sicilian overload

otto is never crowded at lunch, the vegetables are good, and the pastas are usually excellent. bucatini all'amatriciana seems to be a menu staple and is always portioned with restraint and generously supplied with guanciale. the list of wines by the bottle is intimidatingly long, but worth attention. munjebel 8 is 100% nerello mascalese grown on the slopes of mt. etna, from frank cornelissen's 2010 vintage. extraordinarily intense, and with the scent of freshly wetted tephra—carbonic, limestoney, ashy. full of unexpected contradictions, it is rich and deep, brittle and vibratory, dense and weightless. but maybe more dense than weightless. a single glass would have been perfect; three at lunch was perhaps a bridge too far.

not-so-old riesling

i'd just come back from turkey by way of a 10-hour delay in vienna airport, whose only saving grace is widely available wifi, so robust, simple food was indicated. we spent a quiet afternoon with a relatively ancient, unctuous, oxidized italian riesling, marble counters, and lightly cooked beans. the riesling was rich in the way of old whites, flowery but austere, dark in the glass. jp (newly at haus alpenz) plucked this off the otto list by the simple expedient of choosing "the oldest bottle that won't require a second mortgage." it's always nice to drink with a pro.