Niki and I went to Bravo Cucina Italiana yesterday for dinner. While tempted to go with the obvious wine choice for such a place (a Tuscan Chianti, of course), we ended up opting for a new wine on their menu.

Montes Cabernet Sauvignon 2001 has been on their menu about a month, but neither our server nor the bartender could tell us much of anything about it. I thought it a bit curious that they'd put a new wine on the menu before the scheduled staff wine tasting. We decided to give it a try.

My first tasting was pleasant. This Cab's deep ruby color and fruity overtones suggested that we had chosen well. A surprisingly strong finish added to its intrigue. Wine Spectator scored both the 1999 and 2000 vintages at eighty-six points.

The wine improved as it got a chance to breathe. It matched well with both Niki's filet mignon and my margherita pizza. At $28 on Bravo's menu, I'm guessing that it probably goes for roughly $15-17 per bottle at the local wine shop, where I'm sure to look for more. Not a cheap bottle, but hardly expensive. I don't drink wine because it's cheap.

While on the topic of reasons to drink wine, let me share another tidbit that I learned well after we finished off the bottle and got back home. The particular wine -- the exact vintage, it would seem -- has been prescribed to 400 cardiac patients in the quantity of two glasses per day over the course of the past two years by a leading cardiologist in the UK.

I recommend it, and am interested to know what you think.