Dinner with friends

[Jean Fisch]

Yesterday evening. Nice evening. Good wine friends, good wheather, good food, and good wines.

With the antipasto, we also had my last bottle of Ruggeri & C Prosecco Guistino B. 2001: still the same great pleasure and fun - it really opens the appettite for more.

With a ruccola salad and prociutto crudo, we had another Walter Filiputti Venezia-Giulia Sauvignon 2000. Again an easy, food-cuddly wine that was neither too powerful nor too soft. Just right. And great value for EUR 8.

But the evening's highlight was clearly a show-stopping Miani COF Merlot 1998. Absolutely stunning wine of great length, precision, and elegance. The nose was full of ripe dark fruits (not cooked), with this touch of metal and iron that I enjoy, flowers, etc. There is also this slight bite on the nose which makes you say: "oh-oh modern". But in the mouth, this is smooth, elegant, round, yet refined and long. This is miles away from such monsters as Avignonesi's Desiderio or Rampa di Fugnano's Gisele I had recently. This wine fills your mouth with a very precise set of flavors (and does not coat your tong with acid and bitter astrigency ...). This is obviously modern wine making, but if done this way it is for the best.

A good well hung bottle of Vietti Barbaresco 1991 was ideal with Certosa cheese. The wine was very complex, but with the complexity well mastered by some straight gorgeous red fruit flavors.

With strawberries and desert, we had an excellent bottle of Giovanni Dri COF Ramandolo 1999. The nose was a bit closed at first, but then gave way to flavors of honeyed almonds, dried fruit. The wine came over as not overly sweet, which was perfect with the desert. At EUR 13 the full bottle, this is my standard desert wine.

Wine is made for food (except Mosel Riesling, which when good is made for drinking straight from the bottle).

[Craig Camp]

Jean,

How hard are the Miani wines to find where you are? I agree with you - although I normally don't go for ultra modern "International" styles - Miani really does it right. Great wines. Have you visited Enzo Pontoni? If not I highly recommend it. He only cares about his vineyards. A very special and dedicated man.

Did you consider the Vietti mature and ready to drink?

[Jean Fisch]

Miani is as difficult here as anywhere else. I get mine through Germany, and this only erratically.

As per the Vietti, the wine was fully mature as it showed already tertiary flavors. Nice ones BTW.

[Craig Camp]

Miani is as difficult here as anywhere else.  I get mine through Germany, and this only erratically.

My understanding is that most of the wine is going to England where an 'investment firm' is holding stock to sell at a significant profit in the future. Miani is almost unavailable anywhere but Germany. You can't find it in Italy either.