So I went with my wife and some friends (and our toddler) to this restaurant--Sweet Tomatoes Trattoria--on Friday night, a place that likes to think of itself as the top Italian restaurant in our little rural corner of New England. They're probably right, though I was ultimately unimpressed with the food. However, they are reasonably with it when it comes to wine. They have a nice by the glass program that actaully offers wines of some quality rather than the jug wine that you get by the glass at a lot of other places. I ordered a "flight" of two 3 oz. glasses of Chianti Classico, this one and the 1997 Castelli del Grevepasa Chianti Classico Riserva "Clemente VII", which I will review next. The markup was still huge ($7 for, effectively, one glass of wine), but I like sampling lots of wines, so it seemed a good deal.

The wine was a nice ruby red, though the low light in the place made it impossible for me to judge the color more accurately. It offered a nice, sharp, fruity scent, somewhat reminiscent of raspberries. I was greeted with mid-level spicy and plum flavors, topped off with a rather strong acid whack. Of course, you get a Chianti for the acid in some cases--it's a quality that helps it go well with tomato sauces--but I think that the acid taste here was a result of age. It had clearly been more tannic once; but some of that had dropped out of the wine, leaving what had once been a full bodied wine somewhat weak and unbalanced.

Still, it was a solid wine, and one of the better Chiantis I've had recently. It was not, however, anywhere near as good as the 1997 Castelli del Grevepasa Chianti Classico Riserva "Clemente VII".

Back to Rook's Wine Reviews

Log in or register to write something here or to contact authors.