Tierra D' Vinos.

Wine lovers in Mexico City, welcome to your diamond in the rough, appropriately named Tierra D' Vinos. Living up to its self-proclaimed title as the "Land of Wine," the walls of this exclusive restaurant are lined with shelves boasting what is surely the widest and finest wine selection in the capital.

Beautiful dark wooden tables placed under dim overhead light created an intimate ambience, while the more than 1,000 shelved bottles surrounding the dining room induced fantasies of being inside an impressively stocked wine cellar. The wines were organized by country of origin ranging from Bulgaria to New Zealand, and there was even a wall-sized painting of a tree whose branches were named for popular and obscure wines.

However, a potentially intimate dining experience at Tierra D'Vinos was certainly limited by the excessive noise that reverberated off the walls of the nearly enclosed dining space. We opened our menus to discover a confusing selection--the appetizers were not clearly separated from the entrees--and we were slightly surprised by the short and very Spanish list of main courses. Is anyone in the mood for jamon serrano or a tortilla espanola?

We ordered four appetizers: queso tomme relleno al vino blanco, tortilla de patata, boquerones en aceite de oliva and ensalada de quesos, frutas y hierbas. The queso tomme was good-quality Brie cheese in wine sauce rounded off with lettuce, while the tortilla was a tasty and thick, tapa-sized egg omelet mixed with potato. Though the name boquerones sounds a bit unusual, it was a straightforward plate of delicious anchovies swimming in olive oil. The ensalada de quesos had two types of cheese, accompanied by sweet sliced peaches and lettuce.

Of course we couldn't dine at a wine lover's utopia without ordering a bottle. We sipped the Chilean Montgras Carbernet Syrah, an excellent red wine that at 188 pesos was a good value for a quality wine in Mexico. But beware. The prices listed are only for patrons who buy a bottle to carry home. If you want the privilege of drinking and dining, there is an outrageous 90-peso cork fee, a significant impediment--both economic and psychological--to ordering more than one bottle.

Continuing our feast, we ordered four entrees: two fish and two meat dishes. The first was extraviado plancha con verduras a la mantequilla, a well-cooked Pacific fish atop buttered vegetables with bits of bacon hidden in the mix. The other was the fish of the day, which turned out to be a tasty red snapper accompanied by rice dyed black with squid ink. For our meat dishes, we ordered the corazon de sirloin con patatas, a juicy sirloin steak atop potatoes, and a mouthwateringly tender veal breast with roasted vegetables.

Despite being quite full, we knew we owed it to our readers to try dessert, so we ordered the torre de tejas, a sweet mix of strawberries and cream placed between a pair of thin wafers. But probably the sweetest thing we ordered was a well-deserved glass of champagne. Here's to you, dear reader.

Durango 197                                     10
Col. Roma                                       8
Mon. to Wed. 2-5:30 p.m.,                       8
Thurs. to Sat. 2 p.m. to 2 a.m., closed Sunday
Tel.: [phone]                      US$3