A variety of cheese, olives, salads, excellent Italian-style artisan salami, and great Acme bread-this place knows its ingredients. We had buffalo steak with mushroom wine sauce and greens, a buffalo burger, and a chicken fillet with chirri? sauce. Very nice food, with great ingredients and nice presentation.
I brought a "special occasion" bottle of 2003 Staglin Family Cabernet Sauvignon. Maybe infaticide, but at 15% and in the fruit and oak forward high abv (15%!!!) this may be a drink young wine. I actually liked this quite a bit. Sure, there was some caramel notes, but there was also excellent fruit and good savory tannins?? on the finish. The wine was surprisingly smooth for such a monster. My friend commented that "lots of things were going on in my mouth." Terrible QPR given the cult wine status, but if you are going to drink a caramel oak bomb, you can do much, much worse than Staglin Family. Even given the style, I have to respect the wine maker and the wine enough to give it a ***. (My finances need to recover before the "buy again" kicks in here, though)
Frtom the wine list, we ordered the Negroamare Salentino I mentioned in an earlier tasting note. Following the Staglin monster, this almost seemed "light."
(And, at 13.5% abv, it is light in alcohol). Smooth, rich, tobacco. More fruit than the preivous bottle, a little "sweeter" note on the palette. But, I love just looking at that jet black color in the glass!. *** tonight.
Cafaro Stag's Leap cabernet Sauvignon 2002. Joe cafaro is back. His '99 Riserva remains one of my favorite wines of all time, but the 2001 regular release was lacking. Bad vintage or not, we all liked the 2002 release. Smooth, rich, black fruit with distinct tobbaco notes. At only $30, this is fantastic QPR. Luckily, I have a bottle-I may buy more! Given the price-****