$12 at Metro Market. Yesterday as I was getting ready to leave work, I decided to make the spring vegetable risotto in this month's Cooks Illustrated magazine. I made out my shopping list, which included a bottle of dry white wine.I walk by the Metro Market on top of Queen Anne Hill on my way home, and so stopped there for groceries. I fully intended to pick up the first cheap Pinot Grigio I saw, but as I scanned the shelves, this bottle popped out at me.
When Jenny and I were in Italy last year, we went to San Gimignano, a beautiful and ancient hill town in Tuscany. We had an excellent lunch there, but I don't recall the wine at all (I suspect it was a mezzo of the house red). Unable to resist the wine of a place I recalled so fondly, I set off for home with a couple leeks, a pound of asparagus, some peas, a chunk of parm, and of course, my bottle of dry white wine.
The risotto came together very well... not quite as rich as restaurant risotto, but they probably add double the butter that I do. The wine was delicious. Complex and full bodied, it is easily the equal of the white Burgundies that I enjoy during the summer months, and well worth the $12.
The Wine Lover's Companion says that the Vernaccia di San Gimignano grapes are thought to be of Greek origin, other sources say they may have been brought to the region by the Estruscans (ca. 800 BC). This region was the very first to recieve DOC status when Italy began implementing its wine classification system in 1966.
This was the last bottle of the San Quirico they had at Metro Market, I'll make it a point to explore the Vernaccia di San Gimignano grape more as the opportunity rises.
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