New wines; Holiday Wine Deals, Del Posto

New wines

Duboeuf Beaujolais Nouveau 2017 - Good wine, fruity with that Gamay grape twang, light and enjoyable, no need to apologize for drinking it, $7.99 at Costco. Drink a bottle or 2 and forget about it after 1/1. Keep an eye on 2017 regular Beaujolais based upon the Nouveau.

2014 and 2015 Bordeaux's, which are good vintages, are everywhere. Excellent values for under $25. If a wine has a decent rating from Vinous, Wine Advocate, or the Wine Spectator, try it. I would not use ratings from other publications. All Bordeaux's are blends and the main grapes are Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Petite Verdot. Many of the wines now tell you the grape content on the back label.  The Merlot predominate wines are fragrant and velvety. The Cabernet Sauvignon predominate wines are more tannic and focused.

I am just beginning to try these vintages.Costco has a few. The Wine Library, Total Wine and Gary's in NJ also have some to try. Here are a few currently available and all have good ratings. I have not tried these wines.

Château Lilian Ladouys - St.-Estèphe 2014 (750ml) $22
Château Le Thil Comte Clary - Pessac-Léognan 2014 (750ml) $24

2014 Chateau Noaillac  $13
2015 Chateau Les Grands Chenes $20  

2015 Chateau L'argenteyre  $13


Holiday wine gift ideas

A number of wineries run holiday specials that include free shipping. This makes a huge difference to me as shipping can be as much as $8 per bottle. Shipping to your home can be problematic as each state has different laws and each winery interprets them differently. However here are 3 winery deals that include free shipping and that ship to many states. These wineries are also some of my favs./

Domaine Drouhin Oregon http://store.domainedrouhin.com/Events_and_Special_Offers

Tablas Creek  https://tablascreek.com/shop
Municipal Winemakers http://www.municipalwinemakers.com/

Del Posto

I had the opportunity to try Del Posto http://delposto.com/ in NYC. It is an Italian restaurant created by Mario Batali and Lidia and Joe Bastianich The food and service were excellent. 

Ravioli

 Veal

 Swordfish

The wines were very good although the wine list too long and it is very hard to take it all in. The wine list is around 180 pages so I had to make my own mini-wine list. I have never done that before but I highly recommend doing this when a wine list is ridiculously long.









Dessert wine





They have an entire room for wine glasses and use new glasses for every bottle. The Somm actually washes each glass with a small amount of the wine to be tasted.This reminds me of a recent wine issue I had at home. 

We opened a bottle of wine and I did not like it. So we used new glasses and opened another very good wine. I could not get my nose near the glass as the smell was so bad. My wife thought I was nuts. I then opened a third bottle and with new glasses and this was OK. My wife then tried my glass from the second wine and because of the smell she could not get near it either. It turned out that some of our glasses had a terrible smell from the dishwasher.

As you can tell by my story, the idea a glass could ruin a wine, never entered my mind. We use very  good wine glasses and usually wash them by hand but occasionally use the dishwasher. Maybe washing the glasses with the wine as Del Posto does is not that wacky or pretentious.

Enjoy 

Greece Part 2;Athens

Athens

We arrived at the Athens airport from Santorini when Macron the President of France was arriving. We sat in our taxi for over 45 minutes before we could move. The next day they closed the Metro for him and had thousands of police and troops all over the city.

Athens is a large city but the tourist sites are located in the central section of the city. We stayed at an Airbnb apartment in a very nice neighborhood near the Acropolis museum. We had a 1 bedroom apartment with a small garden for $83 per night. Our host was  in contact with us to make sure all was well. A small grocery store and a very good bakery were across the street. It was a great place to stay.

Food

We discovered a few  myths about Greece in our stay there. Bread - Pita bread is used for Souvlaki and gyro sandwiches but the normal bread is Italian style loaves. Baklava and some other honey based desserts are everywhere but they are very sweet, too sweet. Bakeries have many varied cookies, cakes and breads.

Lamb is not that prevalent in Greek food. We found mostly pork and chicken used for gyro and souvlaki and it was unusual for find lamb kebobs.

Greek salads do not contain lettuce. Tomatoes, onions, green peppers, feta cheese and cucmbers predominate. The feta cheese comes in larges slices and not is not as salty as the feta cheese found in the US even the Greek feta cheese.

We found the main food markets in Athens but Athens did not appear to be a foodie city. Lots of restaurants everywhere but I did not find lots of interesting food stores. Fruits were mostly fruits that we see in NJ except really nice figs were extremely cheap. The food halls had lots of fish but restaurants served mainly Sea Bream, which was in season. Sea bass was supposedly out of season when we were there.
View from the Acropolis. The Acropolis dominates the old city. It is only a relic of what it once was. You need to us your imagination.

We had dinner at he Acropolis Museum . The museum is open late on Friday evening for dinner. The food was good and reasonable but it was Italian. They had a jazz band that was quite good and the view was incomparable. See for yourself.

One of the unique things about the museum is where else can you see the original site for the artifacts in a museum from the museum itself. Fascinating.

The Acropolis from the museum.

A restaurant in the city. It was highly recommended by a British newspaper but the place was OK.

Fruit and veggies at the market. Nothing special.

Dinner in the Plaka area. Restaurant recommended by Rick Steves. Food was meh. Ambiance was great. His books are good for sightseeing Note it is really expecting too much to expect recommendations from travel and food publications to be good. Chefs change jobs all of the time. Look for chef owned restaurants.

Not sure what we drank. It was all Greek to me.

We visited the Benaki Museum.  https://www.benaki.gr/index.php?lang=enIt was really good. Small and manageable and has the history of Greece. They have a rooftop restaurant with good food and reasonable prices.

Acropolis Museum. http://www.theacropolismuseum.gr/en

Best meal we had in Athens. Near the Acropolis Museum. Arcadia restaurant.

Archaeological Museum. http://www.namuseum.gr/wellcome-en.html A great Place. it had a room with many of the top objects found on Santorini.

Odeon of Herodes Atticus: A Second-Century Theater from the Acropolis.

Acropolis Museum from the Acropolis.

Temple of Olympians Zeus built under Hadrian 

Ruins under the Acropolis Museum.

The Agora.

What do you think about this concept?

Fish market.

Benaki Museum

Benaki Museum rooftop restaurant.

Athens was fun but 4 nights was too long. 3 nights will allow you to see all that you want.

Enjoy