Dinner- Palisades (Abruzzo, Italy)

This past Thursday Marie and I wanted to hit up the Palisades again and this time we took our ever faithful comrade in arms, Derek!  This week it was wines and food from Abruzzo, Italy.  All week we had been hyping up the Palisades to him and like always the incessant verbal prodding by us finally won him over to our side and he agreed to come...I think he secretly enjoys our nagging.  Anyways, again we set off on 460 towards nowhere and this time, because I didn't bring my gps, we did actually get lost...kinda.  I just happened to take the wrong turn off of 460 and ended up driving up a very similar road as the one to Eggleston.  However, this one had a degree of creepy sketchiness to it that finally convinced me that we were on the wrong road.  Like always when I mess up I don't hear the end of it from the two clowns that I'm transporting (Marie and Derek)  They just feed off of each other and it's almost more than one man can handle.  Lucky for us all I have the will power and character of a stately saint and took it all in stride.  So eventually we found the right road and made it to Eggleston.  Derek had the exact same reaction we had when we went to the Palisades for the first time too.  He thought we were joking when I pulled up to the old general store.  

Again, if you don't remember, this is what the restaurant
looks like from the outside.

We got there early so the restaurant was largely empty and had the pick of tables to sit at.  Again, we were seated quickly and told our waitress that we were here for the wines around the world meal and asked for everything to be brought out together.  We did, however, decide to this time get a bottle to split between the three of us while we waited for our meal.  We tried to pick one that we thought would go with the meal and the weather, which was absolutely beautiful so we decided on a nice easy drinking and refreshing Riesling.

Marie and Derek trying to decide which bottle to get.

We sat for a while waiting for our food, it had picked up considerably in the time that we were there, but it was of no real concern to us.  We were enjoying each others company and conversation over what I thought was a very nice wine.  Eventually the meal came.  It is at this time that I have to apologize to you all.  I was so excited by the meal that I completely forgot to take a picture of it.  It was a plate consisting of a sizable wedding meatball in a delicious marinara sauce, a Tuscan bread salad and an asparagus/Parmesan risotto.  This was all paired with a 2010 Trebbiano D'Abruzzo from Caldora, a 2010 Montepulciano Rosato from Masciarelli and a 2010 Montepulciano D'Abruzzo from Cirelli.

Unlike last time I decided to just dig in to the meal and just try one wine with one part of the dish.  Before I started though I tried to think of what would be the best combination...not sure I got it right but I enjoyed the experiment.

The Caldora I decided to pair with the Risotto.  On its own it really didn't have much of a nose to it at all.  I asked Marie and Derek if they got much of anything and they also had a hard time getting any kind of scent from the wine.  After several good huffs of it really trying to get something I did get a slight hint of peach.  On the palate it was nice and dry with a very light body.  It was slightly tart and strangely a little cheesy.  There was no heat that I detected on it either.  When paired with the Risotto, however, it became much smoother and sweeter.  Many of the peach aspects began to come through more and it gained a bit more body in my opinion.

I paired the Masciarelli with the Tuscan bread salad.  By itself it was much more aromatic than the Caldora. There were tons of sweet apples on the nose and it had a nice full round body to the nose as well.  I felt as though there was a very pleasant smoky molasses hint that mixed with a raisin note to give it its fuller body.  On the palate it honestly had a bit of a funk to it.  It wasn't anything bad just a bit of an earthy dirt to it that wasn't expected.  There wasn't really any discernible sweetness to it either and it had a little heat on the end of it.  The Tuscan bread salad wasn't the best choice for this wine in my opinion.  I'm not sure I enjoyed the wine much to begin with and the bread salad just made it worse.  It seemed to bring out more heat all the way through the palate and what little sweetness there was to begin with was completely taken away after the salad.  After starting off with such a nice nose I was very disappointed by the taste.

The Cirelli I paired with the meatball.  It had a nose that I think was the most interesting.  It was full of rich plum and cherry notes that were offset by a nice earthy vegetal undertone.  There was a nice molasses smoke that gave it a nice full body and it had a bit of heat on it as well.  The palate had a good amount of tannic structure to it and a small amount of heat on the end.  Nice light cherry notes came through on the sweet end and served to counter the tannins quite nicely.  After such a strong nose I was surprised to feel that it was a fairly light bodied wine on the palate.  With the meatball the robustness of the wine really jumped.  More dark deep fruit flavors came to the forefront and it became noticeably smoother and rounder.  The tannins calmed considerably but the heat seemed to jump a bit.

Derek, Marie and myself after our delicious meal.

After a very satisfying and surprisingly long meal we decided it was time to leave.  I believe that my favorite was the Cirelli but I can't help but to wonder if I had paired the other ones differently if I would have liked them more.  Again, I apologize for the lack of photos, I only remembered the camera about the time that I was taking my last bite.  I won't be making that mistake again!