Atwood Cafe - Chicago, IL - 10/13/10

Every so often some random person I know who doesn't venture into the city much will tell me they're going to a play and ask for a restaurant suggestion - the answer I give nine times out of ten is Atwood Cafe.  The food is solid and the location just about perfect for many of the big theaters.

I was surprised, then, to see I have never actually written about it here.  We haven't been since the new chef, Derek Simcik, took over - so I figured it was my duty to snag a reservation and check it out.



Ahi Tuna Tartar - waffle cones, wasabi vinaigrette.

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Fried Oysters - cornmeal crusted oysters, spicy remoulade, scallion relish.

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Slow Roasted Rabbit - braised carrots, onions, carrot purée, beaten biscuts

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Duck² - duck confit, roasted duck breast, dumplings, peas, roasted hen of the woods, English pea purée, carrot mash

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"Coffee" And Donuts - house-made donuts, triple espresso gelato

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For wine, we had the feature of the month that was a very nice Vina Perallilo Arenal Carmenere. While it was solid, upon further research the markup was a mindboggling, and I'm going to go right on ahead and call it offensive (to the payer, not the payee), 500% It was a good bottle, groingrabbingly good for $9 in fact, and I get markups are a fact of dining out, but 500%? I think I'm soured.

The Heather Terhune days were excellent...the new guy's been around for a few months so there are still kinks to work out - but he's well on his way.

2008 Georges Duboeuf Brouilly Beaujolais

We tried this one at Beaujolais tasting a few months back and this was my favorite on the table. It retails for about $13.

Cherry pie filling on the nose - rich, syrupy, sugarfied cherry.

More of that cherry pie filling on the palate as well, with a dash of cola and raspberry thrown in as well. A bit short of acid (or perhaps a bit too sweet), but there are a surprising amount of mouth drying tannins, so much so I can't help but get an oversteeped white tea sort of thing.

A carob sort of quality comes through on the finish, raspberry as well, with a bit of a black tea thing as well.

No arguments at all. For those who only know Nouveau and other sub-$10 Beaujolais wine, this would be a good one to try - drop a few bucks more and see what the region can actually offer.

Score: 87

Tweet and Taste Michigan!

Alright, the Tweet and Taste seemed to go rather well.

I had an array of connection issues, so my participation while not quite shameful, was admittedly lacking. I apologize to the folks at Silver Leaf and Shannon and Cortney at Michigan by the Bottle for the constant coming and going.

The wines were good - the Riesling was quite good, especially at the $14 pricetag. I've had a lot of Michigan Rieslings and this was one worth seeking out. The Pinot Gris, while not quite my style, actually worked rather well. The Purple Foot, a Lemberger, was a bit elusive - not bad, but I struggled with coming up with much beyond blueberry. It was the sort of wine I'd want to have a full bottle to myself to report on...hardly a bad thing!

Kudos to everyone involved!

If you're interested in reading what people had to say, just hit up Twitter and search #ttmi - you can read the old posts. I'd also check Michigan by the Bottle for a video recap and transcript in the coming days.

N/V Silver Leaf Purple Foot

Silver Leaf is a new winery on the Leelanau Peninsula in northern Michigan. The grape in this wine is Lemberger (or Blaufrankisch). This retails for $16 through the winery.

Black fruit - superripe plum - and a bit of black pepper on the nose.

I don't know. This is a tough wine. Tart cherry. Quite dry, nice tannins, black pepper, but...well, I just don't know. Nothing is jumping out...you can go either way with this, either it's crap and nothing's there or it's coy and elusive....I'm going closer to coy. As it opens, some blueberry really comes through. Nice.

A bit of chocolate on the finish.

A really tough wine to rate. I like that it's dry and firm, but it's just not really working for me....I hate to say it, but I'd need another bottle to really know, but for now I give it a B.

This wine was consumed and reviewed as part of the Tweet and Taste Michigan Wine on Thursday, October 7, 2010. This was not tasted blind and the bottle was comped - all effort has been made to be as objective and honest as possible.

