Renieri Rosso di Montalcino 2002

[jmcginley1]

I have to say, I am very lucky to work at a nice Italian resturant in the heart of Princeton that allows me to purchase wines through them, at resturant cost. Tonight I brought home this gem to have with a "pizza americana" (red sauce, pepperoni, sausage, meatball, green pepper, onion and mushrooms)

Beautiful color. a dark purple, which almost matches the lable exactly.

The nose had less power than I expected, very subtle, with some dark fruit(dried cherries perhaps?)

Medium to full bodied, with cherry, currant and a non fruit flavor that I can't place, up front. Nicely balanced tanins and acidity at the finish. Enough to pair up well with hearty Italian food, but round enough tanins to drink without food and not leave your mouth feeling dry.

A very nice wine for the price. I will certainly take a few more of these home with me.

[winoweenie]

Hi jmc1 and let me bid you a belated welcome
to the board. You work for the type of restauranter I love to support. If only more of them would realize the importance of getting staff involved with wine by giving them the opportunity to buy and taste at prices they can afford. Does managewment also have regular tastings for staff? Good tasting notes by the way. WW

[jmcginley1]

It is a great place. One of our manager's brother is the head of the NJ/PA division of Winebow(think "Leonardo LoCascio Selections"), from whom we buy most of our wines, so we have a very close relation with our distributor. Last month I was lucky enough to go to winebow headquaters twice for tastings. The first time we tasted through 12 traditional DOC/DOCG wines; Pinot Grigio, Verdicchio, Valpolicella, Barbera D'asti, Chianti Classico, Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, Barberesco, ect.. The second time was mostly more expiremental IGT wines.

Both times were a real treat. They were a lesson in Italian wine law, history, practices, grape historys, food matchings, ect.

[Georgie]

Do you happen to work at Meditera?

[Innkeeper]

Rosso di Montalcino is one of our favorite Italian Wines. It is one be grab when visiting friends with a partiality for Italian Vino.

[jmcginley1]

Georgie - I work at Teresa's, which has the same brothers/owners as Mediterra. It is 40 yards away from Mediterra, also on Palmer sq. We focus 100% on Italian cuisine, and they prepare Mediterranian cuisine(some Italian included).

[Georgie]

That's good to know. Now I know of TWO nice restaurants in Princeton. There are some posts on this thread about Mediterra if you'd care to read them.
http://www.wines.com/ubb2/Forum24/HTML/000564.html

[jmcginley1]

oh man, I can't wait to read that.