Kurt Michael Friese

“Characteristics: Straw yellow in color with green tints, broad aromatic impact with fruity nuances. Full and dry, underpinned by a fresh acidity.”

The wine media will bombard you with empty statements like this one if you let it. While each of these points may be at least subjectively accurate, taken as a whole I've always found these “characteristics” to lack character. They always seem to me as if they were written by a chemist in a lab describing some new compound rather than by an ordinary person sitting on a deck or by the fire sipping a glass of wine.

Nonetheless, these particular attributes are the ones used by the winemaker (or at least its marketing arm anyway) to describe the 2008 Grillo-Catarratto (roughly $13 a bottle; $141 a case) from Sicilian winemaker Ajello. And they are not, strictly speaking, incorrect. Nor are they all that inviting though, and this wine deserves higher praise.

read the rest at  Iowa City Press Citizen.

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