Saturday, October 24, 2009

Villa Antinori 2004 Toscana

Dan picked this up last weekend for dinner for just over $20. He really likes dry Italian wines, whereas I go for the sunny, fruity California wines. But I have to admit that when you start spending decent money on wine, it doesn't matter so much where it's from and what it's like, because it's likely to be an excellent specimen. So it was with this one. I fully admit I know jack about this type of wine. It was dry, and a little metalic/earthy, and it needed to breathe for about 10 minutes, and it was astonishingly good.

Thursday, October 1, 2009

bison in Banff and the Tinhorn Creek Merlot

I spent the past five days in Banff, Alberta, Canada, initially for work, and then for fun. On the last evening of my stay, after a two day backpacking trip, my backpacking buddy and I decided to grab dinner in town. We'd planned to go to a burger joint, but failed to find it, and I mentioned that I'd accidentally walked into a -- and I quote -- "shi-shi but cool-looking" restaurant the night before that might be worth trying. I located it, noted that it was called "bison" with a lowercase b, and in we went! Marc had venison a la blah blah blah, and I had "the pork dish", which was grilled pork loin, charred pork belly (i.e. a block of bacon), and a risotto of wild rice, corn and cilantro. The food was simply a-m-a-z-i-n-g! This was hands down one of the best meals I've had anywhere in the world. We paired our meats with the Tinhorn Creek Merlot, from nearby Okanagan Valley, which turned out to be an excellent choice, spicy as the wine was. One of my most memorable -- and expensive, but who's counting -- meals to date. Hats off to Canada!