2005 Castello di Monastero Sangiovese Toscano IGT

[hotwine]

One from her gift stash last Christmas....what might be charitably described as a mediocre sangio, nothing special, although it improves with air time over 2-3 hours. 13% alc/vol and about $11 in Houston. With leftover Christmas hams and scalloped spuds.

[hotwine]

Killed the last one last night with her homemade pizza. Better than back in December but not aided by its confounded plastic closure. Still telling her to pass it by on her next visit to Spec's.

[Thomas]

On the plastic closures I agree--hate those things, and I don't care what color they come in.

In fact, I wrote a slam against them in Brandweek Magazine way back in 1998.

[TheEngineer]

I agree. I wish that they wold be required to put that it exists on the bottle label so that I would be able to make decisions to drink them earlier before they fail.

[Thomas]

Here's my list of why to despise plastic closures:

1. They do fail and regularly

2. They can cling to the neck of the bottle and be hard to remove

3. They can eat a corkscrew worm

4. If you are like me, clumsy, you always put the cork back in the bottle (if you didn't decant) while you are sipping, so that if you knock it over, well, you know. You can't put the plastic back in without a hassle.

5. I don't trust plastic to touch my food for any length of time--the poly-chemistry does indeed leach. I've stopped drinking water out of plastic bottles for the same reason.