Cannonau is the most popular red varietal in Sardinia, although it is much better known outside the island as Grenache in France or Garnacha in Spain. Still, it is in Sardinia that Cannonau di Sardegna forms almost one third of local wine production and boasts a unique symbolic status. Here it is often considered to be an aboriginal vine, Sardinia born and bred, and Sardinia’s ancient gift to wine-growers of other regions, although despite combined efforts of Sardinian paleobotanists and archaeologists no conclusive evidence of this has been found so far. In fact, Cannonau wine rather is like Sardinia itself, robust, full of flavour and slightly on the wild side. Cannonau di Sardegna DOC can also often be rather rough and severe when young even after its statutory 6 months in barrels.

Continue reading Saturday Wine Ruminations - Cannonau di Sardegna 2003 »

Parching dog days do call for Greek wines – especially white. Although I’ve been to Greece only once and it was more than 10 years ago I still remember the intense pleasure of gulping down icy retsina during balmy and starry August nights there. Retsina-gulping with friends usually took place in a packed seaside tavern and people around were eating, drinking and laughing - stopping only to dance a couple of traditional Greek dances or burst into song from time to time. And once a while the whole tavern joined in and beautiful, mesmerizing and rather terrible words by one of the greatest modern Greek poets Odysseus Elytis rang out in the night: something about the first swallow and the unfurling spring, and the throngs of the dead and blood of the living necessary for the rekindling of the new sun. Authentic Greek stuff. I wonder whether I would ever hear a song chorused together in some Toronto pub with lyrics by Michael Ondaatje – I think not, and it’s a pity in a way.

Continue reading Saturday Wine Ruminations - It’s Greek to Me »

Well, here is yet another worthy rosé to indulge in both this summer and all year round: I am speaking of Tavel, which is actually the most famous and prestigious rosé of France (hence the special blazon-embossed bottle). Tavel is the name of the village in the Southern Rhône Valley, a short drive from Avignon and other fascinating towns of French Provence; wine of the same name has been made in the area since 1716.

It is made of a blend of traditional Rhône Valley grapes: Grenache, Cinsault, Syrah (a.k.a. Shiraz), Mourvedre and other varietals (local white varietals like Clairette and Bourboulenc are also included into the blend). The picked grapes are macerated in their skins up to two days before fermentation, and the result is a wine of intense rosy-orange colour and heady, rich, fruity bouquet.

Continue reading Saturday Wine Ruminations - a Classic French Rosé »

Canada Day is almost upon us and it is time to talk about Canada’s unique contribution to the world wine picture.

I mean icewine of course, and especially Vidal icewine, to be precise. Icewine is basically an aromatic rich sweet wine, pressed from hand-picked grapes frozen on the vine at no less than -8 degrees C (this allows the supreme concentration of grape juice as the water freezes out and only flavourful liquid grape sugar remains). Although icewine was first created in Germany, it is in Canadian wine-making (mostly in Ontario) that icewine has become a regular mainstay and not an occasional lucky fluke as in Europe. There is more on icewine history and techniques here.

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Everything, I should say. Especially if it is gorgeous artisan cheese found less than a 5 minute walk away from one’s doorstep. In the beginning of my Toronto life I was bemoaning the sad lack of decent cheeses in the neighbourhood. Little did I know that with my unerring foodie’s instinct I would very soon succeed in renting an apartment right beside a new-born local cheese heaven! Nancy Peppler opened her cheese stall at Harbord Bakery only this February. She is there in person four days a week and she also provides cheese-trays and catering service on request. So every time I come for the cheese I notice plenty of regulars queuing up and trying Nancy’s cheeses - usually more than a dozen of them, both local artisanal ones and great international varieties.

Continue reading What’s in a Cheese? »

I’ve been fascinated by sherry for quite a while even though the first I ever tried was the rather cloying and simple Harvey’s Bristol Cream (oh, the lovely massive bottle, I was so impressed by its blue splendour in my late teens!). And then there were the magnificent proud names one stumbled upon from time to time: Amontillado, Oloroso, Manzanilla; that somehow evoked the atmosphere of pirates and adventure stories one read in one’s childhood.

