Bannock’s holiday tourtière

This time of year, it takes a strong will not to indulge, whether it be in the beautiful pastries and cakes spilling out of patisserie windows or the drinks at a holiday party. We say, why even try? We’ve rounded up some of our favourites, along with a few other gifts that your food-obsessed friends are sure to love (including one salve for those who’ve indulged just a little too much).

Words and pictures by Renée Suen

By Fraser Abe | Photography by George Pimentel

November 2, TIFF Lightbox. It’s not often that royalty comes to town (not that we’re bitter, Will and Kate). So when Prince Albert Grimaldi, ruler of Monaco, arrived with his new wife, the South African former Olympic swimmer Charlene Wittstock, Toronto’s peerage class got all dolled up. The couple was here for the launch of Grace Kelly: From Movie Star to Princess, a TIFF exhibit celebrating Prince Albert’s late mom. They toured the exhibit, then repaired to the VIP room, where the prince downed brewskis and the press-shy Wittstock, understated in Dior, chatted quietly with the much less understated Suzannes (Boyd and Rogers). Though the royals departed around 8:30, the rest of the party hit the dance floor to the grooves of a live Motown band, energized as they were by their brush with nobility—the champagne-soaked jelly desserts didn’t hurt, either.

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Captain Fantastic: Peter Munk on his 40-metre yacht, the Golden Eagle, which has a full-time staff of five. (Image: Jim Ross)

There are birthday parties, and then there was Nathaniel Rothschild’s party this past July. The financier, scion of the prominent banking family and future baron was turning 40 and spent £1 million on the weekend-long extravaganza. The venue: Porto Montenegro, a newly developed luxury resort and marina in the Montenegrin coastal town of Tivat, on the southeast side of the Adriatic Sea. It was the sort of gathering that marks the end of an era or the birth of an empire—and in a way, for Europe’s youngest and smallest democracy, it was both.

Four hundred guests arrived at the village airport on private jets or stepped off the fleet of super-yachts that washed ashore from the world’s most glamorous tax havens—the Grenadines, Gibraltar, Grand Cayman. The attendees were described in the Guardian society pages as “200 ugly rich people and their poorer but more attractive partners,” or, as one guest more generously put it, “plutocrats and the women who love them.” A number of the partiers were so fantastically rich they could bankroll whole armies (which the birthday boy’s family, in its heyday, once did): Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska (who arrived on his £70-million yacht, the Queen K); the wealthy Egyptian Sawiris family (who have embarked on their own Montenegrin development nearby); King Leruo Molotlegi, ruler of a tiny, platinum-rich part of South Africa, who hit the dance floor in a fabulous dashiki; British politician Lord Peter Mandelson; Jimmy Choo honcho Tamara Mellon; the historian Niall Ferguson and his Dutch-Somali partner, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a feminist critic of Islam. There was a healthy smattering of European royalty, as well as members of the Guinness and Goldsmith clans.

Munk bought the Port of Tivat for €155 million. His co-investors include two Rothschilds and the Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska

While the guests swallowed gallons of Taittinger around Porto Montenegro’s 215-foot-long infinity pool (decorated with floating disco balls imported specially from London), the actress-turned-DJ Michelle Rodriguez presided over the turntables. The dancing continued until the early morning hours.

Surveying the scene with a paternal pride was Peter Munk, the billionaire octogenarian, Holocaust escapee, philanthropist and chairman of the world’s largest gold mining company. Munk is the leader of a small but significant exodus of Torontonians to the rapidly expanding Porto Montenegro. This tribe, who have affectionately dubbed themselves Munkistanis, either went there to work for Porto Montenegro or have started side businesses (restaurants, interior design, wine distribution, banks) to cater to the growing numbers of yacht tourists that Porto Montenegro is drawing. The resort is Munk’s vision, and he’s the main investor. A slice of Yorkville on the Adriatic.

By Kamal Al-Solaylee | Illustration by Joel Kimmel

As the crowd settled in for an early June performance of Édouard Lock’s Untitled at the Bluma Appel Theatre, Matthew Jocelyn, the artistic and general director of Canadian Stage, stood under the spotlight, urging his audience to renew their subscriptions. Some serious name-dropping ensued. The company will be staging Red, about the life of the painter Mark Rothko, which won a Tony last year, as well as Clybourne Park, a Pulitzer Prize–winning play inspired by A Raisin in the Sun. And Atom Egoyan—who was in the audience that day—will be directing his wife, Arsinée Khanjian, in the war-themed British play Cruel and Tender.

