TN: Some Father's Day wines Since we needed to claim some wines Jean bought at auction a while ago in Chicago, we decided to make a weekend of it. A very decent dinner was had Friday at Caliterra, the Cal-Ital restaurant in our hotel. With our meal we had: 2003 Marco Felluga Pinot Grigio color: pale yellow-green nose: delicate floral notes and white peaches palate: round, moderately fruity with good balance and a clean finish Having enjoyed the PG of his brother Livio in the past, we took a chance on this wine. Nice enough and seemed to have benefitted from barrel aging, though there was no overt oakiness, but certainly a different color from Livio's. It went well with my seafood ravioli in squid ink sauce. Sat. night we dined at Shanghai Terrace, an upscale Shanghai-Cantonese restaurant located in yet another hotel in The Loop. Sidenote: we had a great meal here and their 4th floor terrace has wonderful outdoor seating. With scallop shu mai and lobster dumplings: Nicolas Feuillate NV Brut nose: simple and yeasty with a bit of underlying apple palate: slightly coarse mousse, understated flavors Having recently had a Laurent-Perrier Brut, we were a bit spoiled, but the Champagne was serviceable and did complement the dim sum, which had a fair amount of ginger, scallion and cilantro in them. With whole braised red snapper in ginger-scallion sauce: 2001 Zind-Humbrecht Wintzenheim Gewürztraminer (375 ml, Indice 1) color: golden yellow nose: spicy lychee but a touch hot palate: rich, moderate acidity, deep fig-like fruit, more than a hint of RS and a lovely finish Great stuff, and very good with the fish. It wasn't acutally our first choice, but the 1-2 bottle of '02 Bründlmayer GV was sold out :( Tonight with lamb I opened 1997 Sociando-Mallet color: dark garnet with brick at the edges nose: cbuttis, soy sauce and cedar palate: initally a bit closed, but with airing it took on depth and richness, medium body and good acidity We are starting to open up our limited stash of '97s while waiting for the '95s and '96s to come around, and this one was a good if uncomplex wine. The virtues of this vintage IMO are getting true Bordeaux character without a decades-long wait... oh, and the prices were good, too! ;-) postscript: we did pick up Jean's ill-gotten gains, and I also managed to nip into Sam's where I picked up the '02 Roumier MSD La Bussière and '02 Huet CdB and LHL demi-secs. There's still some left on the shelves... Mark Lipton 
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