The Mantra restaurant promoted another of their wine experience evenings, but this time it was to be sparkling wines. This was an interesting concept; however, it appeared that they ran out of sparklers and introduced a couple of still wines to make up the numbers. In retrospect that was a good decision.
The wines could be sampled in any order so I began with the South African Cape Discovery. It would have been better if they left it undiscovered. This was a fruit wine, notable for having no nose, very little body and no finish. The bottle best described as suitable for hand to hand combat only.
The next was an Italian Perl Anima cuvee extra dry. This wine was a sparkler with suitable body and a reasonable finish, but hardly memorable.
Staying with Italy we had the Villa Cornaro Prosecco Spumnte extra dry. The Italians can make some excellent Proseccos, and this one tried.
At this stage of the game I went to the stills and chose a Hugo Cassanova Chardonnay. At last a wine with credentials. Great nose, good body and fabulous finish. The other still was another Cassanova and a Cabernet Sauvignon. Most enjoyable, but for me, the Chardonnay was best.
The food was rather novel, with a plate of blue cheese amongst other cold cuts. It would take a rather powerful sparkler to get on top of a blue cheese. The rest of the “nibbles” were rather unexciting, though the pizza pieces were enjoyable. The score card for the Mantra sparkling evening would be ‘can do better’.