Score: 85

2009 Silver Leaf Riesling

Silver Leaf is a new winery on the Leelanau Peninsula in northern Michigan. This bottles retails for $14 through the winery. There's a ton of solid Riesling from this state, let's see how this one holds up...

Pink grapefruit and a bit of spiced peach on the nose, with a dash of fresh chamomile.

Nice balance - not much sugar, so the acid balanceds it out without being too overpowering. I get more a floral thing on the palate - orange blossom I'm thinking. Spiced peaches, maybe some apricot thrown in as well.

A bit of that fuzzy spiced peach on the finish, with more orange blossom.

For $11, I quite like this. It's nicely put together, nothing overwhelms, but nothing is out of order.

This wine was consumed and reviewed as part of the Tweet and Taste Michigan Wine on Thursday, October 7, 2010. This was not tasted blind and the bottle was comped - all effort has been made to be as objective and honest as possible.

Score: 87

N/V Silver Leaf Pinot Gris

Silver Leaf is a new winery on the Leelanau Peninsula in northern Michigan. This is one of "those" wines - finnicky with serving temp and air. Serve this as you would a Beaujolais, cool, but not cold - too cold and it's a tight mess.

A little bit of pineapple on the nose, with some general tropical qualities, with a vaguely buttery thing as well.

More pineapple with a buttery mouthfeel on the palate. Dry with a nice acidic zing - fine balance and a bit of vanilla plus some interesting tropical fruit, papaya mostly and even a bit of starfruit. I generally loathe even a hint of oak in my whites, but this is subtle and balance enough that while it's there, it does kinda work.

Papaya on the finish big time.

I wasn't too keen on this when it was right out of the fridge, but it comes together very nicely with some air and as it approaches room temperature. Anyone wine with prominent papaya gets a nod from me, so kudos.

This wine was consumed and reviewed as part of the Tweet and Taste Michigan Wine on Thursday, October 7, 2010. This was not tasted blind and the bottle was comped - all effort has been made to be as objective and honest as possible.

Score: 87

2009 Old Shore Vineyards Tree Line Pinot Noir

It's funny, when I hate a wine I have no problems with how pointless scores are, but when I love one it really makes me question the process. Give any wine this strong a review? I go all Paul Hodges, ....and then I realize I'm taking this little blog far too seriously.

This is a $28 Pinot Noir from Old Shore Vineyards.  Old Shore Vineyards is a brand new winery in southwest Michigan and this is their second release. Based on the website photos, everyone associated with the winery seems to be young. What do the youth bring to wine in an under-appreciated region?

Raspberry, both the fruit and the leaves of the plant - think raspberry herbal tea - on the nose with a bit of earth and chocolate, way in the back I get some plum as well.

Every once in a while I call a wine 'dangerous' or 'misleading.' Dangerous as in it's so good and easy drinking you drink a bottle over 30 minutes and misleading for you drink it over 30 minutes without much thought beyond 'yep, it's good.' This is that sort of wine. Immediately approachable on the first pour. This is the sort of wine with acid so well integrated, you don't even really think about it. Fruit and earth in such balance it barely registers unless you're concentrating. We're talking raspberry, chocolate, cola, cherry, poached peaches (in some sort light German red wine), black tea, sassafras, almost a rosehip quality as well - all of this put together in a subtle, light bodied wine that if you are a fan of Burgundian Pinot Noirs will almost certainly knock your socks off.

This is a finish that lingers of well over a minute starting with rich, ripe peaches fading to plums and rainier cherry and far on the back we get some nectarine - I love this stone fruit thing all with a good dash of black tea.

This is one of the few wines where I've felt compelled to open a second bottle (several days later, mind you) and reconfirm my initial thoughts. Let me tell you, I don't feel this strongly about wines often, but when I want Pinot Noir, I want this.

Score: 95

2005 Mas Des Bressades Cabernet-Syrah Vin de Pays Du Gard

We had this at a tasting a fair number of years back and were big fans so we snagged two bottles. About a year and a half ago we opened one and it was awful - imagine half Cabernet, half Listerine - even after many hours of air it was undrinkable. I decided it would be best to wait a while and see what happens with the second bottle. Here we go again, this time blind....

