Food, Wine, and Travel from Sicily
Dan Marino?
We have been impressed with Donnafugata wines, so we thought we would give this one a shot and sure enough it was good as well. I made some chicken piccata using the wine. Also had most of the bottle left over for dinner and it was great white for the dish. Light but still had a nice taste to it. I believe we got the bottle for around $10.
http://www.donnafugata.it/prodotti/Damarino.aspx
Vespa rating for the Damarino 2010 from Donnafugata
The weather in Sicily is perfect right now. The island is turning green very quickly with all of the vegetation starting to grow. Also it is too early in the year for the tourists to start their occupation of Sicily. With all this in mind, Jess and I really wanted to explore and find a new winery. We heard of a winery that was pretty close to where we live. We tried to organize a little group to share in the experience, but it turned into an episode of herding cats. 🙂 . So we decided to just fly solo and serve as the guinea pigs for the group. Luckily we were greeted very warmly at Murgo winery and Continue reading “Murgo Winery”
Riparosso Illuminati Montepulciano d’Abruzzo 2009
It seemed like it has been a while since we had a good wine and this one started off poorly. The cork was bad and ripped in half from the middle of the cork looking like sawdust. Luckily I was able to work some magic with a different corkscrew and got it out of there without any shrapnel in the wine. Once this commotion was over we were able to enjoy the wine and found it to be very good. It was extremely easy to drink… very well balanced. Almost too smooth in that it didnt have a big wow factor, but for $6.99 it was impressive.
I did some research on the grape and it turns out to have a lot of the characteristics that we like. Here is a link for more info on wikipedia.
Rating: Ferrari
We were looking for a good Chianti to go with our steak tonight and this was a bust. I got this wine as a half bottle to try at $3.00, so I guess I shouldn’t have expected much. I also like to use the empty half bottles for storing extra wine from normal sized bottles. This purchase ended up being solely for the half bottle! ha. Better Chiantis are out there!
Rating: Mini Donkey
Rosso di Montalcino – Castello Banfi 2009
We were looking forward to trying this wine with a great dinner at home. It’s an 100% Sangiovese from the world famous Montalcino area of Tuscany. The bottle cost $15.99. It is definitely at the lower end of the price range for wine from this region, but we figured its worth a shot.
Unfortunately this wine just didn’t live up to our expectations. It was pretty bland. Im thinking if we aged it for a while we would probably get some different results.
Although this wine fell flat for us we are still looking to try many of the other wines from Banfi. We have also heard great things about visiting the Banfi winery in Tuscany… sounds like a plan to me!
I feel bad doing this, but this wine gets the Mini Donkey rating
Banfi redeemed itself after our last Banfi wine that fell into the mini donkey realm. This Chianti Classico is exactly that, with a very good dry Chianti taste. $9.99 per bottle. Not exactly a Ferrari find, but good.
Rating: Vespa
I picked up this wine as a recommendation from my Italian friend, Mario. We weren’t expecting too much in that it was only €3.75, but it surprised us in a good way. Had a lot more flavor than we were expecting. The grape is a Primitivo, which is somewhat synonymous with Zinfandel. Most Primitivo is grown in Puglia (Apulia), the “heel” of Italy, and it is estimated to be the country’s 12th most widely planted grape variety. The main three DOC areas are Primitivo di Manduria, Gioia del Colle Primitivo (Riserva) and Falerno del Massico Primitivo (Riserva o Vecchio).
If your wondering what DOC stands for here is a quick blurb that explains it. Its basically a standard of sorts:
Vino a Denominazione di Origine Controllata (DOC) is the Italian answer to the French AOC. DOC wines are produced in specific well-defined regions, according to specific rules designed to preserve the traditional wine-making practices of the individual regions. Thus, the rules for making Barolo differ markedly from those for making Chianti Classico. The winery can state the vineayrd that the grapes came from, but cannot name the wine after a grape type (doing so would cause confusion, because there are some DOCs named after grape types, for example Brunello di Montalcino), and cannot use a name such as “Superior.” Since a wine has to meet certain standards to qualify as DOC, the quality of Italian wines as a whole has improved since the first DOCs were established in the 1960s, though in some cases the rules drawn up by the commissions had unexpected effects — Super Tuscans (VdT) arose from the requirement (since dropped) that producers put white grapes in their Chianti Classico.
On the map below I marked where the wine is from.
To cut to the chase we give this wine a rating of Vespa because of its good quality for the price.
For info on our rating system go to this link
We have become overwhelmed with all the new wines that we have encountered out here. This is definitely a happy problem and in an effort to keep track we are going to start reviewing the wines as they come along. This will serve as our memory so that when we go back to the store we know which wines we liked a lot and which we didn’t. Hopefully this is also helpful for everyone else out there.
Right off the bat I just wanted to say that we do not consider ourselves wine experts by any means. Also our taste and preferred wines may be different from everyone out there. Everyone has their own favorites in the many different dimensions of wine. For example Jess and I tend to prefer full bodied reds without any “oaky” and/or “tannic” components. For whites we prefer very light whites, like a Pinot Grigio vice a Chardonnay.
The point system just seems too complicated and it would be tough to give a particular wine more points than the next, when we aren’t drinking both wines at the same time. Also we will be drinking wines that would probably be beneath the “wine spectators” of the world, since the majority of our wines will be everyday type of wines at $10 or below. Don’t get me wrong…. having a $50-$100 bottle of wine everyday would be nice, but it would start cutting into the associated food budget and no one likes hot dogs every night… 🙂
So the grading system will be very simple with 3 categories. With so many wines out there I would prefer to be very cut and dry and not have very much gray area.
This wine was another recommendation that we picked up at an Italian grocery store for €4.99. This Nero D’Avola was a downer with some bad flavors working against it. The word rancid almost comes to mind. There are a lot better Nero D’Avolas out there!
Rating: Mini Donkey