Awards, celebrities, allusions to well-known works: there was an unmistakable whiff of desperation in Jocelyn’s populist appeal. Last year, he came to CanStage to make it a hub for, as he puts it, “the great theatre and choreographic artists who work in this country.” But his radical, rapid revamping of the ultra-safe company has alienated audiences. He opened his first season with Fernando Krapp Wrote Me This Letter, an obscure German play, and continued into movement-based and experimental works. By the end of the 2010–11 season, the company had experienced a six per cent drop in subscription rates, and the house capacity numbers were even bleaker. A few short-run plays came close to filling the Bluma for six to 12 performances, but some long-run shows ranged from 45 to 60 per cent capacity, and that factors in tickets sold through heavily discounted specials and other promotions. After two successful decades in Asia and Europe, Jocelyn’s return to his native Toronto has been met with more jeers than cheers.

The attempt to revive Canadian Stage is long overdue. Toronto’s big theatres have lagged in architectural and artistic excitement, left behind by film (Lightbox), opera and ballet (Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts) and art (renovation and rejuvenation of both the ROM and the AGO). Once upon a time, a regional Canadian playwright or director couldn’t be said to have “arrived” until he or she worked in Toronto, but Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton have usurped our natural place as the nerve centre of theatrical innovation. As a company, CanStage has been in artistic decline for years. Martin Bragg, Jocelyn’s predecessor, ended his 12-year tenure in 2010, stepping down at the end of his contract. His penultimate, and representative, season featured such crowd-pleasers as Shirley Valentine—the kind of heartwarming one-woman show that Jocelyn wouldn’t cross the street, let alone the Atlantic, to program.

During Jocelyn’s decade as the head of the Atelier du Rhin in Alsace, he transformed that company into the only organization in France to produce opera, theatre and contemporary dance under one roof. He also brought in corporate sponsorships and oversaw a glitzy renovation. When he was hired at CanStage, the hope was that he would couple his international connections with a nationalist agenda to create a vibrant, culturally relevant performing arts centre producing original work.

Unfortunately, the execution of last season’s productions rarely matched the intellectual ambition it took to program them. Director Peter Hinton’s take on Michel Tremblay’s already-dated story of Québécois identity, Saint Carmen of the Main, looked great but was soulless and poorly acted. At the smaller Berkeley Street Theatre, The Middle Place, based on the lives of Toronto’s homeless youth, came off like a clichéd after-school special. Even the stronger plays, like David Greig’s The Cosmonaut’s Last Message, received plodding productions: I saw a Friday night performance at which a big chunk of the scant audience bolted for the exit doors during intermission. Jocelyn dreams of attracting new, younger audiences, the same crowd that frequents Queen Street art galleries or lines up for TIFF. Last year, he hired an audience development manager specifically to focus on C-Stage, a program designed to seduce the under-30 set with free memberships and $12.50 tickets. For the opening night of Fernando Krapp, he planted mock protesters outside the Bluma with placards reading “Live Theatre Is Krapp,” meant to appeal to a youthful taste for irony. So far, these tactics haven’t translated into ticket sales. Meanwhile, to CanStage’s conservative subscriber base, the changes intended as a breath of fresh air felt more like an unexpected winter blast.

The effects of such a grim reception are showing on Jocelyn’s face. In the promo shots released when his appointment was announced in February 2009, the then-51-year-old exuded an air of European sophistication mixed with the nerdiness of a glee club teacher. That’s been replaced by the housebroken demeanour of someone forced to accept the realities of selling theatre in Toronto in 2011. Part of the problem may be that Jocelyn made his name in Europe, where public funding allows for artistic risk taking without much worry about commercial appeal. He shares a philosophy with the mid-century French theatre director Jean Vilar, who believed in bringing high art to mainstream audiences. “Who doesn’t deserve to eat caviar? Who doesn’t deserve to drink champagne?” Jocelyn says.

Without a doubt, Jocelyn must improve the quality of his productions; his programming choices have been undeniably arrogant. But artistic transitions have bumpy starts. CanStage needed a rude awakening. Risk-averse programming has turned off curious audiences and divorced the city from exciting theatrical experiments. Knee-jerking back to a Martin Bragg–like season would be a mistake—the thought of returning to a slate of middle-brow comedies and dated musicals is much too sad for me to contemplate.

