I really enjoy wine, although I really am quite the amateur when it comes to knowing what I like. I like this one with the red and pink label, or that one with the drawing of a hand on it. I inevitably will try a wine I like and think to myself, "I have to remember this one!" only to promptly forget all of the relevant details. Of course, there have been doozies that were either so good or so bad that I'd be hard pressed to forget them. But that leaves a lot of wines in that gray area.
In the past, I've considered starting a wine journal to catalog the wines I've tried and what I thought of them. And, because my memory is decidedly visual, I thought it would be very useful to paste in labels to help me remember individual bottles. But obviously, this idea never took flight, mostly because I'm too lazy to keep up with anything that complicated. Not to mention that, in hard copy, I wouldn't be able to easily search or organize all those entries.
So! The internet to the rescue, once again! I intend to use you, my friends, as a pretense for starting and keeping a wine journal here. I'll share whatever information is on the bottle, what I paid (almost certain to be $10 to $15, because that's how I roll), what I paired it with (PAIRED! That's like really a wine word!), and a picture of the label. Not to mention my (largely uninformed) thoughts on the wine itself. I promise I won't just crib off the labels when describing particular wines, although if I start throwing around words like "oaky" or "flinty" or "fruit-forward," then you'll know I'm totally talking out of my ass.
Now, if you happen to know something about wine and find that my descriptions are wildly inaccurate or flat wrong, please don't hesitate to share. I make no bones about my relative ignorance in the wine department.
Our inaugural bottle is an Italian red: Quattro Mani Montepulciano d'Abruzzo. 2007 vintage. I don't remember what I paid for it.
I opened the bottle to go with squid ink fettucine with puttanesca, figuring I wanted a nice sturdy red that would stand up to the strong flavors of the puttanesca and cut some of the acid. And I do tend to prefer pairing Italian wines with Italian meals. It's probably all in my head, but they just seem to go better.
I poured a glass of the Quattro Mani to sip on as my puttanesca cooked. Sometimes I do this with red wine and find that the wine needs a few minutes to breathe before it softens, or that it's just not that quaffable of a wine and really needs food to bring out its best.
But this one is very nice all on its own or with a nice hunk of cheese. (I was snacking on a little Parrano while I cooked.) It was round, soft, and dry. Medium bodied, possibly? Very easy to drink. When I finally did try it with the puttanesca, the wine made a nice complement, although I almost wished it had a little more oomph for this particular pairing. Then again, with all the crushed red pepper I put in the puttanesca, I'm not sure any wine has quite the oomph I wanted.
Definitely a do-over, and definitely a good pairing with Italian food. I imagine it would be divine with some good pizza or osso buco.
4 comments:
hmm. I hope you know this Matt dude.
Look for low tannins and no oak. (Any wine shop geek will know what to suggest. The guy with the long hair who works at Wood-land is not a wine shop geek.)
Young wines that are good include those with a lot of fruit: pinot noir, beaujolais, really cheap Chianti, Barbera. Consider also whites (like s. blancs), which seem counterintuitive but can work well.
Finally, jug wine. That overwhelming fruity hot-at-the-back-of-your-throat flavor would go well with the dish.
did I earn a dinner invite?
sorry--offering advice when none is needed. Dinner sounds like it was delish.
K -- Yea, I was a little slow on the uptake in deleting the spam from "Matt." As for the advice, I always appreciate the opportunity to learn more. (And you have a standing dinner invite, BTW.) The problem is, I almost inevitably end up with a pile of wines I know only a little about, and a pot of food on the stove, and the need to pick a wine that goes with the food without the opportunity to consult a wine geek. So this is basically my attempt to create a crib sheet so I can make better pairings (at least, better to my palate) in the future.
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