Speziale Wine Tasting & A Rossi Dinner, Saturday 15 September 2012

Amazingly, it's now already September, the month when serious food lovers begin to anticipate and wonder about the wine harvest coming up next month. So to complement our oenologic musings with a funky dinner, we have organised an eclectic but very interesting two-stage event for September. Both stages are mandatory - you cannot choose one or the other - but once you hear about them, I guarantee that you will want to come for both parts anyway.

To begin the evening, we have a wine tasting - but not any old wine tasting. The tastings will be conducted at the Bar Speziale by Hr Giampiero, a dedicated wine lover by all accounts and also an admirer of the different cultures of the world. He will open his bar specially for us at 7pm and will explain the credentials of fine Italian reds and whites as we taste them - the wines originate mainly from the south of Italy. And just to make sure we don't fall off our chairs after a few glasses, he will also provide some little nibbles to go with the wines. For this exclusive wine tasting, there will be a charge of 10 Euro as he refuses to take any more money than this. Bar Speziale is at Winsstraße 9, 10405 Berlin.

Following the wine tasting, it would seem churlish to dine on anything but Italian. However, we refuse to dine at any old Italian trattoria, especially after a session with Hr Giampiero. So we will stroll out (as best as we can) after the wine tasting around the corner to Herr Rossi, a restaurant very close by. This restaurant politely declines to serve bland pastas and pizzas and gunk like that, preferring instead to focus on the freshest market goods hence he has only a small menu. In fact, the menu is actually around 21 pages - one page for the food and 20 pages for the drinks and wines so at least we know what Herr Rossi is focussing on when he is not cooking. By the way, his dishes are very reasonably priced so one would expect dinner here to be around 25-35 Euro from the 1-page menu plus some drinks from the remaining 20 pages. The reviews are pretty uniformly good as you can see on http://www.qype.com/place/373093-Herr-Rossi-Berlin and http://www.tip-berlin.de/essen-und-trinken/bei-herrn-rossi-gibt-es-taglich-neue-italienische-gerichte

Anyway, now that you know our plans, you should also know that, due to logistical issues, the September event will be held on Saturday 15 September - I know it is very short notice but the dedicated foodies amongst us will no doubt be already rushing to email their bookings to Sylvia for such a night. Anyway, to encourage everyone to book as soon as possible, the closing date is Wednesday 12 September and all those who make the list will be informed very soon after that date. We really do not often get to hold such an event so you know what to do - and please remember that we will start the evening at Bar Speziale.

See you soon!

Chris (on behalf of Sylvia)

How it went on the night...

I have to say that Giampiero made a pretty good wine selection for us of various red and white wines of Italy. We all had a good unhurried session trying all of them so nobody could say that he did not have the chance to sample everything. We actually had a pretty good time there as I guess that the longer we stayed, the funnier we got. Oh well. As for the little nibbles, Giampiero had prepared for us a special eggplant cream that we ate together with delicious homemade pizza bread done by his mother (who obviously still loves him dearly).

After the wine tasting we fortunately had only a short way to the Italian restaurant Herr Rossi. There everything also worked out really well especially as Giampiero had told the restaurant that they should look after us as otherwise we can act like deranged homicidal criminals. The menu was quite short as warned but all the dishes were freshly made. I especially can recommend the tagliatelle but I also would queue up again for the very tasty pumpkin soup. So overall we had yet another pretty good chatty wining and dining night out.