The Amazing Termes Numanthia

Last June Pris and I were in Baltimore for one of Pris' conferences.  We'd just gotten in to town and also just discovered that her museum was acquiring the Alonso Building (where we now reside).  In order to celebrate, and/or get a stiff drink since we were officially moving to Brownsville, we decided to splurge a bit on dinner.  We ended up at the Oceanaire which was about a block from our hotel.

It was a monstrously good dinner, that is easily in our top 5 dinners together.  There was steak, tuna, lobster mac & cheese, 4 cheese potatoes au gratin, creme brule, banana bread pudding, scotch, and of course wine.  To this day I don't know how we ate everything we did.  The wine we selected was a 2007 Termes Numanthia from Spain.  Since our trip Pris and I have been looking for this wine, and asking all our local stores if they'd consider ordering it.  Feldmans did.  I found it about 2 weeks ago there for $30, which is considerably less than its price in the restaurant.

The vintage is different.  This Termes Numanthia is a 2008, but the wine is every bit as great as we remember.  The Termes has a rich and complex nose with loads of cherry and raspberry coupled with floral and spice notes.  On the palate the Termes is all silk luxuriance with intense fruit flavorings.  Raspberries and blackberries hold sway here, but there are nice spice notes to liven things up.  The finish is long and biting, with nice spices showing up around the mid-palate.  This bite adds a nice bit of character to this great wine.  After the intense flavor burst in the mid-palate, the finish is long and smooth.  It lingers nicely allowing you to savor this fine wine for just a bit longer.

The nearest Oceanaire chain appears to be in Houston, but even so, the menu would be different.  We could never replicate that night, but I tried anyway.  Sunday I grilled up a couple NY Strips, pan fried some South Texas flavored crab cakes, and crab and cheese mashed potatoes.  The 2008 Termes Numanthia went just as well with our crab and beef selections as the 2007 went with our meal in Baltimore.  While rich, the wine is versatile enough to go with a number of dishes.  It can stand on is own with the steak or with the spicy bite of the crab cakes.  That was part of the reason we chose it then, and partly while we'll be keeping a bottle in stock as long as we can get it somewhere.

This is a great wine.  Feldmans Market Center currently has it for $30 a bottle.  That's a ways outside of our everyday drinking price, but its definitely a good one for special occasions or splurging on the weekend.  To find out more about the Numanthia wines you can visit:  http://www.numanthia.com/