Accomplished wine sommeliers can do more than enhance our dining experience. Through their inspired selections, suggestions, descriptions and tasting notes they can expand our knowledge and push the borders of our understanding and appreciation. Young & Foodish is pleased to honour the wine professional who in 2008 resisted convention and compiled one London’s most original wine lists.

Best Addition to the Wine Vocabulary:  “Al Dente”, CRU Restaurant Wine Bar, Hoxton

This is something of a posthumous award, as the ownership of CRU has changed hands and the restaurant is closed at this writing. But we did not wish to overlook the achievement of wine expert Morgan Devine. Here is an excerpt from his nine-line description of the Domaine Gay-Coperet Moulin à Vent:

…the nose expresses violets and wild roses in abundance and the palate is pleasingly al dente – easy enough to drink but with sufficient resistance for little game birds…

Comparing the nose of the Moulin à Vent to the bouquet of violets and roses is nice though hardly unusual. It is the link between red wine and pasta that is groundbreaking. The logic to Devine’s metaphorical flourish is inescapable: 

If, (A), al dente, an Italian expression meaning “to the teeth”, is commonly used to describe the firm, desirably chewy texture of pasta and, (B), “chewy” is an accepted term in the wine lexicon for fleshy, firm-structured, full-bodied wines, then, (C), the Domaine Gay-Coperet Moulin à Vent tastes like fettuccine.

 

Best Redrawing of the Wine Map:  CRU Restaurant Wine Bar, Hoxton

CRU’s Morgan Devine lists Old Tbilisi, a blend of the white wine varietals Rkatsiteli and Mtsvane, as coming from the region of Georgia in Russia. With a single description of a single wine, Devine has accomplished what the tanks, bombs and resolve of Putin’s Russia could not: return the Republic of Georgia to the Motherland.