Gordon Ramsay Intenso Rosso – #32384 – $17.00
With the wine-and-food-loving world getting ever more specific about where a wine is from, the soil it’s grown in, and all of the intricacies of making it, picking a wine to match your dinner can suddenly be overwhelming. With so much information available we feel the need to pair every element of the meal with every element of the wine, anything less can be seen as a failure.
It’s interesting then, to see a celebrity chef (effectively a product of this specifics-loving world) get into the wine game and create a table wine, especially a chef with Gordon Ramsay’s reputation for demanding perfection – loudly. ‘Table Wine’ is meant to be a catch all of sorts, a house wine, ready to pair with almost any dish, bringing cheery fruit and refreshing acidity to the table while ignoring many of the specifics.
What we end up in this particular case, is a joining of two regions – Tuscany and Abruzzo – which excel at making table wines. This Sangiovese/Montepulciano blend sees a splash of Merlot to bring a rounder mouth feel, expressing red and black forest berries, black plum, and spice with a soft finish of vanilla and oak notes.
The fact that Ramsay partnered with Alberto Antonini (who’s resume includes Antinori and Frescobaldi) on this project puts major clout behind what’s in the bottle, and the fact that they chose to make a table wine meant they can share their vision with a crowd outside of their normal, Michelin-starred surroundings. This is serious table wine – maybe perfect?
