Canneto Vino Nobile de Montepulciano 2004

-j-j- and I tasted this at Fine Wine Brokers and fell in love with it.

It was very deep and strong. Dark and mouth-filling.

I thought I tasted fennel.

This may have been because I had fennel on the brain. I was at that very moment making a gravlax. Though “moment” is probably the wrong word; the gravlax took a week to concoct.

How to make a gravlax (literally, “hole salmon”): You take raw salmon and cook it without using heat. Instead, you cure it, in this case by packing it in a mixture of chopped fennel and onion for three or four days. Then, rinse it off. Then, wrap it in plastic. Then, unwrap it and top it with chopped fennel fronds and dill. Then, wrap it in plastic. Then dig in!
Except I realized too late that it’s supposed to be an appetizer. Gravlax is not a pigout food. You’re supposed to serve up a few slices to trigger your guests’ salivary glands and then move on to the main course. But -j-j- and I had a pound of it to get through.

When it finally came time to eat it, we thought we’d crack open the wine that had the whiff of fennel.

It was a mistake. They didn’t go together at all.

-j-j- theorized that the fennel on the fish may have been cancelled out by the fennel in the wine, leaving nothing but an oily, fishy scent forced up our sinuses. It was all right, though, if we used some roasted sweet potatoes and sautéed vegetables as a buffer, cleansing the pallet of the fish and preparing it for the wine.

When we’d finished eating, the wine was able to come into its own. It opened and developed and mellowed, and I was able to remember what I loved about it. There was nothing light or fruity about it. It dragged my tongue through the dank underbrush.

As for the salmon, I nibbled at it some more a day or two later. The raw saltiness was very good, but it kept me from eating more than a few bites of it at a time.

It’s supposed to be able to last for another week in the refrigerator, but in a moment of panic, I decided to try baking it, to see if I could enjoy it in greater quantities. But no—it just got fishier and saltier. I gave up and threw it out.

And I decided never to try anything new again.

Villa Sonia 2006 Ripasso III: Revenge of the Villa Sonia 2006 Ripasso

I finally finished off the bottle a couple nights ago. It had been open for the better part of a week, and I didn’t like it much in the first place, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that it would be a waste to toss it without giving it one last shot.

It was the best it had ever been.

It was weak, no doubt about it. But that actually was a good thing for this wine to become. The harsh, rubbery flavor had faded. The wine left no taste at all after its initial inoffensive splash. I finished it painlessly.

A note about supporting local businesses.

I love small, locally run wine shops. A look at the links to the right reveals two of my favorites, Fine Wine Brokers in Lincoln Square and the South Loop Wine Cellar on South Michigan. You encounter friendly, passionate employees eager to help you find what you’re looking for. I often fear for them in the shadow of the Binny’s and Sam’s shops of the world with their enormous warehouses and advertising budgets.

On the other hand, I love wandering the aisles at a big store and being overwhelmed at the sheer number of bottles. I also enjoy picking up bargains during their many sales. (I have a Binny’s card. In fact, the next time I buy something there, I am due for a $10 rebate.)

This causes me some guilt.

I have arrived at this uneasy truce: I buy at the smaller spots often, and I buy at the larger shops during their giant sales.

It seems like every month Binny’s has a big storewide sale. Sometimes the savings are negligible, but sometimes they’re half off or more, It’s pushing my limit a little to buy a $30 bottle of wine. But a $55 bottle marked down to $30 is pretty attractive.

This is a lot of rationalization, I know. And I run the risk of falling into a “pricey=good” assumption. But it’s a pretty easy rule to live by, and it serves me well.

I was at Binny’s earlier this week, and I found a Da Vinci 2003 Brunello di Montalcino marked down pretty severely. About half off. I think it was from $50 to $26.

When I showed -j-j-, she pointed out how much that Da Vinci drawing is beloved by wine label designers.

Villa Sonia 2006 Ripasso

I was hoping my first review would be a positive one.

Not long ago, I was at Fine Wine Brokers in Lincoln Square, and I saw two identically priced ripasso wines on a shelf in the Italian section. The hand-written cards stated that if you love big Italian reds and haven’t tried a ripasso, you should right away.

I bought one of them—a 2006 Remo Farina—and it was great. Smoky, earthy, spicy. On my next trip, I decided to buy the second one, the Villa Sonia. I just opened it a few minutes ago.

Not much nose to speak of at all. The first sip was bold and spicy, but with a bit of dishwater undertone that I didn’t find very promising.

There’s some tar, and there’s a sense that it might be trying to develop into a warm earthiness, but the result is almost acrid. The taste doesn’t stay on the tongue long, but when it disperses, it leaves an unpleasant aftertaste and a trace of burning tires.

I let it sit for a while, hoping it would open up into something more pleasant. The best it was able to muster for me was a little bit of earthy raspberry. But all in all, I was pretty disappointed.

I did some in-depth reading about ripasso that maintains that the wine is easy to pair with food. As it happens, my girlfriend just called, and she’s on her way over with some chips and hummus. Maybe this wine will be better with something to cling to.