In need of a last minute gift for your Valentine? Perhaps a revisit of our wine & chocolate pairings? Whatever your need we’ll be open 11a-5p.

The Cherry Creek location is the newest Pasquini's Pizza serving Vinny No Neck.

Colorado may be a hotbed for rapid expansion of restaurants on both the regional and national level — see Chipotle and Noodle & Co., for example — but Tony Pasquini wants no part of playing the role of franchiser. Anymore.

In fact, he’s going in reverse. He started selling off his Pasquini’s Pizza and franchising new locations more than a decade ago. Guess what? He didn’t like how they were being run. So in the last few months, he’s gone  ahead and bought out the ownership of two of the locations and ended a license agreement with another one.

Pasquini’s is now a family business again.

“You know, it sounded like a good idea,” Tony says. “I figured out it wasn’t for me. When you are a small franchiser, you don’t have the wherewithal to operate the stores on the quality level needed. The spirit just wasn’t there.”

In the process of this changeover, Tony also opened up a new location in Cherry Creek, which marks three locations he now owns and operates (Highland and Lone Tree, the others). All three serve Bonacquisti Vinny No Neck on tap. A fourth location, the original on South Broadway, is still owned by his sister.

So why the change of heart? Simple. Tony has core values he believes needs to be instilled in any business carrying his last name, a mantra that should start with the choice of cheese and continue to how employees interact with customers.

Tony Pasquini

“We just got involved with people who didn’t necessarily have the same values that made Pasquini’s successful,” Tony says. “Use cheaper cheese to make more money? That wasn’t the idea behind it. It was meant to be a community place.”

So now, after seven years of taking a role in an office, Tony is back to the long hours of running not one, but three pizzerias. After some reflection, the 45-year-old wouldn’t have it any other way. Pizza has been in his blood since shortly after his 10th birthday, after all.

At the time, Tony’s father ran an auto shop. He didn’t want to work with his dad.

“My dad’s best friend had a pizza place,” he says. “His son didn’t want to work for him, I didn’t want to work for my dad. When you are 10 and Italian you have to go to work.”

So he started in the pizza biz well before his teenage years. About a decade later, his parent’s divorce led to he and his mother getting a restaurant space on South Broadway.

He turned it into a pizza joint with just nine tables in 1984. “There was really not much to it,” he recalls of the original location that has been expanded and is now run by his sister. “With every dollar we made, we put it back in it. We didn’t have enough to buy supplies for more than a day.”

Well, the concept worked and by 1998 the business was growing. He licensed out a spot in Uptown in 1998, followed by a Louisville location in 2001 (since closed). Then came the crazy growth with the Highland (2007), Lone Tree (2009) and Tech Center (2010) locations popping up in succession.

That’s when Tony started noticing things weren’t up to snuff at all the locations. Since taking all of them back inhouse, Tony has instilled his work ethic and family values while upgrading the menu.

Things such as the cheeses and meats are now being sourced from top purveyors (locally when possible, such as Il Mondo Vecchio for the restaurant’s Italian meats, Bonacquisti Wine Co. for vino and Haystack Mountain for cheese, for example) and general quality control has become a top priority.

“Wherever we can, try to buy local,” Tony says. “Whatever we can do.”

The newest location, Cherry Creek, which just opened a month ago, also introduced a wood-fired oven for the first time and has 15 mostly Colorado beers on tap. Tony hopes to open an Uptown and East Colfax spot in the next year, too. But he’s not going to relinquish control during this expansion burst.

“I learned that never put myself in a situation again,” he says. “My whole life I have been positive and building; franchising is more policing. You have to do this or else — that’s not what I’m about.”

Tony’s Pick: Vinny No Neck ($6 a glass) and Antipasto ($9.95)

This dish got an overhaul when Tony moved back in charge. It features a selection of meats — coppa, salami and pepperoni — from Denver’s awesome butcher Il Mondo Vecchio alongside fresh mozzarella, olives, roasted peppers and more. “It’s fabulous,” Tony says. “It’s the best stuff I’ve had. It’s perfect with Vinny. The Bonacquisti stuff is just a perfect food wine. Hes got that Italian flavor to it.”

Drink Vinny and eat pizza at these three locations:

Highland, 2400 West 32nd Ave., Denver

Lone Tree, 7431 Park Meadows Drive, Littleton

Cherry Creek, 240 Milwaukee St., Denver

More:

• Highland Tap’s surprising wine list
• Go shopping
• Bike to Amendment XXI

• About the winery Bonacquisti Wine Co. Colorado food and wine Colorado wine D red Denver wine Denver wine events Denver Winery Garlic Knot Vinny No Neck

Which one of these Roberta's Chocolates would taste good with wine?