Among his more popular selections for the 2011–12 season, Jocelyn has managed to squeeze in Dark Matters, an exploration of physics and human emotion from the Frankfurt-based Canadian choreographer Crystal Pite, and Beckett: Feck It, a words-and-music tribute to the Irish master. We’ll see how they go over. Two years after his return to Toronto, Jocelyn has yet to buy a home; he says his ideal living space is a loft. This time next year, he might be making a down payment. Or he might be buying a one-way ticket out of here.

My favourite read
I love the personal pieces at the back of The Spectator. Essays are my favourite form of writing because they’re so intimate.

My paper collection
I always have some nice wrapping paper from The Paper Place on hand for last-minute presents. There’s so much junk in the world, it’s a delight when something’s beautiful just for the sake of it.

My M0851 rain slicker
Walking is one of my greatest passions. It’s a way of clearing my head, and I don’t ever let rain stop me. I bought my raincoat for a trip to Vancouver Island and have been attached to it ever since.

My big cutlery
My flatware is from an antique dealer in Germany, and it’s huge. The soup spoons are like ladles. They feel so substantial. I can’t stand the flimsy stuff you get at restaurants.

My Veuve Cliquot
I never used to drink champagne much because there were so few options in Canada and it’s so expensive, but on my last trip to France, I ended up having a glass every day. I felt like I was in another era.

My Staub Dutch oven
It’s perfect for making one-pot comfort dishes in winter. It looks handsome on the stovetop, and I bring it right to the table because it gives the impression there was some serious cooking happening.

My gold nugget
A friend of mine was trying to get a reservation at Noma, an exclusive restaurant in Copenhagen. Another friend runs a gold mine in the Yukon and suggested he write a letter to the restaurant offering to pay in gold nuggets—he did, and he got the table. I love this story. My Yukon friend later gave me a nugget, and I put it on a chain. I wear it for luck.

My dictionary
When I was a student I bought the Reader’s Digest Oxford Complete Wordfinder. It’s so well laid out: I love that the synonyms come right after the definitions.

My happy music
I’m a bit obsessed with the period between the two wars. That perky music­—the Andrews Sisters, Cole Porter—cheers me up when I’m in the doldrums.

(Images: John Cullen)

After three years of restaurant restraint, Aria and Toca, two unabashedly flashy new spots, are giving diners a reason to get dressed up again By Chris Nuttall-Smith

Opulence, I missed you. I missed high thread-count table linens and hand-blown water glasses and even edible gold leaf a little. I missed the dining rooms whose owners gave carte blanche to talented designers, insisting only on “something grand.” But mostly, I missed gasping when I walked into restaurants—having to stop to take a space in, to admire. Though restraint wasn’t all bad for dining culture these past few years, it wasn’t always easy on the eyes.

Two ambitious, expensive, flashy new dining rooms have opened downtown in recent months, one of them from a hotel chain that’s synonymous with conspicuous luxury, the other from a pair of neighbourhood restaurateurs who’ve come out shooting for the moon. Both are fine dining (more or less), and both are likely to make you gasp when you enter.

Aria, the star tenant in the new Telus Tower, at Maple Leaf Square, is the sister restaurant to Noce, a beloved, understated Italian place near Trinity Bellwoods. The new room looks exactly nothing like its sibling, or like any other restaurant for that matter. There is more height than square footage to the space: three extravagant storeys of glass on the south and west sides, a 4,000-bottle, floor-to-ceiling wine tower and enormous soft-focus paintings of opera house chandeliers on the walls. All of this is framing for the magnificent centrepiece: sculptor Dennis Lin’s streaming, undulating waves of bent walnut that rise, like an aria, through the room’s 30 feet toward a constellation of pinpoint-lit chandeliers. The room, by Stephen R. Pile Architects, is glamorous, modern, resolutely elegant. There are linens on the tables, and fish forks when they’re needed. The hand-blown water glasses are from Murano. Aria is easily the most beautiful restaurant in town.

One night, there was a youngish man in a handmade suit, sitting with a tanned and jewel-laden woman who looked as though she was born in this sort of place. Not far from them, a middle-aged couple, he in faded jeans, a T-shirt and laceless sneakers, his bleach blonde wife drinking a Creemore with her chitarrine al pomodoro e basilico. You could almost smell the Trans-Am. Another evening there were crowds of young, casually dressed downtown desk monkeys amid the high-rolling corporates. Every table seemed as welcome as the next. You can drop $3,000 on a double magnum of 2007 Solaia, or $50 on a good Soave. There’s a $96 tomahawk rib steak for two, and an $18 bowl of noodles portioned more like a main than a mid. Planning a fine dining restaurant during a recession had to be a nightmare. It’s opulent, but Guido Saldini and Elena Morelli, Aria’s owners, have also made it accessible. Smart.

