Bonarda, Comfort Food, and Typos

Last night, I had the pleasure of enjoying the 2009 Vila Bonarda Reserva with my chicken dinner. One of my favorite recipes for homemade chicken tenders is Dana Carpender's "Heroin Wing" recipe. While the recipe is delicious as listed in the link, I like to add bread crumbs to the mixture, and I will usually substitute boneless chicken tenders for chicken wings. I'd highly recommend giving this recipe a try, especially if you happen to be looking for a relatively healthy chicken wing option for this weekend's football games. Go Patriots!

However, this is a wine website, so without further deviation, I'll get to the point, and say that the 2009 Vila Bonarda Reserva is a classic example of the Bonarda grape. Last year, I discussed the origins and history of the Bonarda grape in a recap of a tasting that I conducted at BRIX Wine Shop. If you read that column, you saw my high praise for another Bonarda-based wine, the La Posta Bonarda, and also learned about Bonarda's migration from Italy's Piedmont region to Argentina. While there are four grapes in Piedmont that bear the Bonarda moniker, most Argentine Bonarda is what we know in the United States as Charbono. Both Argentine Bonarda and Charbono are fantastic wines for pairing with savory comfort foods and football snacks. For a great example of Charbono, I highly recommend Robert Foley's expression of the grape. It's on the expensive side (~$35), and hard to find, but if you can get your hands on it, it is definitely a wine worth splurging on. 

On the less expensive side, the Vila Bonarda (~$10) is a wine that you can feel good about opening for a dinner in front of a weeknight hockey game. (Thank God the NHL is back!) However, despite it's modest price tag, this is a wine that is filled with character. Deep, rich, and full bodied, it is packed with aromas of dark fruits, which persist on the palate. Notes of licorice and spice intermix with the fruit flavors on the palate, and while it is a wine that is big in structure, it is well balanced, never coming across as over the top, or cloying. 

Yet, for all the positive virtues that the Vila Bonarda has to offer, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out the fact that the wine's low price tag may be influenced by the savings the winery has reaped by not employing a copy editor. Midway through my second glass, I laughed out loud when I read the back label. Anytime I can enjoy a wine that is "the reslut of the tradition and the effort of a family, whose philosophy is the quality," you had better believe I'm going to do it. I'm always slightly saddened when I see typographical errors on wine labels, because there's a good chance that those errors will keep some consumers from trying the wine. But rest assured, despite the lack of QA on the Vila Bonarda's back label, the wine inside the bottle definitely deserves your attention. 

When was the last time you encountered a poorly edited wine label?