Wine and chocolate go together like, well, wine and chocolate. Two indulgent flavors simply deserve one another, which is why there isn’t a better analogy in our mind. And when it comes time to pick chocolates, it only makes sense to check out the artisan chocolate around the corner.

Roberta’s Chocolates (4840 West 29th Ave., Denver) has become a mainstay on the northwest side of town over the last dozen years. Roberta Poirier, the owner, produces a wide assortment of truffles, fudges, peanut butter cups and novelty candies at her namesake shop. She’s also the go-to supplier for the annual Wine and Chocolate Weekend every Valentine’s Day weekend at Bonacquisti Wine Co.

“I just love Paul,” Poirier says, of course referring to Paul Bonacquisti, our owner/winemaker. “After his weekend, people come in saying, ‘I had this truffle,’ so they come in to see the place.”

Makes sense. If you leave the winery with a bottle of Zin-style port, your next stop should be the chocolate shop.

Owning her own (chocolate) store was always going to be where Poirier wound up. She’s been an entrepreneur since elementary school. During her grade-school days, she’d take a quarter to the corner store, buy lollipops for a nickel apiece, then turn around and sell the candy for 10 cents a pop at school. “I had my first job in the second grade,” she says. “I could double my money in second grade.”

When she moved to Colorado, she took over a candy delivery route and found out something really interesting: The candies she made sold better than the ones the company provided her. It seemed as if she had a calling. “My husband said, ‘OK, go get a shop and see what you can do,’” she recalls. “I blame my husband.”

Well, it has worked out. She marries her love of art and design with a knack for producing tasty sweets at Roberta’s. The look of the chocolate or treat is just as important as the flavors, she says. “It’s got to be fun,” she says. “Fun is good taste and look.”

That’s how she gets people hooked on her chocolates (the mountain crunch with caramel corn coated in white chocolate and almonds is her favorite, by the way). Well, maybe it’s more than that. She’s become a partner in the community (which goes beyond her frequent work with Bonacquisti) and charms her customers with a sense of humor. “They say they come for the chocolate but stay for the entertainment,” she says. “That’s putting pressure on me to always entertain.”

She’s also keeps customers’ attention by inventing new tasty sweets based on feedback from the neighborhood. Things like a jalapeno powder-dusted peanut butter cups come to mind. She’s also debuting a Valentine’s Day special that’s a box of assorted chocolates that comes in an edible box. During the football season, it was all about Tebow. Turns out Tebow Fudge (in orange and blue colors, of course) sells out very quickly. “We had to make more. That was fun.”

“My goal is for each customer to laugh or smile,” she says. “You’re not making chocolate to make someone mad. It ends in a smile.”

Three tips to pairing wine and chocolate:

Since Roberta doesn’t drink all that often, we turned to Paul for his advice on chocolate and wine pairing, fresh off sampling 18 of her truffles ahead of Wine & Chocolate Weekend (Feb. 11-12).

• Go with heavier reds to balance the body of the chocolate.
• Match the flavor profiles. For example, a wine with dark cherry flavors will go well with a truffle that has either the same or complimentary tastes.
• Relax, it’s wine and chocolate.

Come smile about sweets and vino on Feb. 11-12 at Wine & Chocolate Weekend. $20 for five chocolates with wine pairings.

• About the winery Bonacquisti Wine Co. Colorado food and wine Colorado wine D red Denver wine Denver wine events Denver Winery Garlic Knot Vinny No Neck

The bar at Highland Tap & Burger in Denver is a great place for a burger and a beer (or a glass of wine!)

This first thing you’ll notice about Highland Tap & Burger (2219 W. 32nd Ave., Denver) is that it is not, in fact, a wine bar. Perhaps it’s the name, the endless flatscreens showcasing the Broncos, Nuggets or Avs (and Red Sox) or the 20 beers on tap that gives this little factoid away.

That hasn’t stopped co-owner Katie O’Shea from becoming quite the wine aficionado. In fact, she’s an executive sommelier and has put together a small but thoughtful wine list (that usually includes a Bonacquisti selection) at the burger joint that’s become one of the most popular spots in the Highland neighborhood since opening in the fall of 2010.

“One of the things that was really important to me about this restaurant was we didn’t want to, No. 1., alienate women,” O’Shea says. “We didn’t want to be thought of as a sports bar, that freezer-to-fire connotation. We have really fresh food here, and to go along with that … we wanted to have a nice little wine list.”

