Dallas FW Wine-Best Cellars Saturday Chef's Series with Daniele Osteria

Daniele Osteria will be our featured guest this Saturday, December 10, from 2—4 pm, as part of Best Cellars ongoing Saturday Chef’s Series. Lauded by the Dallas Morning News, Chef Daniele Puleo’s mostly Sicilian menu blends deceptively simple elements that always seem to add up to more than the sum of their parts. With Chef Puleo’s menu we’ll pair four of Best Cellars’ own Italian gems.

2004 Maculan Pino & Toi—a crisp, refreshing blend of pinot grigio, pinot bianco, and tocai fruiliano from the Veneto. With pinot grigio dominating the blend, the Maculan is a style with which most will be familiar. The pinot bianco and tocai add a bit of texture, complexity, and minerality.

2002 Librandi Ciró Rosso Classico—Librandi is the best-known producer in this little-known DOC in Calabria (the toe of Italy’s boot). Crafted from a blend of gaglioppo (Calabria’s main grape) and greco nero, Librandi’s Ciró is a unique wine. Soft yet sharp, sweet yet sour, it’s reminiscent of crushed berries—lots of flavor with a little pucker thrown in.

2002 Pozzi Rosso—since Daniele Osteria features Sicilian cuisine, it is only natural that we feature a Sicilian wine; Pozzi’s robust rosso, crafted from 100% nero d’avola. It’s a rich wine with a deep purple color with hints of orange on the fringe (a characteristic also found in the Librandi and other southern Italian reds). In the glass it, full of ripe fruit, with gentle tannins and a surprisingly long finish.

1999 Melini La Selvanella Chianti Classico—chianti producers are still trying to shake off the image of the straw-covered fiasco, an atrocity that many of us have enjoyed in our favorite pizza parlor a few years back. Beginning in the late 1970’s a few producers bucked the high production, mass export trend that had dominated the region since the 1950’s. They countered with denser vine plantings and experimented with different sangiovese clones (the Chianti 2000 project), all with intent to produce a quality wine that was a true expression of their grapes and region. By all accounts, they’ve succeeded. The string of excellent vintages that occurred in the late 1990’s was attributed by many to advantageous weather alone, but many winemakers say that the outstanding wines produced in 1997, 1998, 1999, and 2000 were the result of many years of effort, intense vineyard cultivation, more advanced winemaking techniques, and a desire to dispel the image of that straw-covered bottle.

So, to this particular wine. As has been noted, 1999 was an outstanding vintage, and Melini’s is a prime example. Sourced from the La Selvanella vineyards in the heart of Chianti Classico, the wine is rich and balanced from start to finish. It’s softer and rounder than one might expect, and with a ripe mid-palate and great, not-too-tart finish.