Holiday Cheer

Holiday Wine Time

December 10, 2017

So you need a wine for that holiday event – from entry-level to totally unexpected, these four are options worth considering.

Chateau des Charmes 2016 Barrel Fermented Chardonnay
Chateau des Charmes is a favourite of ours and I often recommend their wines to friends who are new to Ontario wine – they consistently deliver at a reasonable price point. This Chardonnay has notes of pineapple, peach and mango on the nose and creamy pineapple and apricot notes on the palate. Such an enjoyable wine with or without food.

Donna Paula 2015 Estate Malbec
Trying to find a food-friendly red that everyone can agree on? This Donna Paula 2015 Estate Malbec is a great choice for an earthy meal featuring mushrooms or black olives. It’s got damp earth, fig and black olive on the nose and a savouriness on the palate that’s cut through with notes of plum and dark cherry. Shawn and I both gave this one the nod of approval.

Sperling Vineyards Brut Sparkling
Tart and pretty with loads of green apple, this B.C. sipper is a great option for your holiday party guests—especially if they include wine nerds like me. Made with great care by this family-run operation, Sperling wines are very terroir driven and drinking this lovely sparkler reminds you of beautiful Okanagan Valley vistas.

Ferox 2016 Sauvignon Blanc
I love this wine. It’s expensive, but it’s unique and fantastic – there’s tropical fruit, mango and melon on the nose and it’s much creamier than I expected. It’s an elegant wine with pineapple, mango and peach on the palate – very different than any other Sauvignon Blanc I’ve tasted (even from Ontario) and I can’t wait to have it again.

Food & Wine

Summer Wine Adventures

August 20, 2017

How is it that August is more than half over? I feel like I’ve barely had a moment to really enjoy summer and it’s already starting to slip away. Looking back, though, there have been some pretty fabulous summer wine adventures over the last few months and I’m excited to share a few of those with you today!

B.C. Wine Time

It’s not easy getting B.C. wine in Ontario – especially not the best of the best, which is typically produced in lots too small for the LCBO to bring it in and far too expensive by the case to have it shipped to you. That’s why the recent Trailblazers & Terroir event in Toronto was such a treat. Four B.C. winemakers shared their stories – and their wines – in a structured tasting that featured some of the top B.C. wines. Many of them will be popping up in better restaurants soon and the opportunity to enjoy them by the glass is worth taking. My personal favourites were the Checkmate Winery 2014 Little Pawn Chardonnay with its cream, green apple and lemon on the nose and rich, creamy palate featuring notes of orange, vanilla and a hint of baking spice. I found the oak perfectly balanced and this would be a delicious food-pairing wine. I was also impressed by the aromatic and floral CedarCreek 2016 Platinum Viognier, which had big, bold flavours and would go very well with anything spicy.

For the reds, it’s hard to choose. I loved the earthiness of the Martin’s Lane 2014 Pinot Noir, which would be a lovely wine to pair with anything mushroom-based. I also really enjoyed the CedarCreek 2013 “The Last Word” red blend, which features Merlot and Cabernet Franc with just a hint of Malbec. There was cherry, bramble and spice on the nose and a nice blend of earthy, spicy fruit on the palate.

Overall, I enjoyed all the wines featured in this tasting and will continue to be wistful in my hopes that B.C. wine becomes more available here one day.

Easy-Drinking Ontario

I had the opportunity to sample a number of Ontario wines recently and I’m happy to share that there are some great options available as we head into the fall. My personal favourite? The Chateau des Charmes 2014 “Old Vines” Riesling with petrol and pear on the nose and pear, green apple and just a hint of creaminess on the palate, this was eminently drinkable and an example of just how good Ontario Riesling can be.

I immediately wanted to try the Coyote’s Run 2016 Pinot Noir as soon as it arrived because I love Ontario Pinot. With its earthy nose featuring wet soil, black cherry and bacon this is a very food-friendly wine. It has lots of savoury notes that lends it well to mushroom-based dishes and hearty fall pastas. The Coyote’s Run 2016 Sauvignon Blanc is very typical of Sauv Blanc on the nose (fresh cut lawn, green apple, a few tropical fruit notes) and gooseberry and yellow apple on the palate. I found it a little acidic for my tastes, but Shawn enjoyed it.

We were also able to sample the Grange of Prince Edward Almanac Red and Almanac White recently. These entry-level wines are an affordable introduction to PEC wine. The red blend is a little heavy on the Gamay for my tastes (not my favourite grape, I know, I know), but it’s well-made and easy-drinking. The white blend was more to my personal tastes and is a nice patio wine – perfect for late summer patio drinking.

Boxed Wine for the Win?

