The Tangled Vine is one of many fantastic little UWS wine bars. I love the fact that my neighborhood is full of these intimate, relaxed places to hang out and chat with friends. I know I have written about the Tangled Vine before, but I thought I would give you last night's cheese and wine dispatch showing you all that you can all go out with a few friends, split some wine and cheese and all spend just around $20.
The nice thing about the Tangled Vine is that their wine list has a really strong focus on organic and sustainable wines. The food menu has a lovely modern European bent with a nice mixture of well-known and less well-known cheeses, meats, crostini, small appetizers, salads, and larger plates. There is definitely something for everyone.
Going out at wine bars can easily be an extremely expensive venture and trust me it certainly doesn't have to be. A few tips - go with a wine you like but that is affordable, you can easily find a decent number of options for $35 and under at Tangled Vine. When it comes to food, I find that a three cheese selection tends to be satisfying as a complement to your wine and that rings in at $18, divided by three or four people, that is not an expensive venture. Splitting a few small plates always allows for a nice mixture of tastes and flavors yet never too much. One little, seemingly obvious note, don't order on an extremely empty stomach, you will order way more food than you actually want to consume and be left with a larger bill than you want to pay -- always better to order less and then see if you're still hungry.
Back to last night now...so we ordered a bottle of Windspiel Gruner Veltliner Fritsch 2008 from Austria. This organic light crisp white wine was perfect for a nice summer night -- full of energy and bounce but not too overpowering that a food pairing would become all about the wine. Ringing in at a round $30 this was easy drinking yet refined with a developed flavor profile -- green apples, a nice bit of acidity and tang, inherently smooth.
With our glasses of Gruner, we ordered a three cheese selection which comes with a few pieces of Organic Whole Wheat Walnut Raisin bread, some grapes, some slivered apples and a few figs, all nice complements to the cheeses.
The first cheese was Tome Jacquin hailing from France -- this was a bright goat based tomme with all the right semi-soft goaty flavor that you think of to begin a three cheese tasting. Full of grassy, peppery, herbal notes, this was a very light cheese that managed to maintain a full mouth flavor. It was the perfect complement to our wine -- an excellent example of a pairing in which both the cheese and the wine exhibited similar attributes and when combined, they created a fantastic aha moment.
The second cheese was a little more out there - a Quadrello di Bufala hailing from Italy, somewhat reminiscent of a Taleggio, this washed rind cheese was definitely a step up! A stinker of a cheese -- gooey, creamy, barnyardy, intense and totally yummy. The acidity of the wine nicely balanced out the intensity of the cheese here, not as successful of a pairing as the first cheese but delish still.
The third and final cheese was a yummy blue cheese also hailing from Italy known as Blu del Moncenisio. This cow's milk cheese was a medium bodied blue cheese, the perfect mixture of piquant, spicy, yet luscious with a full mouth feel. This cheese went perfectly with the dried figs and the bread that we had been provided with -- a great sweet and savory morsel to end the tasting.
We all left having had some delish tastes of cheese and a nice amount of wine and a great time. So next time you are thinking of a nice place to go with friends and are near the Upper West Side, I recommend checking out Tangled Vine.
No comments:
Post a Comment