The Golden Vineyard.

This past Tuesday, the 19th, was Vinomaker's birthday, whoo hoo!  To celebrate the anniversary of his birth, I bought yours truly, ahem, Vinomaker a bottle of Vigna Dorata Brut (Franciacorta DOCG).  I am just so good to myself him.  Titter, titter.
In all honesty not the world's most complex sparkling wine, but very enjoyable nonetheless, and seemingly a tad unbalanced on first impression, the Vigna Dorata opened up to reward the palate and nose with huge dollops of delicious appley-ness.  A blend of 80% Chardonnay and 20% Pinot noir, I, I mean we, quite enjoyed this bottle of metodo classico Italian fizzy stuff.
I also gifted Vinomaker a bottle of Château Du Tariquet Bas-Armagnac.  Armagnac is one of Vinomaker's favourite after dinner tipples and this particular bottle, aged for 15 years and made exclusively from the Folle blanche grape, apparently did not disappoint.  I wouldn't know, I am not a spirits drinker, I'll have to take his word for it.  More bubbles, please.

A Chianti fiasco.

I have gotten off to a rather slow blogging-start to 2014. Being on holiday will do that to a person: rest and relaxation have been available in abundance.  What hasn't been available in abundance is wine. Vinogirl has been a tad under the weather, so, consequently, I have been a little off the vino.  However, I did imbibe in a cheap and cheerful Chianti, a 2012 offering from Famiglia Castellani, which paired very well with Thud's beefy-bucatini dinner offering. To be honest, a lot of time wasn't spent in the choosing of this £6.99 ($11.00) wine.  Thud picked this particular bottle of Chianti because it came in a flask, or fiasco, a familiar sight on shop shelves years ago, but not so common now. This uncomplicated wine paired fairly well with the pasta...and the packaging was, for me, nostalgic fun.

Vin Pseudo.

In Europe, Parmesan cheese by definition must be produced in the Parma region of Italy, ditto with Parma ham. I don't get quite as agitated as my brother does about the American penchant for calling certain food items by what is traditionally considered their place of origin, when clearly the foods in question have been produced domestically in the USA. I simply attribute his alarm at these aberrations of nomenclature to the fact that he has lived all of his adult life under the labeling constraints of the European Union. On a personal level, I do appreciate the fact that Americans usually refrain from calling domestically produced sparkling wine Champagne - so, dear brother, all is not lost. However, at a dessert wine tasting the other day I must admit that I, myself, did experience a little bit of distress over one particular wine: a Vin Santo produced in St. Helena.

Vin Santo, Tuscany's classic dessert wine, is a deeply amber-coloured wine that is made from dessicated grapes. Without going into the maddening complexities of Italy's DOC or DOCG laws, it is generally understood that having DOC/G on a wine's label at least guarantees some semblance of authenticity as to the wine's origin. Whilst I know Vin Santo isn't an actual place, indeed they also produce a Vin Santo in Montepulciano, it did get me thinking about the naming of certain food products. Should the name Vin Santo be reserved for a dessert wine exclusively produced in Italy? Or is Vin Santo simply the name for this particular style of winemaking? Questions, questions.

As for the wine itself, in my opinion, the Il Ponte from L'Uvaggio di Giacomo Winery, wasn't a very good interpretation of this unique Italian digestif. Let me put it another way, I won't be dunking my biscotti into a glass of Il Ponte any time soon.

As today is the feast day of the patron saint of winemakers, St. Morand, maybe a little divine intervention will answer these questions for me. Holy Moly!