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Restaurant Wine List Review - Wine Taste, Why Keep It a Secret?


We?re your customers. That?s right, we pay your bills ? so listen up. Why can?t we understand your wine list? We know what we like, but your wine list...


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Current About Wine News

Beer losing its appeal, say wine-makers - Guardian Unlimited

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 01:08:39 GMT

Belfast Telegraph

Beer losing its appeal, say wine-makers Guardian Unlimited, UK - 21 hours ago The report was commissioned on behalf of French wine-makers to explain why, in a country traditionally made up of ale drinkers, this change has come about. ... Drop in alcohol consumption ‘largest in 15 years’ ic Wales UK consumers drinking less alcohol, report Drinks International Britons drinking less alcohol Bolton News just-drinks.com (subscription) - Independent all 22 news articles

Wine and spirits muscle in on 'beer occasions' - Globe and Mail

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 14:08:40 GMT

Wine and spirits muscle in on 'beer occasions' Globe and Mail, Canada - 8 hours ago Organizers figured that a lot of guests don't want to limit themselves to beer and like to sip wine. That surprised wine drinker Diana Burandt, who attended ...

A beginner's guide to making your own wine - San Jose Mercury News

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 07:12:55 GMT

A beginner's guide to making your own wine San Jose Mercury News, USA - 15 hours ago By Kristen Munson Any vintner will tell you great grapes make great wine, but you don't have to own a vineyard to make high-end varietals. ... From the basement to the big-time, local winemakers pursue their ... San Jose Mercury News all 4 news articles

Another Great About Wine Article

Restaurant Wine List Review - Wine Taste, Why Keep It a Secret?

We?re your customers. That?s right, we pay your bills ? so listen up. Why can?t we understand your wine list? We know what we like, but your wine list doesn?t give us a clue. Ok, so we?re not wine knowledgeable, don?t hate us because we?d still like some wine that we?ll enjoy. We really like wine, especially with a good meal. But we don?t want to study the stuff so we can understand your wine list and know how a wine will taste.

Count these up: 1) County of Origin, 2) Producer, 3) Vintage date, 4) Appellation, 5) Variety of Grape, 6) Vineyard, and 7) season the grapes were picked (Ice Wine, Late Harvest, etc.). That?s right, seven items of information must be catalogued and understood to give us a chance at knowing what a wine tastes like when reading your traditional wine list. Keep six of these, change the seventh, and all bets are off on how the wine will taste. We get as confused as a blind dog in a meat house.

If you hear a lot of us saying, ?Just give me a glass of your house white,? you have a wine list problem. Hey, we?re not too cheap to buy a bottle of wine; we just don?t want to make a sizeable investment in a bottle we may not like. So why keep us in the dark, trying to decipher your wine list code? Why not tell us how the wine tastes, and we?ll pop for a bottle or two.

Expensive restaurants once solved this problem with a sommelier whose job it was to discern our taste preference, analyze the menu we?ve ordered, and recommend a wine we would enjoy with our meal. There are precious few qualified sommeliers around these days, especially in affordable restaurants. When your wait staff recommends, it?s usually wines they like.

The only thing worse than a traditional wine list is one with ?winese? puffery descriptions.
Example: ?This wine has hints of dark tree fruit, root vegetable, autumn leaves, pears, berries and vanilla, with a strong finish of cigar box.? Amazing! Do you have something that tastes like wine?

In January of 1980, Grey Moss Inn in Grey Forrest, Texas, implemented the ?Customer Friendly Wine List.? Customers could order wines by the way they taste for the first time ever. The wine list was divided into categories:

1) Slightly Sweet, 2) Light, Soft, 3) Light, Crisp, Fruity, 3) Fuller, Rounded, Dry,
4) Elegance, Finesse, 5) Robust, Complex, Full Flavored 6) After Dinner Sweet

Red, white and rose wines all appeared in most categories. Some wines like Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon appeared under as many as three categories. As customers, we knew that by staying within a category we could be experimental ordering wine and still enjoy our selection.

Jill Goolden published the book, The Taste of Wine, around 1990 , and about a decade later Fiona Beckett published Wines by Style. The thesis of these books is to classify wine by how it tastes, rather than the seven criteria above. These books led to a rash of wine lists offering up their contents by taste profile ? but these glimmering lights seem to be flickering out.

If you lack the confidence to develop a wine list for your restaurant that lets us order wines by the way they taste, hire a qualified wine consultant, or work closely with your vendors to achieve your goal. Then watch your wines sales grow from glasses to bottles, as we feel comfortable ordering from your list.

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I Love Italian Wine and Food - Tasting A Noble Sicilian Wine

Once again, we are breaking into the series tasting wines from each of Italy?s twenty wine regions. This article examines a noble red wine from the island of Sicily in southern Italy. It is very far from a bargain wine. We were about a dozen to taste it. I?ll be presenting my opinions and those of others.