Cedar, strawberry, earth on the nose.

If this wine were a bear, his name would be smokey. The palate brings tobacco, cedar, cherry, blackberry. Nice acid, fuzzy tannins, good fruit, earth, and spice balance.

Everything's good, but the finish gets a bit weird - green spices overwhelm. Basil, oregano, mint, all with a bit of green bell pepper.

The finish bugs me - while not enough to ruin the wine, certainly enough to knock a few points off. Serve with food - red sauced pasta and sausage (braised in this same wine perhaps?) - and you should be set. If I had another bottle I might sit on it for a while. Not bad for $11.

Score: 86

Tweet and Taste Michigan - Thursday, October 7

It is true, there is another Tweet and Taste coming up on Thursday October 7. Complete details can be found over here at www.TweetAndTasteMichigan.com.

An array of wine bloggers and the like will be tasting three wines from Silver Creek Winery in Michigan, up there on the Leelanau Peninsula near Traverse City. The wines on the agenda are:

Silver Leaf Pinot Gris
Silver Leaf Dry Riesling
Silver Leaf Purple Foot

Purple Foot is, I believe, Blaufrankisch, an interesting varietal that showed very nicely from a couple T&T's back in a bottle from Shady Lanes.

The basics - on Thursday, October 7 at 7 pm CST, you jump onto Twitter and search #ttmi, that's the hashtag you use to follow the conversation...ie, you will get updates from everyone talking about the wines whether you follow them or not. (Are you following The Wineauxs, by the way?) Posts literally go up every few seconds, so it's interesting how things pan out. Because it all moves so fast, you get very real immediate opinions of people, many posts here can come together over the course of a few hours, so when put on the spot strange comments come out.

If Twitter doesn't quite work for you, you can try logging into Tweetchat, which I think is easier to read in realtime.

AND FINALLY, if none of this appeals to you, make sure you log onto The Wineauxs by midnight or so that night, full detailed reviews of each wine will be posted up here, scores and all. Michigan by the Bottle will also have a roundup in the following days - they usually do a good video round up where they discuss each wine and highlight some tweets.

In a couple days I hope to have an offer up here for discounted shipping - so stay tuned, snag a few bottles, and drink and post along, everyone is welcome to participate.

Enormous thanks and much respect go to Shannon and Cortney from Michigan by the Bottle for putting this all together. Become a fan of theirs on Facebook, follow them on Twitter, download the video podcast - they are one of the best wine sites out there and one of the few I read regularly.

2006 Layer Cake Shiraz

This goes for about fifteen bucks retail and previous vintages have been outstanding. Let's see how the 2006 does.

Mocha and plum on the nose.

If you want a beautifully made Shiraz, this is it. Coffee, chocolate, plum, black cherry, blueberry, a dash of root beer concentrate - big, fruity, not much for tannins, but acid is present, a bit of earth and spice give it nice balance. Mid palate brings strawberry and vanilla.

A soda like finish - root beer and cola notes - brown spices as well.

If you are firmly against fruit bombs, this may not sway you but it's still worth trying. It's well made, has very nice depth, and best of all, an obscene value.

Score: 92

N/V Henry-Detaly Champagne

This was nineteen bucks at Trader Joe's - an authentic Champagne for under twenty bucks? How could I not buy one?

Vanilla, caramel, and pear on the nose.

Caramel and orange - an odd sounding combination, but since it's not, you know, really orange and caramel, it works. I'd call this more than a bit sweet - certainly more of an extra dry. A tad yeasty, a bit of red apple, and a bit of a tangerine thing. Not bad.

Definite residual sweetness on the finish with some toasty qualities perhaps slathered with some marmalade.

While it's a fairly tasty wine and one of the cheaper Champagnes out there, you can do much better outside of the Champagne region - be it other parts of France, Spain, California, or - yep - Michigan.

Score: 85

N/V M Lawrence Wet

This is a $15 bottle from L Mawby up in Michigan. The M Lawrence line are all wines with the secondary fermentation done in vats instead of the traditional way. They're also nearly uniformly solid...let's see what this one brings.

