Review by Sac Bee!

Nice lunch with wine at Après, by Allen Pierleoni, Sacramento Bee

We’ve joined the breakfast crowd a few times at the Red Hut (Highway 50 at Lake Tahoe Boulevard) and with good reasons (the waffle among them). But we wanted a fancy lunch with wine – and found Après in the same strip mall.

 Co-owners J.P. Lonergan and Barbara Tenney run a 300-bottle wine shop, with 50 wines open at any time. The classy wine-tasting bar doubles as a lunch-dinner spot, with fine fare. Another top choice for locals.

We were curious about the store’s computerized Enomatic “wine preservation and serving system” from Italy. The machine keeps wines fresh up to six weeks, claims the company, as argon gas keeps oxygen from touching the vino. It works, said Tenney.

Picture it: A streamlined, stainless steel-and-Plexiglas machine holding 16 bottles of reds and eight whites, dispensed in 1-ounce measures for varying prices. You access the pours with a pre-loaded ATM-type card. Between that and the 2-ounce measures hand-poured behind the bar, a do-it-yourself wine-tasting is easy.

We spooned spicy gazpacho and split an attractive Middle Eastern spread of hummus, sweet-pepper tapenade with balsamic vinegar, carrot chips and warm pita bread. Next time: the smoked salmon BLT and bacon-wrapped figs stuffed with smoked mozzarella.

 APRÈS

 WHERE: 3668 Lake Tahoe Blvd., South Lake Tahoe

 HOW MUCH: $4-$15

 INFORMATION: (530) 544-9463, http://apreswineco.com

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Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2010/07/30/2921719/two-delicious-finds-at-lake-tahoe.html#ixzz0vCZMZuSe 

This entry was posted on Friday, July 30th, 2010 at 2:08 pmand is filed under Apres, Après News Archives. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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