But it was during a bus trip through Spain that I had my final sherry eye-opener. We stopped at a small dingy road bar in Andalusia, the most southern part of Spain, homeland of gazpacho, flamenco, and, yes, sherry, or jerez as it is called down there, after the Jerez de la Frontera municipality, where this unique wine has been produced for many a century. I watched the workmen knocking back glasses of chilled Manzanilla and snacking on varied bite-size tapas: plump wedges of cold potato omelette (the original, Spanish tortilla), delicate slices of pickled octopus, olive medley and many, many more. It did not take me long to follow the example. A heady draught of deliciously cool and very dry limpid wine with a faint aroma of toasted nuts and freshly baked bread took me completely by surprise. From this time onward I never missed a chance to grab a glass of sherry in a Spanish bar. I finally learned the difference between Oloroso and Amontillado, discovered the best temperature for serving Manzanilla and so on.

Continue reading Saturday Wine Ruminations - an Unexpected Sherry Party »

Well, the SipOntario event that took place in the Distillery District on June 12th has certainly been an eye-opener to me. I have never tasted so many beautiful Ontario reds before and rather assumed that if I am buying Ontario wine I should opt for the whites and icewine. Boy, was I wrong! Granted, a medium white Ontario wine still is a much better bet than a medium red one, but now I know that at least some of the Ontario red wines can be really spectacular.

But first a couple of words on the event itself. The Ontario Wine Awards were instituted by the famous Torontonian wine writer Tony Aspler twelve years ago, and have grown and prospered ever since. SipOntario is the public tasting and celebration of the award-winning wines. Although it is not always easy for a beginner to navigate through the awards list - there are up to 30 different award nominations! – the awarded wines mostly do deserve one’s attention. Their complete list can be down-loaded from here for future reference.

Continue reading Saturday Wine Ruminations - Ontario Reds Strike Back! »

June is coming on nicely, bringing lots of seasonal fruit in its train, white peaches included. And this is why my post today is about Italian sparkling Prosecco wine. Prosecco + white peaches = Bellini, that enchanting Venetian cocktail, yet another mid-20th century creation of Signore Giuseppe Cipriani at the famous Harry’s Bar, a favourite Hemingway haunt in Venice. Together with Harry’s Bar carpaccio, the Bellini has taken over the world. By now it has become an international cocktail menu must. Wannabe-Bellinis are even sold bottled, ready-made.

Whereas juice of white peaches is the essential one-third of an authentic Bellini, the other two-thirds must be supplied by Prosecco, a sparkling white wine produced just to the north of Venice in Conegliano-Valdobbiadene region. It is made of the varietal of the same name and it is usually a lovely wine. I have never as yet been disappointed by Prosecco even though I don’t care for sparkling wines. Low in alcohol, pale silvery yellow in colour, with plentiful minute pearly bubbles (the smaller the bubbles the better the quality of sparkling is) this wine often displays a delicate floral and white fruit bouquet.

Continue reading Saturday Wine Ruminations - Prosecco and White Peaches »

“When God invented Shiraz he did so with Australia in mind,” Peter Lehmann, one of the prominent Australian wine-makers once said. I can only add that divine inspiration was probably on the agenda too when some Australian wine-maker first blended Shiraz with Cabernet Sauvignon to make a rich, puissant and satisfying red wine.

Shiraz (or Syrah as it is called in France, where from it travelled everywhere across the world) is the most popular Australian varietal and accounts for about a quarter of total Australian wine production. In France it is especially appreciated in Rhône Valley, where it is often used to create blended wines with several other grape varietals, although the resulting quantity of Shiraz in the blend is mostly predominant. Cabernet Sauvignon, on the other hand, is the most popular of Bordeaux varietals, it often predominates Bordeaux blends and has been planted everywhere from Bulgaria to Chile, and Australia is no exception.

The marriage of such forceful personalities could have been a disaster – but it has, on the contrary, turned out to be a great success. I have tasted several Australian Shiraz-Cabernet wines to date (and even a South African one at the Santé - Australian trends are catching up) and I must confess that it is very easy to like them: they are open, round and luscious, even if a tad on the sweet side. This is actually residual sugar that didn’t turn into alcohol before fermentation stopped – which is just as well after all, or the result could have been a dried-out parched thin wine with the uncomfortable alcohol content of 16%, almost like a liqueur.