The nose has the softness of golden apple but just a faintest bite of green.

Apple is the dominant quality here. Mostly the tart, green apple varieties. The acid has a nice balance, a lot of times green apple implies sharp acid, but it's well integrated here. A touch of sweetness - while this is a sec it feels drier than many Bruts I've had. The best part of L Mawby's cheaper offerings is that even if they are simple and more of a quaffable style, they have none of the flaws you see in cheaper sparklers from other areas (an often metallic kind of quality as well as an unpleasant oily mouthfeel). Light, crisp, tasty.

Yep, more crisp apple and pear qualities on the finish.

Not bad at all. I'd buy it again.

Score: 88

2006 Marilyn Merlot

This retails for around $27, though if you go to their website it's selling for a whopping forty bucks a bottle.

Fresh green spices, black licorice, cedar, and cherry on the nose.

Black cherry, mint, menthol, cedar, fresh green spice - vaguely cough syrup like. A bit thicker in body, very gentle tannins, just a touch of sweetness, but really quite balanced.

Brown spices, a bit of fresh red bell pepper, and a dash of menthol on the finish.

For a 'gimmick' wine this is pretty good. For a $40 wine, it's not. If I found this for under $20, I could see snagging another bottle.

Score: 87

2009 Meinklang Pinot Noir Rosa

This is a rose with a bit of effervescence. It ran me about $14 at Whole Foods - it s a biodynamic wine, organic, the label talks about cows near the vines...

Watermelon rind and cherry pits on the nose.

It's strange, when you pour a glass there's a good amount of fizz, but it fades quickly leaving not visible bubbles but an interesting foamy moutfeel. Medium body, a dry sort of watermelon thing, a bit of artificial strawberry, even a bit of red apple in a jelly bean sorta way. It's a tad thick, fruity, but not (or only very slightly) sweet.

More of that red apple jelly bean thing on the finish.

Tasty. Decently priced. Theoretically good for the planet. You can do worse.

Score: 85

2009 Old Shore Vineyard Turkey Nest Pinot Gris

A Michigan Pinot Gris made by Cornel from Two Lads - on paper it seems almost unfair to the competition. This bottle goes for sixteen bucks and can be bought at the winery's website - they don't have a tasting room, but you can apparently make an appointment and pick up orders and check out the grounds.

Pear and a bit of spice on the nose, no individual spice in particular, more like a spiced peach pie filling. I also get what I can only compare to grappa on the nose - something a bit heavy, a bit grapey, but in a refined way.

A very nice balance, a solid acidic zing with just the slightest touch of sugar, or maybe the fruit is just fooling my palate - the thing that I think Michigan Pinot Gris so good is the acid, I think many PG's show better than Rieslings quite frankly, and this pretty much demonstrates why. Pear, green apple, vanilla, orange blossom,

The finish, and quite frankly part of the palate, reminds me a bit of Gewurz - spicy and floral - orange blossom is somewhat more pronounced with more spiced fruit pie filling, less peach, more pear...or even quince? I just had a quince the other day. I felt quite pretentious - which is saying a lot for a guy with a wine blog.

I digress. The fine folks over at Michigan by the Bottle did a video review of this bottle and dug it. I do too. Shannon mentions this is a bit less fruity than the Two Lads Pinot Grigio, not a bad thing, just a difference perhaps in the Gris/Grigio labelling, and while I think in terms of my palate I give the 2L an edge, it's close enough that I'll give this a points tie at 90. Well played.

Score: 90

2009 Woot Cellars Albino Rhino

This is a blend of 88% Albariño and 12% Riesling. Woot Cellars typically go for $65 with shipping per half case. Sometimes they offer smaller lots, but for a few dollars more per bottle.

Pear, golden apple, almost Pinot Grigio like on the nose.

More of that golden apple, more pear, a bit of vanilla - kind of Pinot Grigioy in the palate too. A touch of sugar and acidic enough to be just ever a few tiny millimeters away from being balanced.

