Showing posts with label Picolit grape varietal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Picolit grape varietal. Show all posts

Thursday, October 24, 2019

Eataly NYC Flounder Seafood Dinner

Eataly NYC Flounder Seafood Dinner

Our first night in NYC for a getaway weekend, we dined with son Alec at Eataly in the Flatiron neighborhood, one of our favorite visits when there. Eataly is a unique destination experience of all things Italian food and drink in a small village market like setting. There is a an Eataly in Boston, Chicago, Dallas, LA, two in New York, Toronto and in Las Vegas.

Dining at Eataly is an experience of an Italian village market with a market section featuring meat, cheese, seafood, pasta, wine, desserts, and a corresponding adjacent restaurant for that selection. Restaurants at the Flatiron location include Serra which means  “greenhouse” in Italian,, a seasonal rooftop restaurant, Il Pastaio di Eataly, which means "pasta maker,", a new fresh pasta bar, Manzo, meaning "beef" in Italian, a vibrant butcher-focused restaurant offering meat of all kinds, La Pizza & La Pasta featuring two of the best-loved Italian dishes: Napoli-style pizza and al dente pasta, and Il Pesce offering fresh seafood that is also sold in a market type seafood counter. There is also a wine bar with adjacent restaurant, and a Piazza village like setting offering wine, cheese and charcuterie.

As has become almost a ritual for our visits east, we ate in the Eataly Il Pesce (seafood) restaurant. We ordered for sharing the grilled flounder, one of our favorite dishes.  It is such a large portion that it is easily shared by two people and could probably accommodate another person as well.

Alec order one of his favorites, octopus.

From the winelist we ordered this white wine as an accompaniment to our seafood dinner selections.

 Bastianich Vespa Bianco Friuli-Venezia Giulia 2016

The winemaker notes say of this wine; "A tightly-wound balance of minerality and citrus, evolving over time into a denser expression of wildflowers, honey and ripe pear. Its tannic structure and acidic backbone lend it not only immediate impact, but also a long life."

This is a white wine blend of mostly Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc, with a touch of Picolit. It is from Friuli-Venezia Giulia, from the most north eastern corner of Italy, one of the twenty different wine regions of Italy.

One of the reasons I don't invest intellectually and economically in Italian wines is the complexity of having more than 500 different grape varietals, from twenty different wine regions. 

Picolit is one of those obscure grape varietals, also known as Piccolit and Piccolito. It is a white Italian wine grape varietal that is primarily grown in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region of northeast Italy. Historically it was planted in poor and infertile vineyards. It reached its height of popularity in the 1960s & 1970s, however Picolit's extremely small yields made it economically difficult to grow and therefore has limited the number of plantings.

Butter colored, light body, nicely balanced, bright tangy flavors of crisp green apple with accents of pear and citrus, nice acidity and minerality on the pleasant lingering finish.

RM 90 points.

This got 94 points from Robert Parker's Wine Advocate and 90 points from Wine Spectator.

https://www.cellartracker.com/wine.asp?iWine=3276554