Astor Wines & Spirits just opened their doors in their new location on Lafayette Street. It’s a spiffy looking place. Huge, airy, polished wood. It looks much like the Parisian wine store, Lavinia. In fact it’s even equipped with a room for fragile wines. Nice touch.
Mauro Mascarello (wonderful producer from Piemonte) and Mike Wheeler (from Polaner Imports) were offering tastes of the Mascarello barbera and dolcetto (and freisa, but I had to ask).
I do love the Mascarello wines. The 2003 dolcetto is fat, juicy and even tannic—not what I tend to think of dolcetto but it’s the vintage—atypical. Still, it had a dolcetto dustiness and freshness about it. For under $14 a bottle? Oh, yes indeed.
A lanky guy I recognize from my neighborhood, kind of a --cross between Philip Glass and, I don’t know, the corner- candy- store- guy-behind- the- pretzel-jar-of of my youth, picks up a bottle. He seems pressed for time, as if his Mini Cooper (Hey, I know he rides a bike, remember?) is at a timed-out meter and the meter maid is meters away. He grabs a bottle and asks Mike “How long do I have to let it breathe?” Mike looked a little startled because the wine is drinkable as soon as the cork comes out but will obviously evolve in a cool way within a little bit of time. I look at the candy-store man. He really seems to want an answer. He wants a wine that needs time. Mike gives in to the pressure, “An hour should do it.”
Man plunks the bottle down, his trench coat trailing behind him says, ‘That’s too long, my wife and I can’t ever wait.”
Mike and I looked at each other, as if to say, do you see what we’re up against?
That's what white wine is for. You open a bottle of white and have a glass while the red wine is 'breathing." It's not rocket science.
I bought two bottles. Inspiring, affordable dolcetto that tastes better with an hour or two of aeration is almost impossible to find these days.
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