Monday, December 22, 2008
13.5% ABV indicated. 50% Montepulciano, 50% Sangiovese, aged 9 months in new and used French oak barrels. This has that rustic, prickly, volatile acidity and leathery (bretty?) scent that we find in a lot of lesser-known Italian reds. The wine is not significantly harmed by the new oak, only showing a little sweetness and a little smoke in the finish. Finishes a little sticky. Decent table wine, not worth spending much money on it.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Lots of fruit, an unusual dark maroon spice tint, and a good bit of juicyness. What does it taste like? Hard to say - I wouldn’t necessarily have guessed it as a gamay/pinot noir blend in a blind tasting, but maybe I would have. Unusual, pleasant, refreshing. Larry. ($14, K&L)
Saturday, December 6, 2008
Maybe it’s just the mild head cold and stuffiness I’m experiencing, but this is severely underwhelming. A bit rubbery both to smell and taste, and the biscuity/doughy note doesn’t really compensate for the almost astringent, thin character. Still, we took posession of the new house, and needed to celebrate that along with Repeal Day. Good memories despite underwhelming, expensive fizzy wine. ($119, Costco)
Saturday, December 6, 2008
8.5% ABV indicated. At first it seemed a bit age-faded, with the fruit sort of oxidized and slightly sticky from the residual sugar. Just starting to get that oily aged-Riesling note. Nothing particularly impressive. It was a lot better after a couple days corked and a couple accidental freeze/thaw cycles, strangely enough, with increased zip and zing and interest. Still a Larry, but a much more enjoyable one. ($18, K&L)
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
|
Tagged california, chenin blanc, gavi, italy, maui, napa, piemonte, viognier, white, wine
|
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)