Saturday, March 31, 2007

One HEEL of a White



Yikes. Sorry about the pun there. The Winedaddy is just excited. He's excited because his good pal, Los Vascos has found a mate. That's right. The red house wine in the Winefamily's living room has just found its soul mate and she's a beaut. For those of you scratching your heads wondering what I'm talking about, I'll direct you to my early posting about the wine that me and the Winewife refer to as our "house wine." It's that fantastically spicy Chilen Cab made by those affable French vintners, the Rotschild family. To me, it's the best deal under $10 you can find

Until, that sexy Italian named Gravina came along. (wow, i just called wine "sexy"...i gotta get out more).

Brotomagno Gravina DOC '03 $9.99 (really!)

Some of you may recall my ongoing experiment with the Food and Wine Magazine's 10 Best Under $10. I vowed to try all 10. The Gravina was number 5 (or was it number 6? or 4?). Whatever it was, it was so far the highlight of this list. It's a beautifully crisp wine from the Italian heel of Puglia in the DOC known as Gravina. From what I gather, the traditional southern Italian grape of Malvasia is well represented here but a larger portion of this wine is the Greco grape. Whatever that means to you, what you need to know is that this is what a white wine wine should be. It's a beautiful light yellow almost green color and has wonderful floral notes right off the bat. When you taste it, it's crisp and acidic without leaving skid marks on your tongue on the way down. I found a great in-depth profile on this wine from The Wine Lovers page where you can find a lot more detail than you probably need but some good links and interesting observations.

The distributor, Winebow (one of my favorites), has some decent info on the page about this producer, including some of the many accolades it has received and what a great bargain this wine is. They suggest pairing it with shellfish or oysters or even Asian cuisine. Me....? I drank it several nights in a row with some great cheeses from Gourmet Garage in Manhattan where any cheese you buy is a good one. If all goes according to plan, however, I should be enjoying this wine at the wedding of the Winesister and the future Mr. Winebrother-in-law's wedding this summer. It's good to be the family Sommollier.

Uncorking My Newest Vintage


Ciao Winefriends. The fine folks at Blogger.com have allowed me to set up shop for a while and thanks to a much better user-interface (how about that phrase huh?), this will be the new home for the forseeable future. So grab a glass, cut off a hunk of some stinky cheese, and take off the shoes because this winedaddy is in the building.
I'll be back shortly with a new post (still working on the hangover from the Moving In party I threw myself).
In the meantime, here's a link to my postings in their old home in the event you want to re-live the magic.