ALBARIÑO Torres Pazo das Bruxas, Rías Baixas 2022 $17 BTG
SANGIOVESE Poliziano, Rosso di Montepulciano 2022 $16 BTG
BORDEAUX Madame de Beaucaillou, Haut-Médoc 2019 $22 BTG
for desert there was a 2010 desert wine of some sort but don’t remember
I called and emailed the team there to chat about it but have been ignored for a few weeks. Have to say I am a bit bewildered about this $55 worth of BTG pours and call it a pairing menu for about $200 all in per person. Perhaps I am thinking about this incorrectly or missing something.
Par for the course for Maple & Ash. I’ve found the captains to be very poorly trained and not at all able to make reasonable recommendations from their very large, and very expensive wine list.
We ate at Pineapple and Perls in DC last Friday. Michelin 2 star. although I don’t remember the specific wines, one was a South American Pinot, A village white Burgundy, a 2019 Barolo, and a demi-sec sparkler for dessert all quite pedestrian and forgettable for $195 a person. We felt like suckers. We rarely see wine pairings worth the price even at Inn at Little Washington.
The best have been Komi in DC and The Shack in Staunton, VA.
We had cocktails at the Waldorf Astoria that evening and the crazy expensive cocktails were a better value.
It was a pretty shocking disappointment and to have them not respond at all to emails and calls and is a further indication of their contempt for customers.
I can’t name a single restaurant in that part of the city that I think is worth it. There’s a reason that part of town carries the nickname “the viagra triangle” and is full of Ferraris and Lamborghinis
Logan Square and West Town are much better spots for wine (and value). Table Donkey Stick, Boefhaus, Osteria Langhe, Webster’s, Daisie’s to name just a few.
All in (sales tax included) these are 25 to 30 dollar bottles of wine retail. So basically you are talking around 20 to 25 bucks worth of wine retail. In general I find a “good” wine menu typically costs just short of the same as the food. So if they paired the $160 tasting menu with a 120 dollar wine menu you hopefully would get something a bit more inspiring. Agreed that just taking wines off the BTG menu is pretty weak.
I’d like to defend Maple & Ash here. Pairings are a racket generally, and nobody has a gun to your head. The Maple & Ash list itself is not bad for a steakhouse in Chicago, and there’s some value to be had there. I had the IDGAF menu this Friday, and my date and I ordered two glasses of Krug 169 – they gave us the entire half bottle – and a bottle of 2013 Lillian Syrah. Total cost $510.
