Collavini Merlot

[Botafogo]

Fabio, look at it this way:

We have the entire output of Italy at our disposal but we taste thousands of wines, make very involved evaluations of both absolute quality and relative value and then choose to bring 2,000 or so labels a year to North America (and soon to Brasil). So, having done all of that research, why would we talk about wines we found to be lacking in either intrinsic quality or monetary value unless we were responding to someone else's post on those wines?

To take this one step further, if we had in fact ALL of the labels made in Italy in our store, would talking about any of them still be tainted by some sort of commercial interest in your mind? As I always remind people when this comes up, Marvin Shanken or Robert Parker or Daniele Cernilli are NOT going to exchange a bottle for you that they recommend and you don't like but we will.....

Also, if you do a search of all of my posts, I have almost NEVER started a thread by talking about any wine we sell, USUALLY am talking about standards of criticism, culture in general and especially wine and food pairing and MOST posts involving any wine we do sell (a large majority of which we are the only source in the US so no one else has the info) is providing more info or clarification after someone else has posted on them. I just did a search on my user name and the first 200 posts were 90% food and wine matches and I had to look hard to find any specific wine names, it was mostly on the order of "What do I serve with Chinese Seafood?" and me replying "The best Prosecco you can find in your area".

Last night we had dinner here in a local Neapolitan trattoria (Lucè on Melrose) and planned a dinner with the wines of Campania and Basilicata, Roberto


[This message has been edited by Botafogo (edited 08-29-2002).]