Verace, a newly opened Italian restaurant in Islip, NY with three local wines on tap. By Lenn Thompson, Editor-in-Chief Photos courtesy of Verace I think we've all been there — in a restaurant that may or may not pay much attention to its wine list and may or may not pay even less attention to their by-the-glass selection — more or less offering whatever is already open, and over-charging you for it. You order a glass anyway, knowing that you're playing by-the-glass roulette. Before you even take a sip, you can pinpoint how long the bottle has been open —…
Posts Tagged“italy”
Diploma Dispatches: Central Italy
By Sasha Smith, NYC Correspondent So it came to me on Tuesday night as I was chewing on a mouthful of Vino Nobile di Montepulciano and trying to decide if I could call the tannins both “firm” and “drying”: the Diploma is to wine what dressage is to horseback riding – arcane, academic and interesting to an extremely small, and extremely passionate, group of people. This point is not lost on Mary Ewing Mulligan, (from now on, MEM for short) who reminded us that we are “operating in some never-never land” at arm’s length from the average drinker’s experience. I…
Diploma Dispatches: Northern Italy
By Sasha Smith, NYC Correspondent OK, I admit it. I’ve been feeling a little smug lately. Maybe it was the fact that I did pretty well on my study group’s blind tasting exercise. Or that I devoted a good part of my President’s Day to researching the slopes and soils of Burgundy. Or perhaps it’s just that many of the wines we’ve looked at to date, from Alsatian Rieslings to Southern Rhône reds, happen to be wines I drink frequently. Whatever the reason, up until yesterday I thought I would have no serious problem passing this test. But yesterday’s class…