And the cooking? Brilliant, a lot of it. The baby cuttlefish crudo, for instance: mild, guileless, creamy, just barely dressed with lemon, dried chili threads and thin red shavings of bird’s-eye chili for gentle lift. Or the long, lithe, lightly battered strands of crisp zucchini fritti that turn up dark green, white, yellow and deep golden, tangled in a porcelain bowl like a ball of multicoloured yarn. The dish exudes sunshine and abundance, like a backyard garden in Little Italy on a late August afternoon.

The seared striped bass fillet is perfect. The lobster salad is excellent and the wild mushroom ravioli are worth a special trip. The potatoes that come with the beef tenderloin are mixed with fennel and gorgonzola cheese and topped with sweet, tangy braised cippolini. You feel devastated once you’ve finished potatoes this good.

The kitchen at Aria is almost overrun with talent. The chef, Eron Novalski, who was in charge at Noce, spent four years at Senses (the old, great Senses on Bloor Street) at the height of its run. His sous-chef, Matthew Doerner, was hired out of Colborne Lane. Novalski has also brought over Steve Song, one of the city’s best pastry chefs, who cooked at Senses and Ultra.

Still, I’m not crazy about a few of the dishes: the deboned quail and the Tamshire pork chop are cooked to well done, the way most Italians would eat them. The quail is good, but I’d rather have it more moist. As for the pork, enough with the authenticity: they could at least ask me if I’d like it cardboard dry.

The chitarrine comes slicked in a tomato sauce that’s too dark and swampy, and the noodles are al dente to the extreme. These are rare missteps, however, far outweighed by the dishes that are indisputably great.

Song’s desserts are mostly excellent, particularly the opera cake, which is his most opulent and apropos. It’s a voluptuous tranche of almond sponge soaked in coffee and layered with coffee buttercream, ganache and chocolate, with sour cherries on the side. Song writes “Aria” in chocolate on top of each piece. It’s a dessert and a celebration—it seems wrong to eat it without a glass of good champagne. There’s a gold leaf on top, of course.

(Image: Jess Baumung)

Will Predhomme belongs to a competitive cabal of top sommeliers who sniff, sip and spit their way through hundreds of bottles a week. They do this to help you decide what to drink with your dinner, while making you think it was your idea all along
By Jason McBride | Photography by Sandy Nicholson

One hundred and fifty-one people have reservations at Canoe tonight. Among these are many Bay Streeters, a couple celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary, dozens of people on dates, including the bar manager from Crush, and a young woman who plans to propose to her boyfriend over dinner. The two private dining rooms are fully booked.

Canoe, part of the ever-expanding Oliver and Bonacini empire, is routinely considered one of the finest restaurants in the city. Last summer, in a rigorous competition held by the Canadian Association of Professional Sommeliers, known as CAPS, Canoe’s head sommelier, Will Predhomme, was proclaimed Ontario’s best. Predhomme has devoted a third of his life—he’s 29—to wine scholarship. He now knows more about wine than almost anyone in Toronto.

Just after 5 p.m., the bar area begins to fill up with commuters sipping cocktails as they wait for the traffic on the clogged Gardiner, 54 floors below, to dissipate. One of the restaurant’s first guests, a retired trial lawyer, arrives. As a young female host escorts him to his large corner table, he puts an arm around her shoulder. “I don’t like to pay bills,” he says. “I want a fucking account. Last time I was here, I offered those ladies”—referring to the hosts who greeted him at his last visit—“$300 and told them to set up an account for me. And I still don’t have one.” He and his three dining companions, Canoe regulars, have brought in several bottles of their own wine, including a cabernet franc from the ex-lawyer’s private vineyard in Tuscany. When Predhomme arrives at the table to discuss the wine, the ex-lawyer, captivatingly bratty in a way that only the rich and sort-of-powerful can be, repeats his complaint. “Look, I spend about $50,000 a year at Bymark, and I’d do the same here if I had a fucking account.” Predhomme is unmoved, but gracious. “If you give me your contact information,” he says, “I’ll make sure that it gets to the right people.”