So far, the wines that I purchased for this series have cost a maximum of about $20. I thought that I should try one at about double the price. I felt that by going to a relatively unknown region such as Sicily I might get a bargain. A lot of wines from the Tuscany or Piedmont regions of Italy cost $40 or much, much more. Such is not the case for Sicily.

Italy?s top of the line wine designation is DOCG, which stands for Denominazione di Origine Controllata Garantita (Denomination of Controlled, Guaranteed Origin.) There are no DOCG wines in Sicily. But the formal designation is not very important, many Super Tuscans costing at least twice my budget carry ?inferior? designations. The wine I chose carries the Contea di Sclafania DOC designation, having been promoted from the Sicilia IGT designation. The wine reviewed here is produced by the same company as the white Sicilian wine reviewed in my article I Love Italian Wine and Food ? The Sicily Region. This was no accident. First I bought the relatively expensive red. Then I bought the white wine for about one third the price. This white wine carries the Sicilia IGT designation, but I found it to be pretty good. Let?s take a look at its much more expensive red cousin.

Wine Reviewed
Tasca d?Almerita Regaleali ?Rosso del Conte? Contea di Sclafania DOC 2002 15% alcohol about $38

About 35 years ago, Count Tasca d?Almerita decided to make a flagship Sicilian red wine from two local grapes, Nero d?avola and Perricone. Nero d?avola is a thin-skinned grape that ripens extremely late, perhaps three weeks after Cabernet Sauvignon. Consequently this variety is virtually limited to Sicily. Some think that it is a relative of Syrah. Nero d?avola wines are usually dark and tarry, with lots of black fruit aroma and taste. They are rich and well structured, with firm and silky tannins. Many of the grapes in this bottle came from vines over forty years old. The plants are grown as shrubs, a somewhat unusual practice. This wine was aged for twelve months in French oak barrels, about 60% of which are new. It can be cellared for years. I only wish that I could taste a ten or twenty year old Rosso del Conte.

I?ll spare you the marketing materials and reviews that tend to be very laudatory. Here are the comments from my tasting group.

A bit of black fruit. Highly oaked. Toasted grains, toast, grilled barley. Nervous and wild. Garriga (a mixture of spices found in areas near the Mediterranean Sea). Leather, dried meat, musk, and underbrush. A strong presence. Acidic and tannic, but not very long. Moderately long, fairly tannic. Round. More fruit than oak.

When asked to guess the price, the general consensus was considerably lower than what I actually paid. It?s fair to assume that most of these people would not purchase this wine, even if they do buy wines in this price range. On the other hand, it?s not hard to find reviews on the Internet that draw the opposite conclusion. In fact, every review that I read was more laudatory than my tasting group was. And my thoughts?

Personally, I would rather drink wine with food than without food. There were only a few sips left in the bottle but I was able to squeeze out two pairings. First I tried slow-cooked beef ribs with potatoes and a side of green beans in tomato sauce. This wine was the essence of mouth-filling, a tiny sip enveloped my mouth with pleasure. The wine?s acidity and tannins handled the meat?s fat. If only I had more.

Isola is a Sicilian fresh cheese made from sheep?s milk. The Isola cheese was powerful, strong smelling and strong tasting, especially when you crunched into a peppercorn. The Rosso del Conte?s richness and complexity was quite noticeable in the presence of this cheese. I am glad that I didn?t waste the last precious sips of this wine on a weak cheese.

Final verdict. It?ll probably be quite some time before I buy another bottle of Rosso del Conte. I do think that it?s worth the price, but I can?t say that I got a $100 wine for less than $40. Have you ever done so?

A Short About Wine Summary

I Love Italian Wine and Food - Tasting A Noble Sicilian Wine


Once again, we are breaking into the series tasting wines from each of Italy?s twenty wine regions. This article examines a noble red wine from the is...


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Current About Wine News

Uncorked: Flutist's golden palate befits his wine cellar (San Francisco Chronicle)

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 07:34:53 GMT
Sir James Galway has expensive tastes when it comes wine - more than 800 bottles, many of them top-end Bordeaux, crowd his cellar. It's not surprising, really, that the musician known as "the man with the golden flute" is also the man with a golden palate....

Red wine can keep food-borne diseases at bay (ANI via Yahoo! India News)

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 04:47:34 GMT
Washington, Oct 12 (ANI): The health benefits of a glass of red wine have since long been known, but now fans of the fruity tipple may have even more to cheer about, with a study finding that it is capable of protecting humans from common food-borne diseases. Researchers Azlin Mustapha, associate professor of food science in the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources, and Atreyee ...

For a relaxing picnic, pair wine with fast food; enjoy (The Sentinel)

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 07:14:10 GMT
ALLENTOWN - It takes about 20 minutes or less to make a meal into a special occasion on a summer evening. Best of all, it requires no time in the kitchen. Just grab a bottle of chilled wine from the fridge or State Store, breeze through a fast food drive-through for dinner salads and find a picnic table that's in the shade.


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