2006 Gulfi "Nerojbleo" Nero d'Avola/Drago Centro

Drago Centro, in Downtown LA, has this contest called "Tweet for Wine," and I won it. Basically, the sommelier, Michael Shearin, gives out random clues about a wine from the list and you have to guess it. The clues are fairly nebulous, but I've almost won it twice now. Anyways, the deal is you win whatever bottle of wine you guess correctly. The wine that I won was a supposedly a 2004 Vasari Mamertino "Timpanara," which is obviously not the wine we drank if you look at the title of this post or the picture...They substituted a cheaper bottle. I don't really know why, I don't really care (after all, it's free wine, hell maybe they ran out of the Vasari?), and I wasn't going to argue with them and ruin my evening.

Gulfi is an old producer in Sicily that only started estate bottling their wines in the mid-90's. Previosuly, they had all been sold in bulk. This is from the Nerojbleo vineyard. Nice nose of cherries (bordering on dried) and just a tiny little hint of licorice, that is supported by acidic and well-balanced flavors of more of the same and just a streak of minerality. A nice little food wine, and if we'd paid for it, only 40$ on the wine list, so cheap. I was relieved that this wasn't in the bombastic new world, super-extracted, vanilla camp of Nero d'Avola. Went well with a wide variety of dishes--pork belly with farro and grape reduction, dungeness crab tagliatti with tomatoes and basil, a veal chop with sweetbreads, and truffle crusted chicken. B (The food is fantastic, but very rich. I didn't know that butter played a role in a Sicilian chefs' palate of flavors...surprised me. Service was, well, let's face it Italian, which meant that it was slow. To be fair, they had a mad rush right at 7 when we got there--mainly old ladies in furs rushing out the door to the symphony, but it's a cool place to hang out and we had a good time. It feels like it's located in a city, which is a rarity for Los Angeles area; most of the restaurants are in "the sprawl." It was strange to venture into downtown to eat, even though that is a fairly typical thing in San Francisco, Seattle, or anywhere else you go. Definitely worth checking out.)