“You’ll get me an account?”

“I’ll look into it.”

Despite how much money this guy has (several million dollars, apparently), no matter how many times he insists Predhomme join him at their table (a half-dozen) or extends an invitation to his 55-room Italian villa (at least twice), he’ll never get an account. Canoe doesn’t set up accounts. Predhomme’s job is to make him feel special while also saying no. So he allows him a few indulgences. He decants the party’s wines with extraordinary patience and precision, holding the bottles over a flickering candle so he can better spot sediment. And later, he will invite the ex-lawyer and his friends into Canoe’s wine cellar, a very rare privilege, to select a 2001 La Spinetta Barolo Campè, priced at $500, that the foursome purchases after draining their own stash.

Predhomme is an expert performer of a complicated, occasionally absurd dance of enlightened hospitality. It requires that he convince the ex-lawyer, no matter how inebriated and insufferable he becomes by ten o’clock, that he is in capable, caring hands, so that this particular gathering will be one of the best nights in a long life presumably full of great, boozy nights—while making sure the 150 other guests in the dining room also feel special and this night is one of the best nights of their lives. This is not an easy job. But Predhomme is earnestly obsessed with the idea of service. It’s a weirdly self-punishing thing to be preoccupied with—like obsessing over being the best, most professional shepherd on the tallest, toughest mountain—but it’s also kind of nice when you’re on the receiving end. In the several days we spend together, I don’t think I ever put on my own coat or refilled my own water glass.

Just beneath Predhomme’s modest affability is a bracing current of ambition. If the chef is the engine of a restaurant, the sommelier, at least at high-end establishments like Canoe, is increasingly the drivetrain. Predhomme is keenly aware of his importance to the restaurant and of how much more important he could become. And not just at Canoe; Predhomme is also the sommelier at Jump, the O&B bistro next door, and while there is currently no such thing as a wine director at the company, Predhomme is strategically building such a role for himself. He teaches a weekly wine class to the O&B staff, is grooming his lieutenant, assistant sommelier Ben Shillow, to take over elsewhere, and is further augmenting his own credentials—in the next year, he’ll take the Master Sommelier exam, which, if he passes, will make him one of only 180 Masters in the world.

Buckets of bubbly: a thing of the past? (Image: e_calamar)

LVMH, the luxury goods powerhouse known for its fancy handbags (Louis Vuitton) and highfalutin hooch (Moët Hennessy), has declared that the champers supply is running short. Grape harvests were restricted by the Comité interprofessionnel du vin de Champagne (yes, there’s a committee for this) last year due to a fear of oversupply and falling prices. But with a modest bump in the economy (and bankers feeling free to sip Cristal in the champagne room again), there’s been a spike in demand.

As Decanter.com reports:

Announcing 19% growth in wine and spirit revenues to €3.26bn during 2010, LVMH chairman and CEO Bernard Arnault said prestige cuvees including Dom Perignon and Krug had been the star performers.

‘We found ourselves in a situation where supply and availability becomes short,’ Arnault told analysts in a conference call. ‘You may remember that back in 2009 all the papers said that it was a Champagne crisis.

‘[Moet Hennessy president] Monsieur [Christophe] Navarre would come and see me and say “we have all this inventory – what should we do with all the bottles?”.

‘Some other companies were dumping their stock; we decided to buy more. But we didn’t buy enough and now with the recovery and resumption of the market, we found ourselves short.’

It’s still unknown what effect this might have on champagne availability here at home, but we’re not worried. If worse comes to worst, the LCBO still stocks plenty of Baby Duck for seven bucks.

For a roundup of champagne alternatives, check out David Lawrason’s column on bubbly from the January issue of Toronto Life »

• LVMH: Champagne in short supply [Decanter.com]

2:45 a.m., Cobra

“Let’s get drunk and fuck! Let’s get drunk and fuck!”

I’m at Cobra, a King West club in a sprawling basement underneath a 19th-century warehouse. In this neighbourhood, the best parties are either deep underground or high above in a rooftop bar. Cobra is decorated like a gothic funhouse, with a wall of glowing skulls and lots of black. The get-drunk-and-fuck directive bleats from a techno remix as coloured lights, inducing a kind of electric synesthesia, pulsate on the basement ceiling. To my left, two girls make out and topple over, knocking down their bottle service glassware. Guys eagerly watch from the sidelines, plotting how to make their move. My teeth chatter from the vibrating bass. I down a shot that’s half Sour Puss and half vodka, proffered by a human Barbie doll bartender.

