Wine news roundup and drinking the 2004 MandraRossa Fiano
I haven’t been drinking as much wine lately, so my review writing has fallen off a bit. My apologies. But I have been reading about wine online and there are some interesting stories to review.
Wines and Vines reports that the notion of “hard” and “soft” tannins might actually be a qualitative description for a quantitative phenomenon: number of tannins present in a wine:
“In another, smaller study, the Adams lab asked wineries to submit two bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon, one the winery staff felt showed hard tannin, one that showed soft. Sure enough, when these pairs were analyzed, the wines described as “hard” contained more tannin than those described as “soft”—often three to five times as much.” (link to original citation)
The San Francisco Chronicle’s online edition (the SFGate) has a wine section, and it’s quite good. If you haven’t already been reading this terrific source, check out this article on RRV and Sonoma Coast Chardonnay. Barefoot Cellars and Landmark come out on top in the tasting comparison, but the Williams Selyem Chardonnay sounds most interesting to me. But if you ask Fred McMillin, you might want to take a look at the Hanzell Sonoma Chardonnay instead.
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I began writing this post a couple of days ago, and then I went to the Coastal Kitchen for dinner. The Coastal Kitchen is a decent place, with very good seafood and relatively reasonable prices for what you get. I like it there, although I seem to get less and less impressed with each visit. Go figure.
As with all Chow Foods restaurants, the culinary and decorative theme changes every few months at the Coastal Kitchen. Right now, it’s a Sicilian theme. So last night, I tried a Sicilian wine. It was a 2004 MandraRossa Fiano, a white wine made with 100% Fiano grapes. I got this wine mostly because I had never tried a Fiano release before, and also because it was a Sicilian wine.
My thoughts on this wine are very straightforward: nice, basic white wine that smells fairly sweet like honey and a bit musky but tastes off-dry and fruity (mostly green pear and citrus flavors). You can find it for about $6-$7/bottle, so it’s certainly cheap. I had this wine with a nice mixed green salad and some sourdough bread, and the pairing was definitely a good one. I think I prefer Spanish Albarino and some of the Greek white wines, though…but I have a lot more Sicilian wine left to try before I pass any sort of judgment on that region’s wines.