How far gone is too far?

Last night, I opened my last bottle of Pelee Island Winery's 2002 Baco Noir. We fell so deeply in love with this vintage when it first came out that we cleared out all of the shelves we could find and even went to the winery to ask if they had any bottles sitting in a corner somewhere (they did have a few!).

So here we are in 2010... a full eight years past the vintage date (six or so since release)... I thought surely (and with a little tear in my eye) I had let this one sit too long.

The cork was soft and saturated, but not crumbling, and the wine still hadn't soaked all the way through to the foil. A test taste told me that it did indeed still have the full flavour profile we had come to love - ripe red fruit with the perfect balance of peppery spice - but had indeed gone a bit too far on the acid scale. I said a little prayer that it would still work with our dinner of lightly seasoned steak (montreal steak spice, garlic powder, onion powder and Italian herbs), heirloom potatoes and super sweet local peaches-and-cream corn (all done on the barbeque).

Thankfully I was right on the money. The steak which, of course, was perfectly done thanks to Paul's expert touch, was moist and tender and still a bit pink in the centre and balanced the increased acid in the wine perfectly.

The moral of this blog entry? Just because a bottle may be a little bit past its prime doesn't mean it won't still work with the right food.

A sparkling summer evening

Tonight, with a dear friend from Ottawa, we lingered over a hot and humid late summer evening with a simple dinner of mixed greens topped with an asian sesame dressing and seasoned and grilled shrimp with bacon-wrapped scallops grilled on the barbeque and drizzled with maple syrup.

To drink? Pelee Island Winery's Canadian Sparkling Wine.
Crisp, dry, light, and slightly fruity... a perfect pair with the salad.
Leftovers? I should think not - of neither the salad nor the wine!

Beer can chicken on the 'que

Beer can chicken on the barbeque last night - if you haven't tried it, I highly recommend it. Tasty, juicy, tender fall-off-the-bone chicken flavoured on the outside with onion, garlic, parsley, basil, rosemary, salt and pepper and perched on a tall-boy of Rickard's Dark... YUM! And the potatoes and carrots that cooked in the beer drippings were amazing!

Instead of more of the Rickard's Dark, I paired it with a 2008 Peller Estates Chardonnay. A perfect complement for the seasonings inside and outside the chicken.

Now we're cooking down the skin, bones and bits of chicken in more Rickard's Dark and a bit of the Chardonnay for a wonderful home-made chicken stock...

Pelee Island Winery does it again!

Okay, I'll admit, I'm biased, but the newest creation from Pelee Island Winery, the "Alvar" series of four wines, is breathtaking.
The first that I've tried out of this series of four wines is the 2008 Chardonnay Gewurztraminer blend -- VQA Ontario, so don't get your knickers in a knot.
Okay, I hear you: "What on earth is an Alvar?" See the wikipedia entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvar.
By the way, in case you're wondering just how "new" these wines are, they're not even on the Pelee Island Winery website yet. Ah, the joys of living five minutes from the winery!
This wine is not only the only Chardonnay/Gewurztraminer blend I've been able to track down, but it's well worth the drive to Kingsville to get your hands on some. The usual flavours and aromas you would expect from both the Chardonnay (crisp acidity, balanced with fresh citrus) and the Gewurztraminer (lychee, tangerine, grapefruit with a lingering hint of spice) are, in my humble opinion, perfectly married in this blend. It is impossible to say that one overpowers the other and, paired with a barbeque dinner of chicken/bacon and mixed vegetable kebabs on the patio on an evening that was thankfully blessed with a cool breeze and a very welcome break in the extreme heat and humidity of the past week, I dare say that I was as close to a state of total and utter bliss as I have been in a long time.
The next time you're looking for something refreshing for a summer evening on the patio, either with or without food, with a group of friends or just that special someone, reach for a bottle of this - if you can get your hands on it, that is!

Would you like some wine with that?

Picture it: Kingsville, 2010... a Sunday evening with eleven people snuggled around our dining room table as I host my first wine tasting dinner at the house.

A glass of Prosecco greeted everyone upon arrival and gave us time to put the final touches on dinner. Caesar salad with homemade dressing started the meal, followed by pork tenderloin with risotto and asparagus, finished off with mini sponge cakes topped with mixed fresh berries and a dollop of vanilla yogurt.

I poured four wines with the meal, each from a different winery in the Erie Shores region: a crisp riesling, an oaky chardonnay, a light rose (sorry, no accents on this laptop) and a medium-bodied pinot noir. The consensus was that the rose was the best match with dinner. With dessert, I served a late harvest cabernet, which was ideal with the fruit and yogurt.

What's next? Who knows? My calendar is practically empty and I'm open to all offers and requests - and challenges!

Vinturi, part II

Last night saw us sitting down on the back deck to a wonderfully grilled, lightly seasoned steak with boiled potatoes topped with home-seasoned sour cream, butter and chives alongside grilled asparagus. The beverage of choice was, yes, it's true, a 2009 Fuzion, the near riot-causing (in Ottawa's LCBO flagship store, at least) Argentinian blend of Shiraz and Malbec.

