Alive On The Drive

Our two Aussies were still showing a few signs of jet lag by the time I'd returned home from work and we knew that we had some hefty times just around the corner. So, Boo and I took it easy on them for the evening and just introduced them to our hood. We strolled down Commercial Drive and let them pick a cuisine that piqued their fancy from the smorgasbord that is The Drive. Pizza was the choice du jour.

1648.  2010 Pupillo - Re Federico Nero d'Avola (Sicilia Rosso IGT - Italy)

This wasn't a winery that I was familiar with but I thought the Nero d'Avola would match up pretty well with whatever pizza we decided to chow down on. I still couldn't find an awful lot about the winery when I searched it later but, from what little I did find, Pupillo seems to be a fairly new winery in the ancient area around Syracuse on Sicily. Most of the links or press I saw on the family winery related to a dessert wine, Moscato di Siracusa, that they are championing and bringing back from near extinction.

The Nero d'Avola is Pupillo's take on perhaps Sicily's best known grape. An easy drinking red, I rather thought the wine might be of a similar profile to Merlot Boy's favoured Aussie Merlots - being bigger and fruitier than most of the Chiantis or Valpolicellas that were the other well-priced Italian reds populating the wine list. We'd certainly finished off the bottle long before we boxed up our leftover 'za but I wouldn't say that the wine left Merlot Boy swearing off his beloved Merlots. I'm still up in the air.

But, you know, The Drive is Vancouver's modern version of what's left of Little Italy. So, when in Rome...