Sunday, November 16, 2008
Dried herbs and fall apples and layers of rock and acid. This is absolutely delicious - astonishingly so. I haven’t had many dry wines from Tokaj, but I’m going to need to do some more study of them. Curly. ($10, K&L)
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Pure Malbec fruit in a balanced and clean format. A little small-scale, which is something of a relief after the volatile fruit bombs of Argentina.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Da Kitchen: Monstrously large plates of local food done very right. Good kalbi, great fried mahi. Dis place broke da mouf!
Local Boy Snack Shop: apparently one of the relatively few places for real shave ice on Maui. It is indeed very good, with azuki beans, sweet cream, and li hing mui powder for topping. Really delicious, but avoid the awful tourist trap garbage mall that surrounds it - dire stuff.
We’d visited the sister restaurant, I’O, on a previous trip, so we tried this one this time. The restaurant group has thee properties, all at the same address in a trendy mall in Lahaina. Pacific’o was nice. Decent wine list, though not really adventurous. I started with a ceviche of several local fish and veggies served in a pineapple ring with elegantly-curled plantain-chip scoops. Very nice, quite traditional flavor, in a good way. Accompanied by:
Michele Chiarlo 2005 Gavi (Piemonte) - Nicely minerally, with just enough fruit to declare that this is indeed a grape product.
Then, the main course: “Kona Winds”-prepared ebi, a Hawaiian deep sea fish whose common name I don’t know. It was seared nicely crisp and served on a huge mound of locally-grown arugula, black and white jasmine rice, coarse-diced avocado guacamole, and goat cheese. Normally this would be accompanied by a bacon soy vinaigrette, but I opted for a tomato coulis instead. Excellent, all of it. Our second bottle of wine was:
Pine Ridge 2007 Chenin Blanc/Viognier - about as fruit-forward a Chenin as I’ve ever tasted. Appealing but not all that interesting.
Dessert was their Chocolate Decadence (doesn’t every restaurant have one of these?). This one was a wedge of very nicely bitter, nearly flourless cake topped with a softer sauce layer and accompanied by a scoop of locally-grown blackberry ice cream and raspberry sauce. The slightly-extra sweet ice cream was a great foil for the bitter cake. A very memorable dessert!
Great service, great location, great food. This place really came together.
Filed in rr, tn
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Tagged california, chenin blanc, gavi, italy, maui, napa, piemonte, viognier, white, wine
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Newly reopened following an extensive remodel. It’s a lot more industrial and more noisy now, but a lot more brewpub-like. Good beer just as I remembered, particularly the IPA. And, for the record, there is no better start to a meal than a wedge of beer-battered, deep-fried Brie with guava jelly. Sadly, they underseasoned the otherwise-excellent burger, and completely neglected to season the onion rings. Even so, a very enjoyable brewpub meal.
This is pretty much exactly as billed. Pinot Noir grape, unsullied by oak char or vanilla. It’s grape-y like a Beaujolais Villages, but with some of that Pinot spice. Fresh and pleasant - an unpretentious and tasty table wine that goes down easily. Not as interesting as I remember the Binz cheap Pinot being, but I’ll get more of this and enjoy every sip. ($11, K&L)
Medium amber
Crystallized brown sugared fruit
And vanilla bean
14.7% ABV indicated, but tastes like 15.7%. Like brushing my teeth with a barrel stave soaked in pure ethanol. Maybe if this were chilled it would tame some of the heat, but the prickly acidity and alcohol burn obstruct the fruit. Normally I like acid, but this is spiky and out of place. I think there’s some decent fruit hidden in this wine, but it is indeed hidden. Very much a Moe wine.
Torani Passionfruit Syrup: Somewhat thin, somewhat yellow. Very sweet, with clean, reasonably-believable passionfruit flavor. Could use some more acid and more intensity. 19g sugar per 30ml serving.
Monin Passionfruit Syrup: Much thicker and more syrupy. Harsh, chemical, acrid flavor bears no resemblance to any passionfruit I ever ate. Tastes like the outflow of an industrial flavor plant waste line. Still undrinkable when diluted with water and ice. DNPIM. 25g sugar per 30ml serving.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Tropical American oak, apricot and spice balanced by decent acid. Not really my style, but competently done. Larry.
