italy

So, I got to attend TWO kick ass Holiday staff parties this year! Hollerrrr.

Max was kind enough to take all of us Terroni sommeliers out to dinner at Mezze. We ate some delicious Middle Eastern inspired food, had a blind tasting of wines from our all-Italian cellar and then exchanged gifts; pretty much everything that constitutes a perfect evening in my book. If you threw in a chocolate fountain and someone giving 90 minute massages my brain would have exploded, but that didn’t happen. Let’s not get carried away.

Each of us got to choose ANY bottle from the Terroni cellar. THREE people ended up bringing Etna Rosso. We sure do love us some Sicily. But, we started off with some bianco from Campania and Piemonte.

We tasted each wine one by one. Made our (usually) completely wrong (and sometimes spot on) guesses and then unveiled the bottle beneath its tin foil cocoon with gusto.

If I could only ever eat one salad for the rest of my life, it would be fattoush. It’s the salad of my people!

Warm, homemade pita glistening with honey and butter. Aaaaand SCENE.

Max brought an extra treat- a bottle of 2002 J. Lasalle Special Club Champagne. ‘Cause he’s THE BEST.

A little Slovenian/Italian Pinot Noir by way of Simcic, shall we? Yes we shall. PS- this wine was damn good with the above pâté.

Francesca unveils the Biondi M.I. she brought.

Max reveals his wine, another Etna, Salvo Foti‘s I Vigneri “Vinupetra”. Embarrassing fact- A lot of us kept thinking these Etna wines were possibly Piemonte nebbiolo. Seriously. We suck.

I thought the color of the Biondi M.I. definitely did not look like a nebbiolo (not rusty enough) and the others didn’t really either, but the lighting in the restaurant was a bit golden and dim as you can tell from the photos. Add in the fact that we were all consuming a lot of WINE and our hypothoses for the identities of the wine started to not be so awesome. Oh well.

But, we sure were having fun. I made a moving GIF of Dave revealing his Tenuta delle Terre Nere. It seemed like the right thing to do.

 

Lamb shoulder over smoked oatmeal. Very interesting combination, but delicious.

Heavenly brussel sprouts. How come I only like brussel sprouts when other people make them?

The wine I brought! 2001 Quintarelli Valpolicella. This one was unmistakable. As soon as we started drinking it, everyone started saying “Veneto”, “corvina”, “passito maybe?”, “high alcohol”. Ding ding ding!

Guiseppe actually reached into his own cellar for our oldest bottle of the night- 2000 Marchesi di Gresy Gaiun Martinega Barbaresco. A small parcel within a single vineyard- our boy Dave guessed that right. Freaky genius wine geek psychic!

We ended the evening with this delightfully warm little sweet bite- kind of like the love child of a churro and a doughnut hole. Dang! So. Good.

What a wonderful night! It’s safe to say I learned quite a bit. And left feeling even more proud to call all of these people my colleagues. Grazie to you Max and Francesca for such a delicious experience, in every sense of the word.

Happy holidays to you all! I hope everyone gets to sit around a table with the ones (and the wines) they love.

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