Is The Worm Turning?

[stevebody]

That's one of the things that drives me nuts about retsurant wine lists: this business of stocking up on score-whore, high-$$ premium bottles that have little or no place alongside the food the place serves. particularly in the case of some of the CA and Aussie top-end stuff, there ain't enough acidity in the profile to cut through any fats you have on the plate, so you're not going to strike that happy balance between the two flavor sets anyway. That's one of the reasons my shop has an entire wall of Italian and Spanish wines and five racks of California. I had Gianmaria Cesari, son of Umberto, in here one day and we were tasting his big Sangiovese Grosso, "Tauleto", a massive, gorgeous mouthful that had my knees buckling. "Oh, man!" I gushed, "Do you ever just plop down by the fireplace with a good book and a glass of this stuff and just bliss out?" He looked at me like I was the yahoo I am and said, "Why would you want to do that? A wine like this, you want food and friends and good conversation!"

I've heard that repeated over and over by Spanish and Italian winemakers who visit: wine is for food. They assemble those wines to offer big flavors, yes, but with the right balances of alcohol, earth, acids, and tannins. They don't just make wines for us to sit and sip and worship. I like that a lot and I sneak that into conversations with our local winemakers all the time.