about Bodega Sottano.

This winery, it seems to me (Dan says), shows a great deal about how the wine industry has been able to grow so quickly in Mendoza. The winery is a first venture for the sons of a family with Mendoza winemaking roots. It’s relatively new, founded (I think) in 2003. Rather than investing a lot of money in building or landscaping, which are both fairly minimal, the founders have invested heavily in production capacity, using the most modern technology.

Aiming to make high-quality wines in the mid- to high-price range, Bodega Sottano is growing carefully. They currently use perhaps only a tenth of their winemaking capacity and rent the rest of their capacity out to others. This strategy has the dual benefit of allowing them to pay for the equipment that they ultimately want to be able to use, while at the same time allowing other start-up winemakers to make wines without any heavy initial investment in production equipment.

It’s a great win-win arrangement (Dan says) that shows how Mendoza could have moved from maybe fifty to maybe over a thousand wineries in just ten years, becoming one of the world’s top winemaking regions.

Vineyards of Mendoza: Melipal

Posted on by
Reply

Our third stop on the winery tour of the Lujan de Cuyo is Bodega Melipal.

It’s the high point of the day in more ways than one. The first way, we’ve been expecting. More than expecting–looking forward to. We’ve been drinking wine all morning. We’re hungry, and behold! It’s lunchtime!

The lunch is beautifully presented, and each course is accompanied by a delicious wine pairing. The dessert and its accompanying dessert wine are a fine finishing touch.

There was a problem with the lunch for me, and perhaps me alone. The lone vegetarian in the group, I was given a main course of roasted or sauteed vegetables. It was beautiful to look at, and tasty, too.

But between the cheese it was covered with (and I with a degree of lactose intolerance and no lactase with me) and the oil (perhaps olive oil) it was swimming in, I ended up with a terribly upset stomach that stayed with me for the rest of the day.When I could barely even sip a taste of wine at our next vineyard, I knew the situation was bad.

I don’t blame Melipal for this. The place, the service, and the wine were all excellent. Just my poor luck.

The other delightful surprise about Melipal was the landscaping. This was far and away the most beautiful of the vineyards we visited–perhaps anywhere, ever.

After lunch, we move on to Bodega Sottano in the next post.

Vineyards of Mendoza: Kaiken

Posted on by
Reply

Our tour of four representative wineries of the Lujan de Cuyo region of Mendoza continued at Kaiken Winery. Here we were treated to a walk in the fields to learn about the cultivation of the grapes.

Some of these vineyards contained vines seventy to a hundred years old; others were fairly recently planted.

Hail is a major hazard–in an area where climate is moderate, rainfall light, and irrigation pervasive, there are few hazards of grape growing; and vintages are consistent, year after year. The single major hazard is hail, which can fall hard and heavy, with hailstones as large as baseballs. Hail can ruin a crop in minutes. And so netting to protect the vines from hail, though expensive, is increasingly being used.

These vines are watered using water-saving drip irrigation. We also saw areas where the vines were irrigated in the traditional way through the use of irrigation ditches (acequias). The vines here had much heavier stems–they might have been older–but less abundant foliage. I don’t know how the grape production compares.

Everywhere, the early-summer grapes were beautiful.

In addition to tasting a number of Kaiken’s excellent wines, we were also given a taste of the wine still fermenting in the tank. It wasn’t grape juice any more; it was really wine! And–it was also excellent.

Next post: Bodegas Melipal and Sottano

Vineyards of Mendoza: Benegas

Posted on by
2

We booked an in-depth tour of four vineyards through the excellent and friendly Ampora Wine Tours in Mendoza. The tour was an all-day affair that visited four vineyards. It included a luncheon with wine pairings at one of them.

The first winery, and in some ways the most interesting, was at the historic Bodega Benegas. The history of this vineyard, as remembered through the haze of a day of drinking excellent Argentine wines, is that the owner is the scion of a family of venerable Argentinian winemakers. His grandfather (or great-grandfather?) was Tiburcio Benegas, the founder of Trapiche Vineyards, who introduced French vines into Argentina over a hundred years ago. The owner of the current Benegas practically grew up in the Trapiche winery, but by then the family had sold the winery, and the young man went off to make his fortune in some other field–investment banking?–in Buenos Aires. But wine was in his bloodstream, and Mendoza called. And his fortune must have been in pretty good condition, too, for he was able to buy and completely (and beautifully) renovate the run-down hundred-year-old winery and vineyards that now comprise Benegas Winery. He makes some nine different wines (named after his many children) in the beautifully renovated old buildings. And good wines they are!

