The Wine Spy returns

The Wine Spy: at large in Dubai once again!

We eventually settled for a fairly decent if not really memorable Italian Pinot Grigio, which was after all, only really the starter drink, being in a steak restaurant.

All four of us opted for a steak variant for the main course, so a serious red was called for. Our choice was a Ribbon Vale Winery Cabernet Merlot, from the excellent producer Moss Wood, based in the Margaret River in Western Australia.

We had one Australian with us who has spent a lot of time in Western Australia, and he was delighted this was on the menu.

He was extolling the virtues of this wine, describing the deep yet bright colour, with a powerful nose of redcurrant and blueberry, mixed with leather and earth, with a full-bodied palate, fruit flavours and firm ripe tannins (he was a wine-maker from Australia, to give him his due!)

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Clearly embarrassed, she brought a suit-wearing back up, already armed with a bottle of wine to pacify us. He had on him a bottle of Antinori Tignanello: a fine wine indeed, but we were after an alternative to a Cabernet Merlot blend from Margaret River, and here was an Italian, Sangiovese-dominated Tuscan!

Quite how the two are related beat all four of us, until we realised that this wine was AED1200 ($327) to replace the ordered AED700 bottle.

I have seen this practice often in Dubai, but it is normally reserved for shops in the souk who sell the highest price relevant to the nationality of the person, irrespective of the customer requirements!

When challenged, our new suited friend merely suggested that he thought this was a good wine as well.

Then, something I haven’t seen before in Dubai happened: We suggested that this replacement would be okay, but we were only prepared to pay the original Moss Wood price of AED 70 instead of the required AED1200.

The haggle started, originally at an in-between price of AED 950 ($259), but the customer won, and we finally got the bottle for the same as the previous one!