I’d arrived at 11:30 p.m., waited my turn to pass through the velvet rope, and carefully made my way down the steep staircase (a bitch to do when you’re wearing six-inch stilettos, like most women here, including me). At first the club was nearly empty, with men and women separated in groups as if it were a middle school dance. But as the night progressed, the room filled and the ladies began to pose and grind for an audience of ethnically diverse guys in shiny loafers. Every once in a while, a waitress walks by holding a tray laden with liquor bottles. When a patron orders a $650 bottle of Cristal, Cobra attaches a sparkler to it with an elastic, so it lights a pathway to the club’s very important patrons as the waitress carries it across the room.

One by one, the guys attack—placing clammy hands on trim waists, stubble on well-moisturized cheeks, come-ons on deaf ears. Conversation consists of “What’s up tonight?” and “I can’t hear you, the music’s too loud!” By 3 a.m., the club is nearly empty except for one or two defiant couples, courting the inevitability of what happens at the end of the night.

The opening event for the Thompson Hotel was the high point of cool for the neighbourhood and a warning of the coming deluge of weekend partiers

The entrances to many of the neighbourhood’s nightclubs are hidden in brick-paved alleys that were originally designed to ship products more efficiently to the street’s warehouses. Outside Cobra, three chicks from Western smoke on a striped chaise longue by a cluster of heat lamps, and giggle over the guys they rejected. They tell me they drove in for the weekend to celebrate a friend’s birthday. The prettiest of them, a fragile 20-year-old blonde with a passing resemblance to Kirsten Dunst, is wearing a black lace dress from Urban Behavior, rhinestone earrings from Ardene, $25 bejewelled satin pumps and no coat even though it’s zero degrees and dropping.

I turn my attention back to the street. It’s time I go home to Parkdale, but hailing a cab is a nightmare: King West is a tangle of stretch Hummers and lost packs of bachelorettes. My idea of a big night out used to consist of drinking PBR in a dingy bar in Little Portugal. But over the past few months, as I attempted to figure out why King West became one giant party, I spent nearly every weekend on the strip, dining on foie gras at Brassaii, getting my makeup retouched at C Lounge, avoiding groping guys at the Firkin. Throughout my travels, I met a concert promoter in his late 50s named Gerry, who invited me back to his multimillion-dollar house on Richmond, where we smoked pot and listened to Captain Beefheart; a cop who flashed me his badge and pretended to arrest me “for being so beautiful”; and a guy who swore he wasn’t a rapist as he begged me to join him in his limo. As I make my way home, it occurs to me that this is the only neighbourhood in Toronto where people make direct eye contact.

(Illustration: Jack Dylan)

French champagne is still the standard-bearer for the world’s sparkling wines. But New World winemakers are tinkering with its conventions and challenging its supremacy, making bubbly more fun and diverse—for celebrating everyday life, not just its highlights. Understanding sparkling wine means wrapping your head around confusing nomenclature: in champagne terms, the driest styles are called brut, but the sweeter ones are “extra-dry.” More extra-dry wine is being made whether labelled thus or not, reflecting the fact that most of humanity actually prefers sweetish wine. Of late, in the New World, we’re seeing grapes other than the champagne triumvirate of pinot noir, chardonnay and pinot meunier—such varietals as sauvignon blanc, riesling and even shiraz. The final kick in the shins to champagne is that quality has improved substantially throughout the sparkling-wine spectrum—from Italian prosecco to Spanish cava, from French cremants to the global legions of chardonnay-pinot champagne emulators. Whatever the style, these sparklers are all cheaper than champagne, sometimes astonishingly so considering their fine quality.