Katie O'Shea has built a flavorful wine list at Highland Tap.

An executive sommelier might seem like an odd partner in a business that pushes out heaping beef patties piled high with toppings (literally, the Tap Burger comes with a burger and pulled pork and a fried egg), but everything about O’Shea’s entry into the Denver restaurant business seems even more bizarre.

See, O’Shea started her career as far from food as possible. First, she was a certified financial analyst before realizing that wasn’t her desired career path. Think food was next? Not exactly. She went back to school, getting a graduate degree in mathematics and education from a little university called Harvard.

That led to a four-year stint teaching math to teenaged boys who had various run-ins with the law in the form of drugs, weapons and assault charges. The inevitable burnout came just about the time that some of her husband’s Colorado connections started talking to the couple about going into business with an upscale burger bar concept in Highlands.

They jumped at the chance to move from Boston (Highland Tap is a Boston sports gathering spot) to Denver.

“The kids [her students] drove me crazy,” O’Shea says. “I told them I was opening a bar because they drove me to drink.”

Husband Juan Padro brought the restaurant experience to the table, she added her smarts and a love of wine. Instead of an obligatory red and white, Highland Tap’s boutique list features about 14 options ranging from our own [d] Red to 3 Degrees Pinot Noir, Pine Ridge Vineyards Chenin Blanc/Viognier, a summertime Riesling that goes killer with hot wings and a variety of other fun wines that pair to the menu flavors.

“We just wanted to have a nice little list to appeal to the ones who weren’t necessarily the beer-guzzling type,” she says. “A nice little list that goes with the burgers and salads. That’s the fun part, picking the wine list.”

Even being an admitted cork dork hasn’t stop O’Shea from turning to the dark side. And by dark side, we mean becoming a beer geek. It comes with the territory of this restaurant. Ever the academic, she’s jumped into the world of suds with a pint glass in each hand, learning the ins and outs of the Colorado craft beer industry and passing along her new knowledge to women throughout the metro area.

She, at the urging of Juan, started a women’s beer club, dubbed Crafty Ladies. It’s become so popular that Highland Tap offers the same event twice each month to keep up with demand. “Crafty Ladies has been keeping me very, very busy,” she says.

O’Shea is even flirting with the idea of becoming a cicerone, the beer equivalent of a high-ranking sommelier. “I heard that test is really hard. I’m kind of torn right now between going further with the wine or going further with the beer.”

But wine is still her No. 1 drink, and we get behind any burger joint that has options such as CC Cabernet (a California label developed by Boulder-based Master Sommelier Richard Betts) and, of course, [d] Red or another offering from Bonacquisti.

“I have to say I have a huge appreciation for craft beer now, but my first love is still wine,” O’Shea says.

[d] Red wine pairing
($8 glass, $24 bottle at Highland Tap, 2219 W. 32nd Ave., Denver)
The Rocky Mountain lamb burger ($10) is served on a savory caramelized onion bun with goat cheese, tomato relish and arugula. The nutty, creaminess of these toppings with the rich lamb compliments its dried fruit and spice nicely.

Bonacquisti Wine around the ‘hood:

• Linger’s crazy wine list
• Mondo Vino stocking Highland with booze
• Pizza and wine, New York style at Garlic Knot

• About the winery Bonacquisti Wine Co. Colorado food and wine Colorado wine D red Denver wine Denver wine events Denver Winery Garlic Knot Vinny No Neck

Up next:

What they’re saying about it:

“…the city’s best dining steal.” — Amanda Faison, 5280 food editor

“@jacobharkins you killed it tonight @spuntinodenver! love that you’re bringing the best of CO #wine tasting and facts to #Denver. you rock.” — Kindra Anderson, the Westword wine writer, on Twitter (swirlgirldenver):

Our Wine & Chocolate Weekend is a ticketed event and is now Sold Out for both Saturday and Sunday. 

Impress your date and spend the afternoon at the 6th Annual Wine & Chocolate Weekend at Bonacquisti Wine Company featuring the creations of Roberta’s Chocolates. Small batch artisan chocolates will be expertly paired with awarding winning wines from 1pm to 5pm on Saturday, February 11th and from 1p-4p on Sunday February 12th.

