What makes a wine beautiful?
To The Black Olive all of this is important as we strive to build the best wine list the Mid-Atlantic has ever seen! Follow us as we reach for that goal.
How Do We Pick Black Olive Wines?
First of all, we did not start out being wine experts. There were only two cases of wine at the restaurant when it opened. But over time, and largely thanks to the discovery of how amazing Greek wines are in comparison to the world’s best, we built both a collection and a knowledge of how the world of wine works that is getting thick. As we slowly built our knowledge, so too did we begin to narrow down factors which made a wine acceptable for our list.
Showing the world’s best Greek wines, along side of the world’s best wine from the rest of the world, became one factor early on. But the restaurant has always championed organic and biodynamic farming practices as it is reflected in our cuisine and so too
did the wine list begin to favor more and more wines that were grown in sensible ways. One thing we discovered is that organic wines toe for toe are better. It is not out there in the literature and we are not saying that you can not make a great non-organic wine, we are just saying that the way you grow your grapes makes a difference in the taste.
Discoveries and attitudes about organic and biodynamic wines led us to examine more closely how the grapes were grown, and we began to favor many high altitude vineyards, or regions with volcanic soil, or farms where the vermin were controlled by innovative use of ladybugs. Thus in our wines you begin to see some trends, despite the fact that our aim is to have as much variety as possible. No two wines on the list will taste the same, but they will all show the flavors of the land they were grown on, the “terroir” as the French say.
