Hello;
These days, with loads of up tempo restos serving a huge number of tapa
sized dishes (as in, "Our 17-course menu degustation"), finding a wine that
will neatly cover all the said dishes is very close to impossible. Of
course, unless you are c 20 persons sharing the same menu.
Enter the Wine Menu. A selection of wines by glass, specially chosen by Our
Wine Waiter/Sommelier/Consultant/A Guy in the Barber Shop Who is Really
interested in Wines ...
These may be fairly good examples of the wine maker´s craft - and sometimes
they are not.
LAst week, Xina and self dauntlessly entered the Stockholm high octane
eatery of "Vassa Eggen", there to squander our patrimony and wits, what
little of these still remains. Needless to say, the resto had a menu (we
choose the 5-course version) and a wine menu. After a glass of decideldy
forgettable Grüner Veltliner, as an aperitif, we ... got another glass of
the same, name of which totally escapes me, except for it ending in the word
"Lam", but which had no redeeming features what soever, so let´s forget
about it. It was followed by a LAgrein from Elena Walch, 2003, very toasted,
almost like smelling the smoke from a very fine cigar ... but apart from
that, a very standard red.
And so on. A Pinot Noir from Oz (Dalwinnie, 2001) which tasted nothing like
any Pinot Noir I´ve had, funky, really, not as if the wine had gone bad -
rather like it wasn´t a very good wine. And so on.

This may qualify as the most uninspired wine menu I´ve had since Neichel in
Barcelona, a cronic underachiever by all accounts. And it cost ... SEK 600?
That translates inot USD 85 or EU 66, which, to my mind, is rather a lot of
money. It is, however, rather less than the average price of a bottle of
wine in the "Vassa Eggen"!

Now, my question, gentles all, is, what´s your take on the wine menu
phenonem ... phenomon ... wine menus?
Do you regularly get good glasses of wine, in small quantities, at
acceptable prices? Or do you get the feeling of a sort of, one size fits
all, we pour it, you drink it? Do you as a rule order the wine menu, if
there is one?

Your input is deeply appreciated.

Cheers

Nils Gustaf

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Respond to nils dot lindgren at drchips dot se