Italian restaurant
Carbone Dallas has a deal aimed strictly at wine snobs: The Design District eatery, located at 1617 Hi Line Dr., is offering 12 coveted Tuscan wines, exclusively by the glass, on Wednesday evenings, at a seemingly steep price.
Called "Steak & Super Tuscans," the series takes place every Wednesday night through October 30. Each week, two rare vintage Tuscan wines are uncorked and offered by the glass. According to a release, these wines are selected based on rarity and superb flavor and reflect some of the most important vintages from the Tuscany region of Italy.
Prices depend on rarity, but they start at $95 and top out at $450. For a glass.
But John Slover, the National Beverage Director for Major Food Group, the New York-based group that owns Carbone, says to keep in mind that some of the wines in their cellar would cost more than $1 million for a bottle.
“These wines are very difficult to source and we are fortunate to be able to share them from these extraordinary vintages,” Slover says. “The Carbone Dallas wine collection includes more than 1000 references, and 10,000 bottles valued at over $1 million. When a rare wine is uncorked, it is limited to the table. We felt that offering this experience by the glass would involve more of our wine enthusiasts and expose more of our guests to these incomparable flavors."
To accompany these wines, chef Mario Carbone has three American Wagyu beef steaks: a 24-ounce Cowboy, $270 for two; a 14-ounce bone-in strip for $160; and an 8-ounce Filet Mignon for $55. They come with choice of Barolo Sauce for $15, or Mare e Monte — a red shrimp-based butter sauce, also $15.
Here's the wines and their wine-y descriptions:
October 9
- 2006 Soldera Brunello di Montalcino Riserva, $450 per glass: A relatively new Brunello estate, Soldera dates back to the 1970s. Fiercely obsessive in vineyard management and wine making, Gianluca Soldera showed the world the vast potential of the Sangiovese grape. Soldera only bottles riservas in the greatest vintages and they are simply unparalleled for their depth and intensity.
- 2018 Canalicchio di Sopra 'Montosoli' Brunello di Montalcino, $140 per glass: Canalicchio di Sopra was another early Brunello di Montalcino estate with a long history of age-worthy excellence. They are perched high up on the cooler northeast side of Montalcino. 'Montosoli' is one of the greatest Brunello vineyards and the wines are coveted for their high-toned, ripe red fruit and length on the palate.
October 16
- 2019 Tenuta delle’Ornellaia ‘Masseto,’ $400 per glass: In the early 1980’s, Ludovico Antinori (brother of Piero) purchased the Ornellaia estate and noticed one site had blue clay soils like Pomerol in Bordeaux. Striving to make the Petrus of Tuscany, he planted merlot and started making a deep, rich 100% merlot wine that has quite simply become the greatest wine made in Italy. It is an excitingly intense cornucopia of plums, blackberries and leathery, earthy tones.
- 2018 Macchioli 'Messorio' Bolgheri, $175 per glass: Le Macchiole has been family owned since the 1980s and in the Bolgheri region of Tuscany. Their ‘Messorio’ wine is made from 100% Merlot and is designed to be their most powerful and impactful wine only from the best grapes in their vineyards. It is a full, mouth-filling & pleasurable wine.
October 23
- 2015 Valdicava 'Madonna del Piano' Brunello di Montalcino, $250 per glass: Through force of will and striving for Beauty, Vincenzo Abbruzzese spent the 1980s and 1990s drastically improving his grandparents’ estate into one of the region's elite Brunello di Montalcino estates. The ‘Madonna del Piano’ vineyard is their flagship wine and is one of the purest expressions of raspberry & floral scented sangiovese in Montalcino.
- 2020 Antinori Bolgheri ‘Guado al Tasso,’ $95 per glass: ‘Guado al Tasso’ is Antinori's estate on the Tuscan coast, overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea. This amphitheater-shaped growing region allows for the perfect ripening of grapes like Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc. With warm days and cool nights, the wines are firm & ripe but with an enveloping elegance.
October 30
- 2010 Poggio di Sotto 'Riserva' Brunello di Montalcino, $350 per glass: A relative new-comer, Poggio di Sotto was established in 1989 and quickly grew into a Brunello favorite among aficionados. Obsessed with quality, the wine was created with the premise of perfection and has achieved cult status for its intense complexity and harmonious balance. It is grace in a glass.
- 2015 Fontodi 'Flaccianello', $125 per glass: The Fontodi estate in Chianti Classico has been planted with vines since Roman times and was purchased by the Manetti family in the late 1960s. In the 1980s Giovanni Manneti wanted to show the world the quality of Sangiovese and started making a 100% Sangiovese called 'Flaccianello' from the estate's greatest plots of Sangiovese. It has developed into one of the world's most sought after and complex wines.
Glasses poured in the past two weeks that we missed included a 2019 Tenuta San Guido ‘Sassicaia,’ $195 per glass; a 2020 Antinori 'Tignanello,' $95 per glass: a 2015 Biondi Santi Brunello di Montalcino Riserva, $300 per glass; and a 2018 Gaja-Pieve Santa Restituta 'Rennina' Brunello di Montalcino, $140 per glass.