Angels Gate 2008 Archangel Sauvignon Blanc Sparkling
$19.95 | Beamsville Bench | 89 points
This engaging bubbly successfully catches herbal sauvignon nuances among honeyed grapefruit, guava and white flowers on the nose and palate. It’s light bodied, frothy and semi-sweet, but built on solid acidity. Chill well and serve with spicy canapés. angelsgatewinery.com

Bottega Petalo Il Vino Dell’Amore Moscato
$12.80 | Italy | 87 points
The ideal wine for Sunday brunch or breakfast in bed. It’s sweet and quite fizzy, with only 6.5 per cent alcohol and a floral nose of lily, green melon and the lime of the moscato grape. Also terrific with fruit salads and pastries. Serve cold. LCBO 588780

Flat Rock 2007 Riddled Sparkling
$24.95 | Twenty Mile Bench | 89 points
From owner Ed Madronich (who successfully petitioned the VQA to allow the use of crown caps on Ontario bubbly), this off-dry style is open hearted, with ripe pear fruit, and mild biscuit and honey complexity; slightly frothy effervescence and very good length. Chill it well. Vintages. LCBO 187377

Henry of Pelham Cuvée Catharine Rosé Brut
$29.95 | Niagara Peninsula | 90 points
One of the classiest pink bubblies from Ontario shows a subtle nose of fresh raspberry, icing sugar and fresh bread—altogether like a
delicate raspberry pastry. It’s light to mid-weight and vaguely sweet, with a fine, racy effervescence and a drier, bracing finish. Very good length. LCBO 4051

Hinterland 2009 Whitecap
$20 | Niagara Peninsula | 87 points
This is a new vidal-based bubbly from a small Prince Edward County winery that specializes in sparkling wine. Bottled under a crown cap, it’s a light, tight, off-dry fizz with clean, simple apple and floral aromas. Almost a moscato style, but drier, with the County’s mineral edge. hinterlandwine.com

Piper-Heidsieck Brut
$49.95 | Champagne | 92 points
My favourite non-vintage brut champer has shed $9 in the past year. It’s slim, racy and ultra-refreshing. The nose is almost piercing, with flinty minerality, dried apple, lemon loaf and light smokiness. Very refined, with lemony and almond flavours hitting excellent length. LCBO 462432

Roederer Estate Brut Sparkling Wine
$28.95 | Anderson Valley, California | 91 points
California’s best champagne-style sparkler, in my books, comes from the Anderson Valley in Mendocino, a cool coastal region of grand fir and pine forests. I’d swear there are coniferous scents amid its honeyed pastry flavours. It’s weightier than many; bold, dry yet elegant. Excellent length. Vintages. LCBO 294181

Segura Viudas Brut Reserva
$14.55 | Spain | 89 points
Champagne drinkers will need to retune their palates to the unique green olive and damp chalk scent of Spanish cava, which uses local grape varieties led by macabeo. This textbook, brisk edition offers a steely centre and softness on the edges. Great with mixed nuts, olives and seafood. LCBO 158493

Villa Sandi Prosecco $14.05 | Treviso, Italy | 88 points
Italy’s northeastern Venetia region is producing increasingly good, casual and affordable prosecco. Most of the current, gentle offerings catch pure honeydew melon. This particular wine has a light-hearted charm and a touch of sweetness, but it’s also more flavourful than most others of its kind. LCBO 249722

We prefer to pass the holiday season by eating our way through it and forcing loved ones to do the same. So we’ve come up with 13 inventive edible gifts (and not a mini-muffin basket in sight).

See our foodie gift guide now >>

See our other gift guides:

• 33 gifts under $30 >>

• 33 gifts under $100 >>

• 34 gifts over $100 >>

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(Image: Jack Dylan)

It’s boom time in B.C. There are now nearly 200 wineries, and the quality just keeps getting better. In fact, with the recent influx of showcase wineries and new restaurants, the Okanagan Valley is being called Napa North. Winemakers have perfected techniques to harness the arid valley’s impossibly short but scorching growing season. The sheer diversity of wine is stunning: floral aromatic rieslings and gewürztraminers from cooler sites north of Kelowna; sophisticated pinot gris, chardonnays and pinot noirs from the Naramata Bench; and powerful cabernets and syrahs from the hot south near Oliver and Osoyoos. Until recently, however, it’s been hard to taste the western renaissance in Ontario. Supply is limited (B.C.’s output is two-thirds of Ontario’s), and the wine is still treated as an import here due to archaic interprovincial alcohol regulations. (For starters, it’s illegal for wineries to take orders from Ontario and ship directly to their customers.) Thankfully, more good B.C. wine is now trickling into Vintages stores and wine agencies. The selection below includes some of the best cutting-edge wines now available.

