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Lawrason On Wine

March Archive

The Best Fest in the West

Posted on March 5, 2008

I spent last weekend at the annual wine inundation known as Vancouver Playhouse Wine Festival—an event that locals and winery visitors argue is the best of its kind in Canada. It’s actually not even arguable, in my opinion (even if some easterners feel bruised by this admission). One would think that Toronto should be able to mount a show of this calibre, yet it never has. Hogtown’s big shows are for-profit, commercial ventures that tend to cheapen the content and keep the LCBO at a distance. The government cannot be promoting any commercial interest other than its own, and the reason that other wine shows work across Canada, including Playhouse, is that they have the full support of provincial liquor boards. One might ask why the government is in the wine retail business at all, but that’s a topic for another day.

B.C.’s Osoyoos-Larose Mid-Term Report

Posted on March 12, 2008

Vintages’ March 15 release features 1,000 cases of the 2004 vintage of B.C.’s storied Osoyoos-Larose, the Franco-Canadian joint venture rooted in the desert soils of the southern Okanagan. It is very good—88 points—but not excellent wine. At a reasonable $39.95, any serious B.C. and/or Bordeaux wine enthusiast can afford to decide for themselves, but a recent trade tasting of several vintages of Osoyoos-Larose at the Rosewater Supper Club in Toronto has not yet convinced me that a new Médoc is being minted in the Okanagan. Its creators argue they are not trying to recreate Bordeaux, but there is no question it is fashioned from the Bordeaux template, from the blend of the same five grape varieties to the winemaking staff to the techniques they have imported.

Matching with Malivoire

Posted on March 19, 2008

On a cold, snowy winter day (what else is new?) recently, I attended a wine tasting designed to be enjoyed as most of us actually drink wine—that is, with food. In the end, this meal was hardly average; it was served in the back of a tiny, fragrant bistro called Gamelle, where the tasters met with Niagara winemaker Martin Malivoire. We worked and played through 10 recent releases that were uncorked with a non-stop selection of small plates, sipping and nibbling in no particular order, unless a certain match made choirs sing and seduced us into tasting again.

California Greening

Posted on March 28, 2008

My column in the May issue of Toronto Life (on newsstands April 10) examines the burgeoning “green” wine movement, with observations and reviews based on tastings at the international Return to Terroir event in February, and Vintages’ organics release on March 29. Since then, I have compiled even more notes on the wine world’s most pressing trend. Much of the information and inspiration has come out of California, where “green” is becoming an industry-wide mantra. Grape growers are taking the lead in environmental practices and turning the heads of those in other sectors of California’s massive agricultural industry. Two insiders have told me that a stunning 55 per cent of Californian wine producers have now registered for a new program that allows for self-assessment of sustainable agriculture practices.

David Lawrason

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.

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