Michele Chiarlo Barbera d’Asti 2007 Le Orme

Michele Chiarlo Barbera d’Asti 2007 Le Orme

Retail: $11.99

Grape: native to Piedmont

This was disappointing.  Matt shuddered at his first taste.

I tasted some grape juice (although Matt thinks I’m crazy because he associates grape juice with sweetness, which this wine did not have).

We both detected bitter black cherry and a burnt hot quality that was not pleasant.  It was sharp on the nose with hints of tar, wood, earth, and rusticity.

After sitting down with some Italian sausage and beans, Matt decided that it needed food to be palatable. I found it surprisingly easy to drink despite its bitterness–probably because I prefer bitter tastes over any other.

Vino Volo: in the airport!

Matt and I usually get to the airport with tons of time to spare, so on Friday, before we boarded our plane to Pittsburgh, we stopped at Vino Volo for a quick drink and bite to eat. This wine bar chain currently has locations in about 10 airports in the U.S. and it’s a welcome change to the overwhelming fast food options you usually get.

Impressive, albeit small, wine list with some fun flight options. (Heh, get it?)

These are cute and come with each glass.  Not your basic, run-of-the-mill wine guide with standard terms, but still user-friendly.

Matt’s artisan cured meats (small size for $8) were yummy but really just made him more hungry for a real dinner.

My brie & prosciutto sandwich (small size for $6) was surprisingly tasty. The brie was slightly melted and warm and the fig spread was ooey and gooey (in a good way).

It’s nice to have Vino Volo in the Philly airport, because when we were early in Pittsburgh coming home, we sat in a Friday’s. Not as nice.

Mother’s Milk

So much for not marketing.

I was really hopeful that this wine would be an exception to my general rule about Australian wines (I have had some decent ones). Somebody out there thought that his wine was great and I picked it up in the PLCB for about $16 (not so bad). I hadn’t had a decent Syrah in a while, and thought it might be fun for Erin and I to share something nice.

Unfortunately, this wine turned out to be a fairly typical marketing nightmare. Comic book label, catchy-name (hey, who doesn’t want to drink “Mother’s Milk”?) The wine turned out to be super-alcoholic, though. Not a lot of fruit quality, plenty of tar and heavier flavors, lots of rich spice (particularly clove), and hefty wood, but the main thing going here is that it smells mostly of alcohol. Yeah, OK, so they estimate an ABV of 14.5 % but still, I love Pax wines, which regularly creep up to 15% or more, but they manage to make something that smells like wine not ethanol. I should add that with a little time (and air) the wine mellowed out. So, long story short, it’s not all bad. When Erin first opened the bottle, she thought it was cooked (overexposed to heat, ruining the wine) and in a sense, it is. The grapes were more likely than not very over-ripe at harvest, and once you have too-developed flavors in the grapes, it’s hard to go back. I wish people would focus on making wine, not ridiculous stories.

One potential saving grace is that it is screw-cap, so if you want a catchy-looking wine with a cool label and a great tag, go for Mother’s Milk, if you want something that tastes like wine and that you can actually inhale the aromas without choking, then you may want to skip this wine, or give it an hour in an open bottle or maybe even decant it (if you’re into that sort of thing) and it should be decent.