“House” wine conjures up different images for different people.
For some, it’s a rare bottle exhumed from the catacombs of a restaurant’s wine cellar, brought out for elite patrons who have discerning palates and a refined sense of what makes a wine good or bad. For others, it’s the rancid turpentine at the bottom of the servable vino ladder carrying the label “house” in order that servers can avoid calling it “that slop we wouldn’t even degrease our oven vents with”.
But thanks to beloved local chef Dante DeMagistris, it now means you landing exclusive wine hailing from private family-owned land in Italy that is only (presently) available at his local spots (Restaurante Dante in Cambridge, and the Belmont and Lexington outposts of Il Casale). And then there’s the good news: Doing so won’t require you selling your own blood to pay for it. “It’s not meant to be something just for wine snobs. It’s for everyone.” DeMagistris says.
The two styles of white wine, Coda di Volpe ($9), and Fiano de Avellino ($13), both hail from his Phoenix famiglia de Magistris winery located on land in Canida, a province of Avellino, Italy. The property itself has been in his family for generations, and cultivated by caretakers who for 80-90 years have farmed different styles of local produce. But it’s the 10 acres of high-sloped and water-lush land that creates the ideal microenvironment and the grapes for his first two releases flourish in.
And the 90-year-old vines have been mined to produce floral, crisp wines with notes of earth and wild Chamomille (which grows naturally there), that bodes well for the occasional flexing of wine muscle during a date over some spaghettis and clams, prosciutto and melon, or just a hearty order of burrata.
Also well-paired with burrata: more burrata.
PHOENIX FAMIGLIA DE MAGISTRIS. AVAILABLE NOW AT RESTAURANTE DANTE AND BOTH LOCATIONS OF IL CASALE.