Two bottle night.

I didn't drink a lot of wine on my recent trip home, but one night Thud and I managed to polish off two bottles.  We did have some help, however, as Lord Roby and Miss Roby (his daughter) stopped by for a glass of something red and Sicilian.
The Torretta Di Mondelli, 2013, Nero d'avola (IGP Terre Siciliane) was not a particularly outstanding wine, it wasn't really very complex and only medium bodied, but it had plenty of fruit - various black and red berries - and an attractive liquorice component.  Not too tannic, not too acidic, just a nice wine.  Really nice considering the price was around £6.00 ($10.00), a bargain.
The Torretta was better than the other wine we drank.  The Palastri, 2012, Primitivo (IGT Puglia) was palatable, full bodied, but the fruit was just had a little stewed fruit thing going on.  Actually, I thought the wine was alright, but Thud didn't like it at all.  And the proof of the Primitivo pudding was, although it paired fairly decently with our evening meal of goulash, the bottle did not get emptied.

Nero d'Avola strikes again.

The weather is back on track. Thank goodness! It got up to a very pleasant 82 degrees today.

Vinomaker and I just finished a nice dinner of fettuccine alla bolognese, paired with a delightfully spicy, gingery 2009 Tami' Nero d'Avola. At only 13% alcohol, I treated myself to two glasses...hic!

A pleasant tipple.

Enjoyed this bottle of rosé last night, purchased from the supermarket chain Tesco. Deeply pink and very fruity it was delightful. Thud and I enjoyed a bottle of the red version of this wine, from the same producer, about a week ago. I have to say I think I could become very fond of any wine, red or rosé, made from this Sicilian grape variety. I shall have to explore further.

The black grape of Avola.

Because Do Bianchi asked so nicely, I decided to say just a few words about the Sicilian wine I recently drank that had the Vino-seal closure. I usually try to steer clear of reviewing wine, but here goes.
Cusumano's 2007 Nero d'avola (the most widely planted of Sicily's indigenous red varietals), is a fruit driven, surprisingly high alcohol wine with a distinct Mediterranean character. Dark cherries and damsons abound, buoyed by a bright acidity. The pleasant spicy-plum finish is ample consolation for the fact that the wine is a tad unbalanced (due to the heat at the end.)
All in all, this offering of Nero d'avola was very entertaining because of it's unique closure, and was eminently quaffable because of the high standard of winemaking .
I hope the next bottle will be just as enjoyable. Never buy just one.

Vino-seal.

There is an ongoing, didactic discourse on certain wine blogs about which is the best closure for wine. It is an interesting topic, but sometimes the preachiness of it all gets a little tiresome. A screw cap can be a perfectly acceptable closure for a wine that you do not intend to age. Some proponents of the use of nothing but all natural cork are reaching ridiculous heights of brinkmanship, e.g. the folks at Celani Family Vineyards who feel the need to apprise the consumer of the exact size, to the closest millimetre, of the cork that bungs up their Cabernet sauvignon. I generally care more about what is in my glass, not how it manages to stay in the bottle.
One of the wines Vinomaker, I and everyone else drank after the christening, a week last Sunday, was a tasty offering from Sicily. It didn't really matter what the grape varietal was, we were all so enamoured with the Vino-seal closure that the contents of the bottle became secondary. Small things amuse...