The entryway to the winery sets a tone of intimate elegance, with small plantings of grapes, along with other greenery, flanking the path.

Inside, the first building contains exhibits of old winemaking equipment and some lovely traditional wall hangings.

Much of the wine is fermented for up to eighteen months in French oak barrels.

It is blended with other wine made in larger tanks; and then the finished wine stored in the bottle for a year, in the old concrete fermentation cellars, an area of the winery that vaguely reminded me of Edgar Allan Poe’s story “A Cask of Amontillado.”

Unaware of the dark, ancient cellars with their suggested mysteries, kittens played in the sunlit gardens above.

Next: Kaiken Winery

Dinner at The Atlantic Inn

Posted on by
Reply

This Sunday Dan and I finally got around to our celebratory thirtieth-anniversary dinner. We were about three weeks late, but we have a long tradition of being late in celebrating our anniversary. This is because we have a long tradition of not being in the same city on our anniversary. Heck, there were times we weren’t even on the same continent. So we’ve gotten used to a certain degree of freedom when it comes to important celebrations, preferring to fix them in space rather than in time.

In this case, we decided to return to The Atlantic Inn on Block Island. This decision was a blend of nostalgia and a really tempting new menu. The nostalgia part dates to the early years of our marriage: The Atlantic Inn was where we stayed on the island before our house was built. The inn’s porch is still one of our favorite places for a drink because of its stunning views over the rooftops of the town and over the harbor to the long sweeping curve of the northern neck of the island and out to sea.

But the restaurant is a different story. At some point the menu switched from a la carte to a multiple-course prix-fixe-only menu with disappointingly few choices for pescatarians like us. On the few occasions when we ate out on the island, we always ended up going somewhere else. But now the menu had changed. A-la-carte options had returned, and lots of them. The menu sounded wonderful.

I wish The Atlantic Inn would get around to posting a current menu on its Web site. But they haven’t yet. I actually considered scanning the entire menu and posting it here because it ought to be posted *somewhere*. But this is not the right place. Are you listening, Atlantic Inn Webmaster?

I will, however, post the menu items and descriptions of what we had.

First, I do have to say that I told them it was our anniversary dinner. I did this so that we could get our favorite table, the one in the corner at the far end of the room overlooking the sunset, the harbor, and the sea. And they were happy to oblige us in this. But we weren’t expecting the complimentary celebratory glass of champagne. This is a class act!

We also weren’t expecting the amuse-bouche of a tiny glass of powerfully delicious gaspacho with a lime froth.

Here’s what we were expecting, and ate with pleasure:

Appetizers

Frisee aux Lardon (sans Lardon)

Baby frisee, slow-poached Blazing Star Farm egg, housemade pancetta lardons (omitted for us), grapefruit and truffle vinaigrette

White Tuna Sashimi Tasting

“Sea essence”, citrus-galangal pearls, ikura, dashi-hijiki, served with prawn crackers

Entrees

Spring Bounty

Polenta cake, wild mushrooms, spring peas, fiddlehead ferns, Fontina Val d’Aosta, garlic essence and baby greens

Halibut Cheeks

Lightly seared, garlic bagna cauda, escargots, English peas, fiddleheads and wild mushrooms

(Note: These two items sound similar but in fact were quite different, and both delicious.)

Dessert

Lemon-Chamomile Pound Cake

Fresh blueberries, lemon curd sauce and honeyed creme fraiche

When you’re celebrating your thirtieth anniversary at a restaurant that has been a recipient of the Wine Spectator‘s Award of Excellence for the last nine years running, how can you not splurge on the wine? We selected a Far Niente 2005 Chardonnay. The wine was as wonderful as the meal.

Our heartfelt and full-bellied congratulations to newly promoted Executive Chef Aaron Wisniewski and to pastry chef Linda Rondinone for an evening we’ll remember for a long, long time.