If there’s a room in heaven reserved for wine lovers we image it looks a bit like Edinburgh’s Divino Enoteca. The walls of the Old Town basement restaurant are covered in shelves carrying every Italian wine you could possibly want, with a centrepiece of the the ‘Enomatic’ – a wine dispenser that uses Nitrogen gas to keep wine from deteriorating after even the smallest glass has been taken from each bottle. This allows Divino to offer Italy’s finest wines by the glass (150ml); half glass (75ml) or taste (25ml).
At the helm is Silvio Praino, Divino’s specialist wine manager. Silvio has decades of experience in the restaurant industry and there is little he doesn’t know about Italian wine, at one point owning 46 vintage Barolos in one of his previous restaurants. Here he shares his Italian wine tips in his own words.
First, a bit about Silvio
“My name is Silvio Praino and I’ve been at Divino Enoteca for three years. I look after the wine list. You can call me a wine manager, any title, it doesn’t matter. I just like wine.”
“I’ve been involved in Edinburgh restaurants for twenty three years. I was in Edinburgh for three years in the seventies then I went to Australia. Then I came back from Australia to find out why I went to Australia in the first place. When I came back I had a short spell in Tinelli’s restaurant. Then I opened up my own restaurant in 1993, “Silvio’s On The Shore” where Martin Wishart is now. I also opened Scalini West End at 10 Melville Place. I had both restaurants for a while so I decided to sell one to Martin and years later I sold Scalini and thought, “Have a rest.” Then I retired with my wines.”
“The wine cellar in a restaurant is always important. If you do good food you want decent wine. So I got involved with a large Barolo list. They used to call me ‘Mr Barolo. At one stage, I had Barolo back to 1935, 1935 to 1993, so I had 46 vintages at one stage. Even the London paper wrote about it, not just the Edinburgh paper.”
“Wine tasting is hard work. You can go to a wine tasting where 20% of the wines are drinkable and 80% are absolutely shocking. I usually know what I want to taste so I go from the light to the heaviest. I use Bicarbonate soda for my teeth. It’s very good.”
The best wine at Divino Enoteca
“The wine list at Divino has everyday wine that you can drink a glass or two of and there is also the possibility of more extravagant wine. We always promote drinking 50ml. People would love to drink the more extravagant wine but they cant afford the £600 bottle. By doing 50ml, at £14 -15 or £20, people have the opportunity to taste it. I always make a comparison with a Ferrari. If you want to hire a Ferrari for the day you pay a lot of money. Why are they not offering you a Ferrari for half an hour? A lot of people would do it. “I’m driving a Ferrari for half an hour, go for it. On that basis, when you get to explain to people, forget £100 a glass, you just want to taste it, a one off. We manage to persuade most people.”
“From the list at Divino at the moment I would pick the Primitivo from Puglia. It’s a 50 year old wine. In the south quantity is reduced; to get to a 50 year old vine you have lot less grapes, lot less vine, but it’s fantastic because it’s a natural concentration of the fruit and the alcohol is also quite nice and you get a nice balance and just drink the wine like water. Primitivo, in Italy, has definitely come into its own. People have got to know more wine from Puglia. Puglia is the biggest wine region in Italy – they produce 17% of Italian wine.”
“My second one from the list has to be Barolo – I always like a small producer. The other one would be Brunello Montalcino but the problem with the Monatalcino is that it’s expensive. I’m trying to persuade people who drink super Tuscan wines like Sassicaia, Tignanello, why are you paying £300 for the Sassicaia and you won’t pay £300 for the best Brunello you can buy? I’m trying to get people to go that way but it’s hard work. You have to find out what people are interested in. There’s always a story to tell about how wine is made. A lot of people are interested in that story but then others just want a glass of wine.”
A surprising fact about wine temperature
“The key is to keep the wine at a certain temperature, not changing all the time. It’s all about how you keep it. You don’t want 30 degrees during the day and back to five at night, or back to Scottish room temperature as I say.”
“One aspect of complimenting food I tell people a lot is to have white wine at room temperature with dishes. If you have a very very cold white wine with ham it will clash but if you have a room temperature white wine with parma ham it’s excellent. If you drink an eight degree cold wine with fish, it doesn’t matter, you will not taste the food. If people start to think about room temperature and food they will discover it to be interesting.”
“You don’t want a white wine that doesn’t have the complexity of a red wine, it’s a more floral wine and if you drink it very cold it overshadows everything, especially the bouquet. When you have it at room temperature it expands the floral, the bouquet and the alcohol. The alcohol is only released when it’s room temperature so the warmer the wine the more the alcohol will expand and open up. So white wine, which is lower alcohol normally, is benefited by drinking it at room temperature. I’m a great believer of that. Today there are more producers that make white wine with grape skin contact so there are deeper colours and because they take the tannins from the skin they are definitely better at room temperature, never too cold. I still get people asking for ice on the side to put in the white wine, believe it or not. But it’s peoples taste so I never argue.”
Complimenting Italian wine with food (including chocolate)
“With meat it’s easy but spices can be a problem. You can have a very spicy dish but it doesn’t mean that red wine will go with it, because the spices will overpower. If you have a garlic dish or if you have raw onions on a dish it’s not easy. It all depends what’s on the plate and you have to make a decision there and then. Fillet steak with mushroom, that’s easy. Fillet steak with rosemary and garlic, that’s a popular dish maybe a Cabernet Franc, which has the spiciness. Its interesting to go through that process with the customer.”
“Wine flights are more snacks. We try to give guests three different things. If it’s white wine, we try and give them salami, some people think it doesn’t go with white but it does. Then we have parmesan cheese which goes with the medium to heavy red wines. Then we have the set list that has the wine and each individual dessert. The most interesting dessert wine is Barolo Chinato which is Barolo, three year old first, infused with a bark of cinchona tree, cinnamon, rhubarb and artichokes, so it’s very aromatic. It’s like you are drinking tonic because the quinine is overpowering. When you have Barolo Chinato which is a few years old, the quinine is a bit softer and that goes well with dark chocolate because the bitterness of the dark chocolate heats at the same level of the quinine. We accompany the Barolo Chinato with dark chocolate, fondant or dark chocolate salami (melted dark chocolate with crushed biscuit) and we accompany these with the Barolo Chinato. People either go “wow” or “I don’t like it”. It’s very interesting. That’s another small thing we have here that no Italians I know do.”
To sample Divino’s delicious wine (and Italian food) for yourself, check out the 5pm Profile for Divino Enoteca on 5pm Dining.