I’ve been a fan of Andina since immediately after it opened, so when Roxi and I found ourselves in the Pearl District in Portland on a drizzly fall Saturday, it was an easy choice for lunch...
We wisely opted for shared small plates…a word of Andina advice: the food is so good, and so wonderfully diverse, that as good as the main dishes are (and they are, they are) the small plates are always a good choice because you get to sample more of their offerings!...
The wine? I lobbied strongly for one of the truly interesting and impressive whites on the list, but Roxi was adamantine for Rioja. So we had Rioja. Unfortunately, neither of us was impressed by the 2005 Palacios Remondo Rioja. Mind you, I have tremendous respect for some of the wines Alvaro Palacios has made; and he certainly has had a profound effect on the “New Spain” style of wines---but this was not very well integrated, showed raw sweet vanilla-oak in front, a hollow and expressionless middle, and a slightly charry, bitter, tart berry finish. I’ll be charitable and say perhaps it’s going through a phase. Perhaps. And perhaps it is a wine I will never be fond of.