Recently, the LCBO started stocking international boxed wines and that’s seen an overall improvement in quality that’s well-worth noting. Because it’s usually less expensive wine, it’s not always going to be a go-to for me, but I get that for some people cheap, sweet and hot are selling points (and I’m not kidding when I say that at all – I work with a few of them), so I wanted to highlight two I recently tried that were pretty decent. The Radio Boka boxed wine from Spain was actually quite enjoyable. For a party, it’s a great value and while it’s sweeter than I prefer, I think it would go over really well with a crowd that’s not as wine snobby as yours truly.

And Bota Box invited me to a truly fun event where I got to try a few glasses of their boxed Cabernet Sauvignon under the stars while enjoying BBQ and an outdoor viewing of The Princess Bride. It was a lot of fun and a reminder that you can still have a great evening with a picnic wine that might be a little sweeter and hotter than your palate prefers. I have recommended both of these boxes to friends whose tastes run in this direction and I don’t think they will disappoint.

What have you been sipping this summer? Do you have a favourite boxed wine? Share your thoughts in the comments below or on social.

Best of

June Wine Adventures

June 17, 2017

It’s been a little while since my last post and I’m not sure how good my reasons are for that. Honestly, I’ve been a little burnt out on wine blogging over the last few months. I still love learning about wine, but after a few years of regular blogging it’s hard to keep up the constant enthusiasm sometimes. Over the last few months, I’ve found my time split between competing passions. I’ve been focused on writing fiction, running and yoga—as well as spending more time with the people in my life who have often been overlooked because I was so busy juggling a full-time job and my wine blogging adventures. It’s hard to feel bad about making that decision.

That’s not to say I’m ready to give this up, I just might have to keep things a little less frequent as I strive to maintain some balance in my life. And with a running injury set to sideline me for much of the summer, I’ll likely have a little more time available to devote to blogging again. So, with that said, here we go with my latest round-up of wine stories!

Some Southbrook Stunners:

I recently had the opportunity to taste through some of the wines in Southbrook Estate Winery’s latest release. I’ve always enjoyed this Niagara producer and I wasn’t disappointed at this tasting. Some of the highlights included the new 2016 Biodynamic Bubbly Vidal, which is done in the Ancestral style to create a refreshing and light effervescent sparkler. The Wild Ferment Cider was another interesting surprise. It’s done in the style of Northern Spain and is a very dry cider with a hint of sweet apple juice. It’s fermented with wild wine yeast and priced reasonably at $15.95 – it reminded me a little of the sparkling cider I so love from The Old Third in Prince Edward County.

The 2013 Poetica Chardonnay was another standout for me with apple, pear and a touch of cream on the nose. This wine had nice fruit on the palate, with notes of pear and green apple. A lovely, small-batch wine.

The 2016 Estate Cabernet Rosé also impressed with strawberry notes all through and lots summer fruit on the palate. This would be a nice patio sipper this summer and a perfect wine for so many food pairings (I love the versatility of rosé). And the 2013 Estate Witness Block Cabernet Sauvignon/Cabernet Franc was an elegant red with anise, raspberry and bramble on the nose. Another personal favourite of the tasting.

Another surprise was the 2016 Small Lot Natural Orange Wine. I haven’t always been a fan of Southbrook’s orange wines, but this one was more to my tastes. The tannins are still quite pronounced and the flavour is certainly unique, but it’s a little more fruit-forward and less bracing than some of the previous vintages.

B.C. Wine on my Mind

Over the last few months, Shawn and I have been going through some pretty fantastic B.C. wines from Evolve Cellars. Their lightly sparkling wines (Effervescence) are perfect for summer and bursting with lovely flavour. They truly are a perfect sparkling option for summer (though a quick peek at their website doesn’t show any available right now, so perhaps already a sell-out). We really don’t have enough access to B.C. wineries and it’s such a shame. Another favourite from that province? Time Winery’s 2013 Syrah – Shawn and I couldn’t get enough of this big, bold red. You can order wines from these producers online across Canada now and it’s well worth it if you have the ability to store these wines easily.

Sweet Italian Wine Time

I was recently invited to an event at iYellow Wine Club to check out Italy’s Roscato wine. Sweet wines typically aren’t my thing unless they’re specifically dessert wines (or used in cocktails), but I like to keep an open mind and I found this wine interesting. It’s a slightly effervescent, very sweet wine from Northern Italy meant to be served cold and which the company’s representative explained was very popular with new wine drinkers. I get that, since I started my wine journey on Arbour Mist. And Roscato at least is a quality product – the effervescence is added via the charmat method and not carbonation, the grapes are hand-picked and they use the minimum number of pesticides. It’s also 7 per cent alcohol, so this is a pretty good option for adding to summer sangria (honestly, that would be my number one suggestion for how to use it) and it’s a sweet treat over vanilla ice cream.

What have you been drinking so far this season? Share your favourites with me in the comments or on social.

B.C. wine