Sunday, June 29, 2008

Teanum Otre Negroamaro 2006



An Italian wine from EMart. About 20,000 wonish.

We decided to make a pizza earlier in the week. Mozzarella, basil, fresh and sun-dried tomatoes and olives. Very Korean. As I was tasked with doing the shopping I decided to pick up a cheeky bottle to wash it all down. I decided to go the Italian route and this bottle proudly displayed an International Wine Challenge seal of approval and I thought why not?

Negroamaro is not a grape I am familiar with, perhaps as it was a victim of the EU vine pull schemes, and so I went into this with a completely open mind.

This is not a heavily extracted wine, it is not particularly intense in colour, somewhat contradicting its name. The nose didn't really do much for me, it was lightly fruity but had a really unappealing characteristic. The only way I can describe it is as the slightly scruffy kid at school who you always suspected didn't wash as much as he should and so carried around a slightly earthy funk to him. Not really what I want in my wine.

It is an acidic wine, fairly light bodied with soft tannins, again suggesting only limited extraction. It is however, pretty good. There is enough fruit to make the acidity appealing and it is a light, bright glass of red wine. Lots of red fruit with raspberry, not so much the flesh but more the seed that gets stuck in your teeth and a few hours later you manage to extract and chew. Delicious. Also, I got a really unmistakable orange quality, which with the cranberry fruit made it almost like a good Cosmopolitan.

Not bad at all and went well with the pizza.

Tonight, in celebration of the baking temperatures here in Korea we are making a pie. Meat and potato pie with mashed potato and mushy peas. Summer food at its finest? I am going to make up an extra batch of pastry though and fully intend to make a dalk galbi(닭갈비) pie this week. I suspect that this is the idea that is going to make me a millionaire.

3 comments:

Daniel Lee Gray said...

what wine would you recommend with the dakgalbi pie? Sounds intriguing

squirrelandgman said...

I am not sure there is a wine out there that would stand up to my dakgalbi. It really is firery hot. Korean food can be a pain to match really. I guess if you toned down the heat a bit you could go with a decent Riesling. Has the acidity to cut through the fat of the pastry and refresh from the heat and you could get one that had a touch of sweetness to match with the sweet pots and slightly sweet sauce.
Pie and beer is probably a better match though. It has stood the test of time.

Anonymous said...

looks delish...