Mi casa su casa

What I love more than anything else is sitting down and cooking a nice meal and enjoying it, along with a few bottles of wine, with some friends new or old. Since my readers are from throughout cyberspace, distance prevents this from happening. So, barring my inability to concentrate too long, I'm going to walk you through our imaginary dinner, or more importantly, our selction of wines, at a well-known Pittsburgh restauarant, the Sonoma Grille. Before you ask, I have no affiliation with it whatsoever, it just has a really nice wine list for lover's a California wines. Even wine lists in many other major metropolitan areas boast more eccentric, pretentious or what have you wine lists, this i s a good one to look at and perhaps have you look at a wine list the way I do.

Their web site is http://www.thesonomagrille.com/

Before we even get to food, we're going to start with a bottle of sparkling wine. The sparkling wine list is http://www.thesonomagrille.com/WineList.php?SECT=4&CAT=2&SEP=20.

First, what are we dealing with:

Kenwood Brut NV (California) $7/glass $28/bottle
Villa Sandi Prosecco NV (Italy) $8/$32
Gloria Ferrer Blanc de Blanc 2001 (Carneros) $44
Schramsburg Blanc de Noirs 2001 (Carneros) $75
Iron Horse "Russian River Cuvee" 1999 (Sonoma) $80
J Brut Rose NV (Napa) $82
Veuve Clicquot "Yellow Label" (France) $16/$90
J Schram 1999 (Napa) $175
Dom Perignon 1998 (France) $250

Okay. We're going to elimate anything above $100 for starters, because we're going to have four bottles of wine - 1 sparkler, 1 white, 2 reds and maybe after dinner drinks. We're also going to eliminate anything outside of California (although I love Prosecco): after all we're at the Sonoma Grille, not Alain Ducasse. We want to experience California. So we're looking at the following choices:

Kenwood Brut NV (California) $7/glass $28/bottle
Gloria Ferrer Blanc de Blanc 2001 (Carneros) $44
Schramsburg Blanc de Noirs 2001 (Carneros) $75
Iron Horse "Russian River Cuvee" 1999 (Sonoma) $80
J Brut Rose NV (Napa) $82

I've never had Kenwood sparkling wine, and I'm sure it's good, but frankly Kenwood is best known for it's Merlot, and Merlot is not a grape that goes into sparkling wine, so I'm deleteing that as well. (I'll be honest, I didn't know they made sparklers.) Gloria Ferrer is a nice enough choice. As one enters Sonoma County from the south, the vineyards that line the highway are Gloria Ferrer. You're in the Carneros AVA, one that straddles souther Napa and Sonoma. It is a cooler region owing to the breezes that blow north off the bay. This is a good choice, expecially if we're pinching pennies, but we're going to look further. I REALLY like Schramsberg. Schramsberg was the sparkling wine that Nixon served to the Chinese during a summit in the 1960's. Even so, we don't want Blanc de Noirs. Real Champagne (and those wines that copy it from outside of France) use three grapes in their production - Chardonnay (White) and Pinot Noir or it's lesser-known cousin Pinot Meunier (both Red Grapes). Blanc de Noirs (literally white from blacks) is Champagne made entirely from the two red grapes. While the color is still lightish, the body is fuller, in fact, fuller than we want at the beginning of a multi-course dinner with four bottles. By the same reasoning, we're skipping the Rose. Hence, we are left with one of my old-stand bys, Iron Horse "Russian River Cuvee", not an unenviable choice. The Russian River Valley is a coller microclimate perfect for sparkling wine production (as is Carneros as we have mentioned). By it's nature of using both white and red grapes, it's flavorful but yet refershing, and a perfect way to start the dinner.

Peruse the menu and the whites, and we'll start picking our appetizers next time...