Notes from an Italian wine dinner:
I like to pull some older wines from the cellar and use them as part of a dinner once or twice a year. These are the notes from my most recent dinner which was Italian based.
We started out with a couple of modest but decent whites to sip along with some liver pate on bread croutons, and small half tomatoes filled with a chevre/herb mixture.
2022 Inama Soave Classico – decent starting winemade from the Garganega grape, though not with the class of their Foscarino reserve wine.
2017 Passopisciaro Passobianco – fresh well made chardonnay with some light nutty notes.
With a terrine of chicken with a core of duck breast:
1988 Pertimali Brunello di Montalcino – still a deep red colour, with a nose of sweet dark fruit, long, balanced and still fresh – surprising at this age, but the best wine of this course.
1995 Ciacci Piccolomini d'Aragona Brunello di Montalcino Vigna di Pianrosso – plumy nose, lighter colour than the previous wine, good balance and length, with primarily red fruit, and it seemed further along in the development path than the preceding wine that was seven years older!
The next course was intended by me to be fairly light so as to provide a rest between the courses that surrounded it. It was some asparagus spears wrapped with prosciutto, and wrapped in puff pastry after filling with grated gruyere cheese (yes, I could have chosen an Italian cheese, but I just like the way the gruyere works in this preparation). The wines for this course were both IGTs.
1995 Tenuta dell'Ornellaia Bolgheri Superiore Ornellaia - Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Franc, (they also started growing some of Petit Verdot in this year but it came into production several years later). Dark wine with a nose of dark fruit, hints of cocoa and spice, excellent fruit levels and a nice lengthy finish.
1995 Antinori Tignanello – made from mostly sangiovese, (80% Sangiovese, 15% Cabernet Sauvignon, 5% Cabernet Franc) this wine had a lighter colour, some good black fruit and interestingly hints of tomato, and was an elegant pleasurable wine, but not quite up to the Ornellaia.
My main course was veal cheeks cooked long and slow with various vegetables (there to impart some character and then be discarded) in a slow oven for three hours, resulting in beef that you could cut with a spoon. Served with mushrooms done in a balsamic marinade and then roasted briefly. With this course I had decided to head for Piemonte.
1990 Parusso Barolo Mariondino – medium colour, nice slightly spicy nose of dark fruit and a tarry element, long clean finish. Only mild criticism was that it seemed to show hints of oak
1989 Pio Cesare Barolo Ornato – darker, with a similar nose, a bit more intense and excellent length. Bricking at the edges was the only sign of age. I’d call it a toss up between these two
Santero Moscatio d’Asti – this non vintage wine with 7.5% alcohol was something I picked up to accompany a dessert (pear cake) with no expectations, but it turned out to be delightful – not really sweet and with a very nice muscat nose. A few bottles will be headed for my wife’s section of the wine cellar and I might poach a bottle once in awhile on hot summer days.
With cheese:
1971 Bertani Recioto della Valpolicella Classico Superiore Amarone – sadly a shadow of it’s former self, but after the number of wines we had enjoyed, I didn’t head to the cellar to pull another bottle.