Macaroni Grill House Chianti

Joy and I have been felled by the flu the last couple of days. Normally, we try to post every other day, or at least every third day, but unless you want to read my review of Nyquil (a gentle hint of anise gives way to a soaring, dry-heaveable finish that lingers for three days) there isn't much for us to post about. Any wine we were to try would have no taste to it, and would likely react with the dangerous amounts of antihistamine coursing through our bloodstreams. I mean, I can think of a lot of reasons to have your stomach pumped, but to do so for a wine blog? Not unless there were scads of free publicity involved.

Anyway, without sampling anything new, I'd like to take a second to talk about an old friend I was fortunate to sample once again about a week back. That would be the house chianti at Macaroni Grill. Macaroni Grill, for those of you who don't know, is a big, boxy chain Italian restaurant that has sprouted like fungus in a lot of suburban areas. It has moderately-priced Italian food and a pleasant enough family atmosphere, which makes it a nice evening out. However, to me the highlight has always been the house chianti which, while indistinct in almost every discernible way, is so refreshingly void of offense that you don't even know you're drinking it. That's bad, I suppose, if you're trying to impress your date, but good if you're trying to get your date drunk. Did I mention that one of my first dates with Joy was at the Macaroni Grill in Arlington, VA? That was right after the date when I took her to the landfill. Anyway, I've digressed.

The chianti has some nice berriness about it. I've always loved the fact that they don't serve it in any sort of a wine glass, but instead in a tumbler, suitable for your favorite soda. I've always wondered if, as the night wears on and they have to dig further in the cupboard, they start serving people wine in Scooby-Doo jelly jars and those big plastic cups you get at sporting events. Perhaps this is some kind of traditional thing that I'm not hip to, but it amuses me to no end and gives the serving of wine a generic, everyman quality that appeals to me greatly.

On our last visit, I asked the waitress who manufactures the chianti. I figured it has to be sold under a different name in a store and I could, perhaps, buy some to drink at home. She informed me that Macaroni Grill owns these vast vineyards in Tuscany where they grow their own grapes and painstakingly stomp out wine with their own blistered feet. A lovely story, but total bullcrap. From a little research on the web, it looks like it's manufactured by Navelle vineyards in California (not Tuscany) and is nearly identical to a chianti they sell under the Almaden brand name. So look for that as a later review. Almaden, by the way, is one of the biggest names in boxed wine typically found in your local supermarkets.

So now you know.

I give the Macaroni Grill House Chianti 7 out of 10. I have no price information because it's not sold by the bottle under that name.