Saturday Night – Mixed Grill

Mick and Amy came over this past Saturday night for dinner. It was my turn to cook and I’d been craving Caesar salad for awhile so it was the first course. I paired it with a Louis Jadot Bourgogne which we have had a number of times(see Wine List for reviews). This wine for its $20 price point should be a staple in anyone’s wine cellar, is it always consistently good year after year and pairs well with a number of foods. It is a great pairing with Caesar salad.

"Croutons with a side salad"

For the main course I did a mixed grill and it had been long week so I want something special to pair with this food. I picked a 2005 Tignanello as my pairing for the night. I tried this wine before at a Wine Club bonus tasting (http://zippysauce.blogspot.com/2009/03/wine-club-bonus-tasting.html) and picked up this bottle right after that tasting as I wanted to share it with my wife and Mick and Amy as I really enjoyed it at the time.

"Mixed Grill"

The Tignanello had a huge nose of dark berries, tar and cocoa. It was a touch tannic and hot which surprise me a bit but was also a nice big wine. The mixed grill threw the wine for a loop; at times as is was awesome and not so good at other times. I’ll be honest here and say that I missed with this pairing and think this would have been better with rare roast beef or rare beef tenderloin vs. all the different things that were on the plate with the mixed grill.

"Worth a $100 per bottle?"

Here is the group rating for the wine – Mick - 90, Mark - 89, Kathy – 87, Amy - 87, Overall – 88.25.

(See link above to Bonus Tasting for LCBO information on the wine.)

My miss at the pairing here was probably the main reason the ladies were a touch tight on their ratings as this wine did have a lot going for it. On the other hand, with its $100 price tag maybe they were looking for a little more from this wine to justify this price.

Cheers!

Mark