Wine Dinner Easter Weekend

This Chianti Reserva from Montalcino, Italy is a 2007 wine that has been aged for two years, at least one in oak.  A Chianti wine is a sangiovese grape.  Most chianti's are known to go wonderfully with food.  With this I ate with my family at Sal's Restaurant in Blacksburg.  We started with a platter of antipasto.  This includes salami, prosciutto,  red peppers, mozzarella cheese, romano cheese, olives, and more.  This Chianti wine at first smelled of almonds and blackberries.  The oak was very prevalent in the taste, as well as a mix of raspberry and creamy vanilla.  After tasting some romano cheese, the Chianti became much more flavorful.  The salty cheese brought out  many more berry flavors and gave the wine a kick to it.  The mozzarella cheese also brought out more flavors to the wine, but creamier flavors.  The wine tasted roasted and zesty while eating the mozzarella cheese.  The prosciutto brought out a blackberry cigar flavor of the wine.  It was a smokier taste, probably from the type of salt that prosciutto has.  For dinner I had the Salmon Salad.  This was not only amazing, but the Chianti with the Salmon was AMAZING.  It was incredibly smooth tasting and the vanilla, almond, roasted cigar flavor worked amazing with a grilled salmon.  The balsamic dressing and olives in the salad also added to the taste within my palate.  It was a salty and flavorful delight.