Blogs

Lawrason On Wine

November Archive

The Best Of October 2006

Posted on November 6, 2006

Each month, I look back over the previous four weeks of tasting notes to review ten wines that stood out for quality, value, newsworthiness or plain intrigue. With several major high-end tastings, including Halpern’s Grand Cru Festival, the Errazuriz Berlin Tasting and the Port and Douro Reds event, plus tastings for Vintages November releases, much of the selection is up in more rarefied territory this month. And, by chance, several happen to be great age-worthy cabernet sauvignons—still the king of the cellar. Here is the line-up presented in descending price order, so you have to read to the end to find the best values. They are all either immediately available, coming soon (please bookmark), or I have provided tracking information.

Call in the Marketing Police

Posted on November 13, 2006

I get my share of grand tasting opportunities, fancy dinners and interviews with wine celebrities. But some days one must work the trenches as well. On Friday, it was the monthly press tasting at the LCBO for new releases on the general list, a smorgasbord of inexpensive, often weird and not too wonderful wines, beers and spirits. Given that the holiday silly season approaches the selection was even more bizarre, with “gift ideas” of oversized bottles that look like bowling pins, undersized French Rabbit tetra-paks and bottles with names like Yellowglen Pink, Igluu (an icewine gift set), Funky Llama, Painted Turtle and Kelly’s Revenge. (Note to the marketing police: please investigate who Kelly is and why he or she is so vengeful as to inflict these sour wines on us). One can see some artistic merit and mirth in these packages, but set against the barren, clinically white walls of the tiny tasting “lab” at LCBO HQ, the collection also presents a grotesque Warholian landscape of our almost infantile North American drinks culture. (And thus the need for marketing police.)

The Real Beaujolais

Posted on November 20, 2006

Did you have your glass of Beaujolais Nouveau this weekend? I know, it’s about as much fun as a flu shot. I have been in four different fine dining Toronto restaurants—plus one in Belleville and one in Prince Edward County—since Beaujolais Nouveau release day last Thursday, and I can only report the virtual silence about Nouveau this year. Very few displays, posters, chat, or bottles on tables. I tried it at the LCBO Thursday morning and the diagnosis was "thin, simple and sour," so I would not recommend spending $13 to $15. I then moved on later in the day to Jamie Kennedy Restaurant and Wine Bar where there was fine, dawdling, conversational mid-afternoon Beaujolais tasting underway with the terrific gamays from Pascal Granger of Julienas.

The Toronto Taste Challenge

Posted on November 28, 2006

It’s usually the Maple Leafs who put their reputations on the line at the Air Canada Centre, but Monday there was an event of career importance to over 200 of Toronto’s wine professionals. The city’s top palates gathered in the Platinum Club overlooking centre ice to compete in a blind tasting challenge for about $80,000 in wine-related prizes. It was free to any and all aspirants, with seven international wines presented to professionals, three to amateurs, with both groups also having to identify three Canadian VQA wines. With each wine, contestants had to identify grape variety (four points), country of origin (three points), region or specific appellation (two points) and vintage date (one point).

David Lawrason

David Lawrason has worked full time as one of Canada's leading, independent wine writers and educators for over 20 years. He was the founder of Wine Access magazine and Globe and Mail wine columnist for 13 years before becoming resident wine guy at Toronto Life, where he pens a monthly column and writes an exhaustive review of LCBO general listings for the annual Food and Wine Guide. As a wine educator he has taught sommelier programs at George Brown, Humber and Niagara Colleges, and has run popular public courses in Toronto since 1988. He has visited every major wine major producing country in the world, while focusing recently on the booming Canadian wine scene, as founder of the Canadian Wine Awards program, and Canadian wine columnist for Wine Access.

Lawrason on Wine RSS Feed