Continue reading Saturday Wine Ruminations - Australian Shiraz-Cabernet »

I’ve been fascinated by New Zealand ever since my first encounter with it in Jules Verne’s Captain Grant’s Children (1867-1868) at the tender age of 7. At some point the courageous European travellers that sail and hike across the world in search of the lost Captain Grant escape from the cannibal Maori tribe’s intent of eating them. They simply take refuge on one of the beautiful dormant New Zealand volcanoes that is taboo (by the way, this word arrived into English from the languages of New Zealand and Polynesia) to their assailants and then create a hand-made eruption to feign their own death. In fact, they ingeniously master the forces of splendid New Zealand nature in many other ways. They even recklessly bake sweet potatoes burying them in thermal volcanic ground – this bit always excited me a lot! And my Mum’s doctoral thesis was on flora and fauna of New Zealand, so even as a child I heard a lot more about it than most of the people living in the Northern Hemisphere do.

As for New Zealand wines, most that I tasted before were excellent, and so the trade tasting at the New Zealand Wine Fair that took place at the Design Exchange last week was something I was looking forward to very much. I was greeted by a giant flat screen showing beautiful landscapes, somewhat familiar after the Lord of the Rings - actually, the best part of the movie for me! - and an even pleasanter sight, wineries’ stalls arranged alphabetically: easy to tour, taste and make notes (happy, chummy, and relaxed wine-makers in consequence). That was a great help in a hall inundated with trade visitors.

Continue reading Saturday Wine Ruminations - New Zealand Wines in Toronto »

Well, I was on Santé duty last week, so I gave last Saturday’s wine column a miss, but I have great wine news today, which I hope will make up for the omission. It was my first Santé and I was naturally very curious and excited to attend both the International Wine Trade Tasting and the same event made public later in the evening.

I didn’t entertain hopes of tasting all the wines that were present (more than 300, d’oh!) but I was intent on working through the most interesting wineries in a nice and orderly fashion so as to gather a maximum number of impressions and still remain clear-headed by the end of the procedure. And, of course, I planned to devote particular attention to the wines of South Africa, special guest of this year’s Santé festival. I don’t expect that I would ever get there on my own so here was a perfect chance to learn the most about the world-famous South African wines in just a couple of hours.

Continue reading Saturday Wine Ruminations - Santé South African Wines »

We are having lovely weather right now, and although I’ve got quite a few fabulous red wines up my sleeve, I am once again settling for something lighter, appropriate to a sunny break! But this doesn’t mean I am going to talk about something merely to quench the thirst, oh no. It’s time for a little palate exercise in wine appreciation.

And what better to start with than a distinguished varietal that is hardly grown anywhere outside its home region? Spanish Albariño from Galicia, or Alvarinho as it is called across the border in Portugal, is virtually unknown (unbottled) to people from other countries. Bottled Albariño is another matter. Torontonians that frequent abundant Portuguese hangouts of the city may have tasted it many times eithout even realizing it, as it is one of the seven officially recommended varietals for the production of classic Portuguese frizzante new wine vinho verde. But what has really made Albariño fashionable among the wine-lovers right now is the varietal still white wine produced in the Rías Baixas region of Spain, appreciated for its elegance, concentration of flavours and rich bouquet.

The LCBO website currently features nine different Albariño wines (ranging in price from $14.70 up to $23.15, all from Rías Baixas), but I was hard put to find even two of them on the same premises simultaneously. So far I have tried only the $17.95 Andión Albariño 2005 made by Núñez (presumably cold-fermented and partly even in Californian oak, very up-to-date!). It was an exceptional combination of opulent honey aroma and enticingly severe dry taste with hints of minerality, a really impressive wine. Not for nothing one of the most famous winemakers from Spain, Miguel Torres, thinks Albariño to be related to Riesling! Could it have been brought by pilgrims from Alsace to Santiago de Compostela and its vicinity as it is sometimes surmised? I do not know, but the fact remains that it is one of the most noble and complex white varietals in the world and I am very much looking forward to the other Albariño bottle I have secured, Laxas Albariño of the same 2005 vintage.

