Originally published on November 24, 2008.
I’ve had this wine on the shelf since the day I opened (well, maybe since the third day I opened: Dr. Konstantin Frank’s Rkatsiteli (Finger Lakes, New York.) It fits many potential Thanksgiving criteria: local (for the locavores), food friendly, and for those who like to know the wines they’re drinking have been recommended by someone with a byline, it was just recommended by Eric Asimov in this blog. So you don’t have to take my word for it, you can take Mr. Asimov’s word. I get a kick out of the mention because it seems to touch on the same points I always touch on:
- It’s hard to spell
- The grape is from “the former Soviet Republic of Georgia”, because if you say it’s from Georgia, people immediately assume you’re talking about the state (which isn’t a good thing for wine sales). And if you say Georgia-the-country without mentioning the Soviets, they just think you’re geographically challenged.
- It’s good!
But you don’t have to trust either Mr. Asimov or my admittedly biased view…you can trust the nice man older gentleman from “the former Soviet Republic of Georgia” who saw the bottle sitting on the shelf and bought if for nostalgic reasons. He came back a few days later and announced, “it’s not like I remember it…it’s very good!”