Recommended by Colorado Homes & Lifestyle Magazine

Still on the fence? Check out the lineup:

White Merlot – White Raspberry Truffle

Vinny No Neck – Pomegranate Truffle

2008 Cabernet Sauvignon – Cherry Bomb Truffle

2010 Old Vine Zinfandel – Smoke Truffle

Zin Port - Jalapeno Infused Fudge

Wine & Chocolate Weekend, February 11th & 12th, 2012

Garganelli with Duck Ragu
by Mario Batali via the Food Network

Sangiovese is a perfect wine for the acidic properties of tomatoes, which is why it’s used along side so many traditional pasta dishes in its most famous region, Chianti. Here, Mario Batali creates a wonderful ragu with duck legs that adds a gourmet feel to the course. The sauce also calls for two cups of, you guessed it, Sangiovese. When you cook with a wine, drink that wine and it’s a can’t fail pairing. Also note that Mario makes his own pasta, which is a fun but labor intensive way to make dinner. We don’t judge if you purchase some fresh pasta from any gourmet grocer.

• Check out the Garganelli with Duck Ragu recipe 

Beef Brisket
by Marczyk Fine Foods

Marczyk Fine Foods is one of our favorite gourmet grocers in Denver, and they offer a variety of recipes that can (and should) be made with ingredients at the quality level they offer. This beef brisket recipe is delicious and offers a variety of sweet, spicy and savory flavors that are playful and easy to consume. Just like Vinny, which can hold up to all of the above and enhance the body of the meat.

• Check out the Beef Brisket recipe

Grilled Pizza with Spicy Italian Sausage
by Bon Appetit

We love Vinny with a pizza loaded with goodies, and you really cannot go wrong with this pairing. Italian sausage has a special place with this wine though, the fruit flavors of the wine complementing the bold tastes of the sausage (the best spicy sausage in Denver is available just around the corner from us at Carbone’s). Here, Bon Appetit suggests grilling your pizza, which is one of the best ways to cook a pie at home. Your BBQ can reach super high temps, which come close to mimicking the heat found at in the oven of your favorite pizza place.

• Check out the Grilled Pizza with Spicy Italian Sausage recipe 

More:

• Learn more about Colorado food and wine pairing

• About the winery Bonacquisti Wine Co. Colorado food and wine Colorado wine D red Denver wine Denver wine events Denver Winery Garlic Knot Vinny No Neck

We hope you have a wonderful Christmas.

Paul and Judi

Wine can be a confusing thing, especially for those of us who like to crack open a bottle and just enjoy with friends. Part of the intimidation comes from the vast vernacular required to hang with certified cork dorks. We could list hundreds of words that relate to wine, but there are more important tasks in life. So we offer 33 basic terms that will make you feel comfortable talking wine with novices and experts alike.

Acidic 
A wine that has strong acids in it which can make your mouth water a bit. Acids are usually really good for food and wine pairings.

Appellation
A known wine region defined by, depending on the country, geography, wine quality, topography and a number of other factors. In the U.S., these are simply legally defined geographic areas. Colorado has two: The West Elks and Grand Valley.

Aromatic
A wine with very noticeable and distinctive aromas. Often, these wines will result in people at the tasting room saying something like, “smells yummy.” We couldn’t agree more. Try the Riesling for a delicious pop of fragrance.

Blind tasting
The only way to prove to your friends that Colorado wine can hang with the world. The premise is simple, line up several wines by theme (grape, region, etc.), place a brown bag or other masking agent over them, pour and enjoy without knowing which is which (but be sure to number them to keep track). Then you and your friends can talk about the wine without bias.

Breathing
Some would suggest that letting a wine breath is as important as the act of breathing for humans. Introducing air to wine can open up aromas and flavors, balance the wine and make it supremely enjoyable. The beauty of wine is that it literally changes with every sip.

Classico
An Italian term for the historical or “classic” center of a wine region — often located in the heart of a Italian appellations known as DOCs. This has nothing to do with Colorado other than we dig Italian wine here on 46th and Pecos.

Cult wines
Wines that have a rabid following due in large part because of quality, lack of production and marketing. These wines cost a boatload and often require signing onto a wait list just to get one. We’re not there (yet), but we figure the to be gaining that status in our home neighborhood, Sunnyside.

Decanting
We just told you how important breathing is in regards to a wine’s development. Decanting speeds the process by aerating the wine in an area with more room for oxygen. Decanting can also help separate sediment from wine. Decanting a red wine is almost never a bad idea.

Dry
This simple means the wine lacks sugar (sugar from grapes can be removed completely during the fermentation process at the discretion of the winemaker).

Grand Valley AVA
This Colorado appellation is the heart of the state’s wine country. It’s located in and around Palisade.

Jug wine
This American term is generally reserved for inexpensive table wine. In our case, we have fun with it by offering a growler-like refill program.

