Vinotecca
Wednesday, May 11, 2005

Erika and I went to Cafe Habana last nite for dinner and had Cuban breakfast which was very good and not that expensive. I had french toast made with Challah bread and a berry compote featuring mango, raspberries and something else. Afterwards we stopped into Vinotecca the new Royal Oak wine bar hooked to Bastone. The atmosphere is great, the seating is very comfortable the place was clean. I did have some problems with their selection tho, compared to their whole wine list there are only a handful of wines available by the glass. They have the list sectioned off by style and there are only usually a few wines by the glass and the rest you have to buy the bottle. The ones available by the glass tend to be ones you can find in the store which doesn't help me much. I would like to go in and try something I cannot find or is a bit out of my price range rather than ordering a Montes Alpha Cab that I can pick up from Costco for $14 a bottle.

I had a glass of Frei Brothers pinot noir from California, it was $9 a bit over priced but like I said the atmosphere was good. Erika had a Blackstar late harvest which she enjoyed and their cheese menu was pretty impressive. Overall, the bar is good, but I think they need to serve more by the glass. If someone who wants to learn more about wines and wants to try different styles, they will be a bit hard pressed to have a large choice. Say I want a Burgundy, well I'm out of luck seeing that there was only 1 French wine by the glass. This all may sound a bit pretentious but there are people out there who would like to experiment and the easiest way is to drink by the glass not by purchasing the whole bottle. One other complaint, they only had 1 port available, why not have a selection of different ports like some from California for people to enjoy. Buy a bottle of Trentalude Chocolate Amore port and sell that by the glass for $8, people would go crazy for that.

I give the bar a "B" rating, take some of my advice and it could become a 4 star A+ venue.

Posted by mardenhill 5/11/2005 12:32:00 PM    

1 Comment:

1. Anonymous said...
   7:25 PM  
   Keep up the good work » » »

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