Saturday Night Special

Alright, this is something I’ve been meaning to get started for a while, but I’ve always managed to fail.  So tonight, I’m getting one out when it’s so easy.  Though come to think of it, I completely failed to get an image of dinner.  Not the point.

Unique in a good way

Tonight, dinner was pizza.  Specifically, a thick crust pizza with sausage, (sliced, not diced) tomatoes, and roasted red peppers from Unique Pizza & Subs.  It was actually quite tasty, though I prefer their Bacon Cheeseburger special.  I don’t actually know what else to say about it.  It’s better than Little Caeser’s, better than Domino’s, honestly is just good food.  I approve.

To go with it, though, we had a wine.  Now, wine might not be the first thing you think of to go with a pizza.  I’ll admit, it’s not normally for me, either.  But we were going to have wine tonight before we were offered free pizza, so we took a gamble on one of the bottles I had on hand, which fortunately turned out to be a perfect match for the pizza.  Tonight we had a nice bottle of Diana, an off-dry red (despite it’s claim to be a straight dry), a blended wine from northern Italy.  Italian wines are not something I normally pick up (Chilean is totally the way to go, actually), but this came on a recommendation from one of the guys at Brennan’s, where I get all my wines these days.

Diana 2003

Frankly, I’m glad we opened it up for the pizza.  It was a perfect accompaniment to something of the sort.  While it might have stood up to a more interesting or sophisticated meal, I don’t think it would have given me what I was looking for like it did tonight.

As I said, the wine—at least to me—was more of an off-dry than a full-on dry as the label suggests.  It was also fairly full of fruit, had nice smooth tannins, and was not particularly complicated; in other words, ideal for more “common” foods.  I think it would have worked equally well with anything that a merlot or a zinfandel would normally be paired with.  On a related note, it might well be a good match for something like steak and potatoes, but I’m a bit biased against simple wines; I like something interesting, most of the time.  In any event, it’s an undemanding wine, and so long as you’re not looking for something sweet (or complex), I think most people could get behind it.

In particular, Josh, I think this is one that could really work for you.  It’s 80% Rebo/20% Merlot, and while I haven’t the faintest idea what a Rebo grape is about (never heard of it aside from this bottle), it plays somewhere between a Merlot and a (somewhat flat) Cabernet Sauvignon.  So if you’re looking for a red sometime, and you happen to see this bottle, think about picking it up for something a little different, in a non-threatening way.

So, that’s my first Saturday Night Special.  Hopefully, this can become a regular feature (and a bit better arranged and written) going forward.