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Wine Lists: Hot and Hot Fish Club, Birmingham, AL

4 out of 5 stars (4 / 5)

 

 

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Chef Chris Hastings, a repeated James Beard winner, is making some of the nation’s best food happen off Birmingham’s Highland Avenue. His inventive new Southern cuisine is taking critics by storm, and he’s deservedly proud of his food and way of doing business. It’s quite likely that Hastings will walk over during your meal and chat you up.

blacktearsbottleFor me, the winner on his wine list is Black Tears by Tapiz. This is the trophy wine from a longtime Mendoza winery where I had the privilege of eating lunch a couple of years ago. Most of the Tapiz wines are just okay – but Black Tears is a big, bold, classic New World red. You’ll like it; and as I remember the wine was relatively well priced. It’s about $40 in stores and it seems like it was less than 2X on this menu.

 

 

On my wine lists feature, I don’t attempt to rate the food; only whether Argentine wine is well-represented and well-priced.

 

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Store Check: Whole Foods Market, Birmingham, AL

3.5 out of 5 stars (3.5 / 5)

Whole Foods hit town with an astonishing assortment of high end wines at grand opening. It looked like it was going to give neighborhood favorite Western Supermarket a real run for its money. A few years later, it seems that the $60-80 product (big California cabs, etc.) has been pared in favor of more sub-$20 choices.

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The Argentine Red aisle looks fine, though it’s hardly the most compelling choice in town. But there are still two compelling reasons to shop here.

1) Since you can buy a bottle and drink a glass at the counter at the Brasserie while they cook you a grass-fed Tenderloin you’ve picked out yourself at the butcher shop, you can create your own poor-man’s parrilla right off US 280.

state-malbec2) The semi-annual 20% off case sale. The one to pick up here is Colomè Estate Malbec, priced at $28.99. It’s from Salta, in the northern provinces, and now owned by the Hess family out of Switzerland.