Continue reading Saturday Wine Ruminations - Andión Albariño Núñez 2005 »

I promised a really cool summer wine last time, didn’t I? Well, here it is, Yering Station E.D. Pinot Noir Rosé 2005, only $15.95 at LCBO (Vintages 15545). I know I already reviewed one of the Yering Station wines, but the fact is, I can’t resist a really perfect rosé! Yering Station wine-makers are really good at their job, their cellars might look like a posh imitation of those of Château-Lafitte and their grounds like those of Château Margaux, but the wines are of their own making. Actually this extra dry (that’s what E.D. stands for by the way) rosé is easily one of the top five best rosés I have ever tasted.

This Australian rosé, with a colour of translucent red grapefruit, and a heady red fruit aroma and amazingly refreshing taste is something I fell in love with after the first sip. And besides, it drinks like water, only better, 13% alcohol notwithstanding. You don’t feel the alcohol in it at all, period. I can’t imagine why the majority of commercially available rosés tends to be sickeningly sweet and cloying, with no pronounced bouquet or flavour, when you can get such incredible finesse of taste and clean finish.

Granted, Pinot Noir is one of the most aristocratic varietals, but this only makes it harder to work with. It is a tricky vine even in the relatively cool climate of Burgundy, an area that has long been famous for its great Pinot Noir red wines, but producing such a result with Pinot Noir in Australian heat-waves is a real feat.

So what to pair this rosé with? Cheeses, poultry, cold meats: all the traditional picnic fare would be perfect. I can easily imagine myself sitting in the garden on a warm summer evening and sipping this suitably cooled rosé to my heart’s content. By the way, I find it exceedingly simple to get high on good rosé – I start floating on top of the world after a couple of glasses, so just a tip, do remember that it is something with alcohol you are drinking after all, even if it drinks like water, and especially if it does!

Well, judging by the brave flowers sprouting outside, it will be sundeck-lounging and picnic time soon, so I decided that one of the fashionable ‘tetra pak’ wines is in order (no heavy glass, reasonable prices, etc.) and opted for the lemon-green package of Three Thieves Bandit Pinot Grigio 2006 from California.

On closer inspection I discovered that the package was covered with self-promotion (“cheap wine snobs rejoice!” etc.), that set my back up immediately. Actually, the words Pinot Grigio don’t need much brio to attract notice. And speaking of Pinot Grigio, by printing this name and not Pinot Gris on the wine-label, the wine-maker probably intimates that his wines are made along the lines of the exquisite elegant North Italian Pinot Grigio from Friuli and Veneto. And (presumably) this wine is something to look forward to.

Continue reading Saturday Wine Ruminations – Three Thieves Bandit Pinot Grigio 2006 »

There is Chianti and there is Chianti. About 50 years ago almost all Chianti-labeled bottles outside of Italy usually contained cheap plonk. Now most of the Chianti Italy delivers to the rest of the world isn’t cheap any longer – but neither is it plonk. The worst one can expect of Chianti today is a somewhat dull and rigorous although still decent wine (with the notable exception of rustic straw-coated flasks – these can still get quite plonky). As for the best, opinions vary, but I can testify that Nipozzano Chianti Rufina Riserva 2004 ($20.30 LCBO, made by Marchesi de Frescobaldi) is definitely one of them.

So what makes a good Chianti? Nipozzano is deep ruby-red, toned-down fruity wine with just a hint of spice (no new oak for two years passed in barrels), prolonged complex taste and supreme elegance. Maybe it’s not the most traditional Chianti in Tuscany - small quantities of Bordeaux French varietals, such as Cabernet-Sauvignon and Merlot were added to the main bulk of the local Chianti-making Sangiovese varietal, a trendy practice made possible by 1995 legislation - but the result is very impressive. It was perfect with my homely roast lamb gigot with baked butter squash and baby carrot mélange au jus (perked up with a slight bit of nutmeg and fresh thyme). And I must confess that the mind boggles if I try to imagine the effect Nipozzano would produce if paired with one of Tuscany’s grand classics – exquisite boar ragout with luscious and often chocolate-enriched wine sauce (ciao, Jamie Oliver!). I mean, the pleasure shock would probably scar one for life, wouldn’t it?

Continue reading Saturday Wine Ruminations - Nipozzano Chianti Rufina Riserva 2004 »