As with many Woot Cellars offerings I had to buy six bottles. While I am quite content having five more bottles and will cheerfully spread them out over the summer, if and when they come back up I don't see buying any more.

Score: 86+

N/V Kirkland Sonoma Sparkling Wine

Oh Costco....every so often I debate cancelling my membership but I'll be damned if it ain't worth it. This bottle goes for $11 and is part of the Costco house brand Kirkland.

Very nice nose, pink lady apples for the most part. The wine seems to have a pinkish hue so my guess is this has a reasonable amount of Pinot Noir.

More of a red apple quality on the palate, fruity, perhaps a touch sweet, or it may be just a tad short of acid. Perhaps a bit of raspberry, and some of that funky white cherry Slurpee thing, but it's mostly apple here with a bit of pie crust. Quite nice.

A bit of spice, almost a hint of cinnamon comes through on the finish, more pie crust, with almost a cherry aspect.

For $11, I'm going to give this one a hearty recommendation.

Score: 88

N/V L Mawby Talismon

This thirty dollar sparkler came in our wine club shipment. We had it at the tasting room but it didn't leave much of an impression. Will it now?

Caraway on the nose with something vaguely savory Asian, ginger maybe.

Here's an interesting thing to know about sparklers. Cheap, crappy ones are often quite good served ice cold and consumed within 20 minutes of opening - I mean, pop open a bottle of ice cold Cook's and it's probably pretty drinkable. Good quality ones are often fairly mediocre until they warm up a bit and get a bit of air. I was at a loss, but this came into its own. Some citrus notes along with pear, a slight bit of toast, lots of crisp acid, a bit of caramel - all while being quite dry. Very nice.

Ripe red apple, rye toast, and something of a citron quality linger on the finish.

Pop it cold, let it sit for an hour, and dig in. All that being said, for thirty bucks I'm more inclined to snag a couple other bottles from this producer, but then again, I'm cheap. If presented to me as a gift, I would cheerfully imbibe.

Score: 87

2005 Mary Michelle Vidal Ice Wine

This is fifteen bucks for a half bottle, which makes it one of the cheapest ice wines I've even encountered. Mary Michelle is tied to Illinois Cellars which is located in southwest Illinois.

A little caramel and a bit of an odd turpentine quality on the nose.

Golden raisin, vanilla, butter, pear, honey, caramel - nice and complex but a bit hot. 14.2% alcohol in an ice wine? Odd.

More caramel on the finish.

A bit different than what I'd expect from an ice wine - bigger, bolder, hotter - so be advised. I'd say it may be worth a look, but it's definitely the sort of dessert wine you want to drink with food - poundcake or a nice cobbler, maybe?

Score: 86

2008 Wurtz Riesling

I got this at Whole Foods - the pricetag said $32 but it was on sale for $22. After a bit of research, $32 would be too much to pay, but $22 is a fairly solid price. Three liters, meaning four bottles, of a German Riesling.

This reminds me of a tasting I went to a few years back - it was just Fran, myself, and another older, snootier looking couple at the table. They tried some wine that they liked and grabbed the last bottle off the table - apparently wanting more, they asked the guy pouring if he had any more. He replied: "Not in bottles, but check this out" and whipped out a box of the stuff. I don't recall what the wine was sadly, but the box was around forty bucks (compared to $17 or so for the bottle). The woman of the couple was so appalled that the wine was sold in a box, she actually put the bottle back on the table and said "well I won't be buying any wine sold like that." Crazy.

Lime and even a bit of that much desired petrol thing on the nose.

Shockingly dry - I mean, this is, in no uncertain terms, a dry Riesling. Lime, slate, white grapefruit, not the most complex of wines, but still a nice, crisp wine for a hot summer night.

Lime and white grapefruit on the finish fade fairly quickly.

Considering this works out to just over five bucks a bottle, I have no complaints. If you think of Rieslings (for better or worse) as light sweet wines, this may surprise you - it's a legitimate dry Riesling and well worth a shot. If I were having a cookout with brats and such, I wouldn't hesitate snagging another box.

Score: 85