Nose
The smell of the wine basically. To truly enjoy the nose, stick your nose deep into the wine glass (and don’t fret if you sniff a little up your nose; it happens to the best of us).

Oenophile
A wine aficionado or connoisseur. Hopefully you classify yourself as one. If not, stop on by the tasting room, and we’ll convert you.

Off dry
Wine that has just a touch of sugar still in it after fermentation. It’s not quite sweet nor is it bone dry.

Port
A sweet fortified wine, which is generally produced from grapes grown and processed in the Douro region of Portugal. This term is trademarked, so we can only offer a Port-style wine. This wine is fortified with the addition of distilled grape spirits in order to boost the alcohol content and stop fermentation thus preserving some of the natural grape sugars.

Reserve
In the U.S., this term means very little. It’s a term a winemaker can add for whenever he or she deems it. In places such as Spain or Italy, it has a legal definition that dictates time in oak barrels and aging minimums.

Revisit
A handy term to order more wine from a tasting room without sounding like a lush (ie, “I’d like to revisit that Vinny No Neck.” Sounds like you know what you are talking about.)

Sommelier
The snotty person at a restaurant that knows everything about wine. Well, not everything. There are several schools of varying stature that can bestow up to three levels of Sommelier on a person, the highest distinction being Master Sommelier (the Court of Master Sommeliers is the most esteemed authority). Locally, the International Wine Guild and The International Sommelier Guild offer three levels starting with the most basic certification that follows a weekend seminar.

Sparkling wine
Any wine that bubbles. Champagne only comes from its namesake region in France.

Sweet
A wine with significant sugar left in it after  fermentation. This should not be confused with fruit forward. Sweet wines will coat your mouth and have a thicker viscosity than dry wines with big fruits. A wine can be fruity without being sweet.

Tannic
Tannins are a compound that come from oak, and grape skins, seeds and stems. They provide structure in a wine that can help it develop for many years in bottle. If a wine is heavy on tannins, it will feel gritty, almost sandpaper-like, on the palate. In this case, the wine is either being enjoyed too young or it just needs a little air to allow the fruits and acids to  come forward.

Terroir
A fancy word that talks about the major factors in grape quality: mostly climate and geography.

Varietal
Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay and all those other wines made from a single-grape.

Vertical
One of the best ways to understand how much a year can change things. Tasting a vertical lineup means sipping on different years of a one wine type from one winery. Bonacquisti Wine Co. wine club members periodically get invited to do this at the winery when we open up the library.

Vin, Vina, Vino, Vinho
The way the French, Spanish, Italians and Portuguese, respectively, say wine.

Vintage
This is the year of the grape. If the wine says 2009, that means the grapes where harvested in 2009. If it doesn’t have year on it, then the wine may be a combination of more than one year of grapes.

West Elks AVA
A Colorado appellation located in and around Paonia.  This is where the state’s bomber Pinot Noir and high acid Riesling comes from.

Wine key
The popular, handheld corkscrew that all self respecting wine geeks use (instead of those fancy, breakable types that look like animals).

Wine cave
A subterranean structure, such as your basement or the underground tunnel of your Bordeaux chateau, for storing and aging wine. You know you want one (so do we).

Yeast
A micro-organism that is found in a variety of places, including the skins of grapes. Yeast reacts with sugar to start fermentation, you know, the process that turns grapes into booze!

Still stuck on turkey
Some of us didn’t get enough tryptophan over the Thanksgiving holiday, so we like to carry over a roasted bird for one more celebration. There’s nothing wrong with that. Try a Riesling with your bird and forgo the red wine. It’s perhaps the most food-friendly wine in the world, a delightfully aromatic wine with body and balance that loves a good turkey.

A rare roast
A medium rare, juicy roast is red meat heaven around the holidays (assuming your favorite relative who’s doing the cooking doesn’t leave it in the oven too long!). That means you should reach for a Cabernet. It’s a classic pairing. Or, you can stray from the norm. We say have a little more fun, and try a Cabernet Franc (there’s just a few cases of our 2008 left!). Its green chili and pepper notes give it a fun flavor profile that will match an herb-encrusted exterior. There’s plenty of fruit too to compliment the medium rare meat.

Going goose?
Some like to mix it up at the Christmas table with a holiday goose. It’s not a bad idea. Turns out Zin is a nice companion to this fowl on Christmas Day. Why? Well, partly because we’re partial to Zinfandel (we get some prime fruit from Lodi for this wine). But more so because it’s a big, bold wine and goose is a bold statement at the holiday dinner table. The tangy fruits will sing with the bird, and the natural fat content of a goose calls for a bolder wine.