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Part one: A 30 march of wines
March ends in madness. Sydney Crosby breaks his jaw. The Toronto Maple Leafs are on their way to the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Wichita State is heading to the final four while a Canadian star guard leads...
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Part two: A 30 march of value reds
Today’s date may read April 5th, 2013 but as far as I’m concerned, it’s still March. Winter chill hovers like a suffocating raft over a simmering cauldron of consommé. We are the suds, the weather our...
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Wine, wine and sunshine
The unequaled quotient of sun multiplied by wine makes California the leading authority to transition from winter to spring. The California Wine Fair signals that seasonal change across Canada, at...
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Masters wines in purple, yellow and green jackets
White and red. These are the two descriptors that separate and define wine. But the pigmentation in wine runs a colour spectrum way beyond the black and the white. Whites wines can appear pale or...
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A Stanley Cup for house league hockey
They do give back. If your son or daughter was born in 2000 or 2001 and loves playing minor hockey, the 2012-2013 season would more than likely have been a good one. Regardless of ability or what...
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A wine pentathlon
Wake up and smell the grapes. Put those lame excuses on the shelf and get over yourself. Time to cease and desist the dissing and dismissing of Ontario wine. I used to be like you but now I participate...
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Time to buy these great wines
Smaller investments lead to bigger fortunes. This is the credo that works for me when it comes to wine. I practice what I preach and taste as many wines as possible, to determine the personality of my...
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Come together, over wine
Intensity is in the air. The artists are at work, blessed with a geographical, geological and climatic canvas unique to the planet. They share arts and letters, compare and contrast methods, style and...
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Cloudy with showers, more wine expected
This one’s for the floodwaters ravaged and oppressed in cottage country and to a much lesser extent, the city dwellers, this morning’s sunshine respite notwithstanding, faced with a few more days of...
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You can lead a county to the city
It’s time to discover the wines of bucolic Prince Edward County in south-central Ontario, a place possessed and structured of a learned and cultured essence. If you were born in PEC you likely never...
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Top 10 wines for May Day
If April was the cruelest month (and in 2013 it certainly seemed like it was), May has just got to be better. A good, proper and solid bottle of wine would go a long way towards fashioning sunny and...
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The Wine Diaries: Napa Valley’s Peter Franus
Peter Franus is a man at ease, comfortable within his own grape skin. His Ontario chaperon, the still markedly too legit to quit Mark Coster of Profile Wine Group showed the California winemaker around...
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Go leeks go
Foraging for wild edibles in Ontario’s forests can be a bit of a cat and mouse affair. Fiddle heads unfurl to become ferns in the blink of an eye. Morels and other fungi pop from the loam, air-dry,...
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Mother’s Day barbecue wines
One year ago to the day, I extolled the virtues of Chardonnay and why it was the wine of choice to drink with mom on Mother’s Day. I would be skirting the channeling of my inner, anti-ABC if that...
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Wine: It’s a matter of tasting notes
There’s a new message in the bottle. A growing, grumbling movement suggests that wine consumers have little use and perhaps even less tolerance for wine tasting notes. The concept of keeping score to...
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‘London Calling’ for Canadian wine
Just in case you were under the impression that Canadian wine is made solely for and consumed only by Canadians, think again. The world is hungry for our prized grapes and unbeknownst to 99 per cent of...
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A lesson learned from the averted LCBO strike
Two words. Buy local. It was like Armaggedon in LCBO stores across the province on Thursday and that’s exactly what the spin masters wanted to see. Everyone waited with bated breath while being told...
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Go Gamay Go
It’s the current war cry by the voices of those who know. A plea and a calling to Canadian growers and winemakers to plant and bottle more Gamay Noir. A proclamation in favour of a great grape and one...
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Around the world in eight Chardonnays
Chardonnay covers more than 400,000 acres seemingly everywhere and is the most widely planted wine grape on earth. Today marks its fourth annual global celebration. Who knew there was this marketing...
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See the humanity in real value wine
There is no secret that Canadians and especially the wine consumer from Ontario, desperately want more choice. We want private wine shops that can specialize in niche products. We want all Canadian...
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