Wannabe Wino

With Matt's Uncle Bruce in town, we found ourselves out and about again this week. The museum he is involved with here was having an opening event and Bruce invited us along. At the event, which was very well done, a Renwood Sauvignon Blanc was served, a nice surprise and departure from the flabby Pinot Grigio or oaky Chardonnay you usually find.

After the event, we headed out to one of our favorite local Italian places, the Odeon Cafe in Dupont. To our surprise, we had to wait for a table, I guess it's getting more popular as we used to just waltz in and sit right down. We waited at the bar and ordered a bottle of 2004 E All Omo Il Vino Toscano Sangiovese.

The wine had a real cork closure, was 12.5% alcohol by volume and cost $54 for the bottle. I also wrote down that it had a pretty label and drew a picture of it. Which, given my very limited artistic skills, is quite amusing, but from what I can interpret it is two fairies (or angels) holding up a shield. Right. Another beef with restaurants and wine. The glasses were warm. I mean, I'm happy you clean your glasses, but I do not want them directly from the dishwasher. And the wine itself was warm, so I took Joel's (of Wine Life Today and Vivi's Wine Journal fame) advice from my post about warm wine in restaurants and requested an ice bucket to stick the bottle in. Our server brought one with no problem and our wine was saved! (Though he did try to take my wine out of the bucket after only about 2 minutes, but I put it right back in again.)

As for the wine, on the nose I found oak, black cherries, dark fruit, spice, earthiness and leather. In the mouth I would describe the wine as dense and dark, with spice and dark fruits, blackberries, cherries and currants. The tannins were big and I think the wine could definitely age for quite a while.

Everyone had something different for dinner, but I do sometimes like to pair an Italian wine with Italian food. Matt had lobster ravioli with a tomato cream sauce, Bruce had gnocchi with cream sauce and bacon and I had the 4 cheese fettucini. The wine was actually a nice complement to the cream sauce and I thought the pair was pretty good. We'll be back to the Odeon Cafe again as the food is always reliably good and the prices are decent. The wine list needs some help though. It's not very long or diverse and the prices are mostly in the upper $40s and above!