While I would have normally let this one age for a few years, I wanted to see what effect the Vinturi would have on it. Well, my friends, I was once again pleasantly surprised. Pre-Vinturi: a relatively full body, lightly fruity and tannins so intense I almost gagged. Post-Vinturi: still the same relatively full body, but more fruit on the nose and palate and nicely mellowed tannins. The real kicker came when I tried some non-Vinturi afterward... OUCH!

Those of us who are die-hard cellarers will, of course, continue to stock up on wines and see how they age naturally with time. That is, to my mind, one of the great joys of wine. For those of us who can't wait to enjoy that bottle of wine, thank Bacchus/Dionysus for the Vinturi!

To decant or not to decant? Vinturi solves the problem!

People often ask me about the benfits of aeration and how to preserve any wine in the decanter that is not consumed. Aside from the obvious answer -- to drink all of the wine -- I have never known what to say. Who, me, at a loss for words? Yes, indeed, it does happen!

That all changed when Paul gave me a Vinturi wine aerator (http://www.vinturi.com/). From its sleek teardrop shape to its ease of use, the Vinturi is indeed a wonder to use, and a conversation piece to boot!

We tried it with my brother-in-law and his wife on a 2005 Shiraz from Pelee Island Winery (with pizza - one ham and pineapple and the other a combo with mushrooms, green peppers and pepperoni) and were pleasantly surprised at the effect. The fruits were more prominent and the tannins were slightly mellowed. Essentially, giving an already excellent wine just that extra touch that only comes from decanting, but without the fuss -- not to mention the challenge of cleaning the decanter afterward!

No longer does anyone have to wonder how to get the benefits of decanting a bottle of wine in a single glass.

If you try it, let me know what you think!

Icewine - not just for dessert anymore!

... but was it ever, really, *just* for dessert?

The next time you're faced with the decision of which wine to serve with a spicy dish (thai, eastern, middle eastern, etc. or just something you've spiced up on your own), think sweet! The higher sugar and lower acid in icewine are a perfect pair for spicy food because they minimize the effect of the spice and heat on your tender tongue and palate.

Give it a try and let me know how it turns out!

Selling the house calls for champagne!

Yes, my friends, the house in Ottawa is sold. No realtor and no hassles, just an eager and very pleasant couple with charming kids who were in love, I would say, with the house from the moment they walked into our moving sale on April 24.

And thanks to a couple of dear friends who gave us a bottle of Maleta Winery's 2006 Old Vintages Brut Sparkling Wine (VQA Niagara-on-the-Lake), we had a little celebration on Wednesday night.

I have to track down more of this bubbly... it was fruitier than I expected and still crisp and highly acidic. It was definitely not a Dom, and that's definitely a good thing!

Hello, Kingsville!

Finally, almost a year to the day of putting in our offer on 136 Main Street West, we are arrived and (almost) settled. Just a few more (hundred, it seems) boxes to unpack.

A family birthday celebration kicked off our arrival. On the menu? Coq-au-vin with pancetta, pearl onions, mushrooms and herbs served with basmatti rice, carrots and green beans. The coq-au-vin bubbled away for six hours in Pelee Island's 2008 Baco Noir and, naturally, that's what I served with the meal. An excellent pairing for the mushrooms and herbs.

To make matters more interesting, dinner on Monday was a re-creation of the above (leftovers with corn instead of carrots and green beans heated on the stove). I also added some hot sauce to give it a bit of a zing. We enjoyed it with an Alsacian Gewurztraminer which, in spite of the red wine in the original sauce, was a perfect complement for the spicy re-creation.

The moral? Proof that the same dish does not have to be served with the same wine. Get creative and let me know how it works!

Niagara-on-the-Lake and Hillebrand

Thanks to Paul's family, we just got back from an amazing weekend in Niagara-on-the-Lake. Queen's Landing is a great place to stay, with high-class dining and within walking distance of the historical district--lots of shopping!

We enjoyed a wonderful dinner at Queen's Landing on Saturday night and treated ourselves to the "Icewine Dinner Tasing Menu" for dinner at the Hillebrand Winery Restaurant on Sunday night. Get this--we had the *entire* restaurant to ourselves. How cool is that? The food was out of this world: six courses, each paired with wine... I'm honestly still digesting almost 24 hours later, so more details on that dinner will come in a later post.

Thanks again to Paul's family, to the wonderfully attentive staff at Queen's Landing, and to the chefs and our server at Hillebrand for a fabulous experience!

Peller Estates Private Reserve

A wonderful dinner last night of boeuf bourgignon and a Peller Estates Private Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon 2004 - a mouthful of a title and unfortunately a bit past its prime. Still a wonderful nose and lots of fruit, but a hint of that ready-for-vinegar type of acidity. Not so much as to be unpleasant, but enough to say, "I'm glad I drank this now instead of waiting another six months." So if you've got the 2004, drink away! If you're hanging on to the 2005, I'd dare say it's ready to drink, too, before it starts the downward spiral. Unfortunately, I didn't have a 2005 in my cellar to compare.
Bottoms up!