Blue Mountain Gold Label Brut
$34.95 | Okanagan Valley | 89 points
Blue Mountain is a pioneering, premium estate that specializes in mineral-driven chardonnay, pinot noir and bubbly from its impeccable bench vineyard. Its brut is light to medium bodied, crisp and juicy, with a hint of shortbread sweetness on the finish. Excellent length.
liffordwine.com

CedarCreek 2007
Cabernet Merlot $23.95 | Okanagan Valley | 90 points
CedarCreek remains one of B.C.’s pre-eminent producers, capturing
a stylish and supple poise that few others achieve. This exudes ripened blackberry nicely framed by mocha and subtle tobacco. It’s showing some tannin, so it needs a few years to mellow. Excellent length. Vintages. LCBO 175604

Gray Monk 2008 Gewurz­traminer
$18.95 | Okanagan Valley | 90 points
Gray Monk’s forte is crafting aromatic whites from its steep lakeshore vineyards on the 50th degree of latitude—the northern limit for the vinifera species. This off-dry gewürz has classic notes of lychee and orange with hints of ginger. Very good acid-sugar yin-yang. Vintages. LCBO 321588

JoieFarm 2009 Riesling
$31.95 | Okanagan Valley | 90 points
Founded in the bucolic Naramata Bench sub-region by sommeliers Michael Dinn and Heidi Noble, JoieFarm focuses on varieties from Alsace, Burgundy and Champagne. This dry riesling blooms with green melon, petrol, floral and spicy flavours set in a fresh style. Very juicy, with orange-grapefruit acidity on the finish. liffordwine.com

Laughing Stock 2007 Portfolio
$54.95 | Okanagan Valley | 92 points
Vancouver investment consultants David and Cynthia Enns call their winery a “vow of poverty.” Portfolio, a top-barrel Bordeaux-style cab-merlot blend, has a complex nose of cedar, dried herbs and wood­smoke. It’s rich and spicy, with firm tannin. Best 2012 to 2017, approach­able now. Vintages, Dec. 11. LCBO 71464

Le Vieux Pin 2006 Epoque Merlot
$37.95 | Okanagan Valley | 90 points
Le Vieux Pin is a no-expense-spared newcomer to the area. Its maturing merlot—the most widely planted grape in the Okanagan—features classic notes of raspberry jam, fig, herbs and tea, accented by oak. It’s sturdy, bordering on sweet and hot, but it never tips the balance. Vintages, Nov. 27. LCBO 206318

Mission Hill Family Estate 2007 Quatrain
$45 | Okanagan Valley | 93 points
This 2010 Canadian Wine Awards gold medallist is a gorgeous blend of merlot, syrah, cabernet franc and cabernet sauvignon. It’s streamlined with beautifully etched blackberry, licorice, pepper, cedar, chocolate and sage flavours that fill the palate yet avoid excess heat. Best 2012 to 2017. missionhillontario.com

Quails’ Gate 2008 Stewart Family Reserve Chardonnay
$30 | Okanagan Valley | 91 points
Ben and Tony Stewart’s innovative northern Okanagan winery is reaping the benefit of its 45-year-old vines. The chardonnay is perfectly poised, with aromas of necta­rine, chive, toast and smoke. It’s smooth and suave yet built on stony acidity. hobbswines.com

Sperling 2008 Old Vines Riesling
$35 | Okanagan Valley | 89 points
Okanagan-raised Ann Sperling makes wine at Southbrook in Niagara, and now at her family’s vineyard southwest of Kelowna. Her first vintage of riesling is a gentle, almost delicate (12.5 per cent alcohol), barely off-dry edition with pure peachy fruit, silky texture and a firm, crisp finish. trialto.com

(Image: George Pimentel)

One evening last March, Toronto’s stylish set put on their best frocks and headed to a retail baptism. Sarah Jessica Parker, celebrity high priestess of fashion, was in town to launch the Halston Heritage label at The Bay. The party, which reportedly cost over $200,000, was meant to establish Canada’s oldest department store as a major player in high-end womenswear. If retailers can be born again, this was The Bay’s moment to lean back and dip its head into the holy water.

Fashion media and socialites were ushered into the Queen Street flagship store and up the escalator to sip champagne on the third floor. That’s where The Room is located. The upscale designer dress salon was renovated a year ago for approximately $4.4 million in a high modernist style by the designers Yabu Pushelberg. The result is a treasure trove of conversation piece baubles, heels, flirty cocktail dresses and gowns by some of the most prestigious designers in the business. It’s the beating heart of the new Bay.

The Halston invitation promised a chance to meet Parker for some chit-chat and a casual photo op. The stable of thoroughbred clothes horses in attendance that night included Wendy Melvin, the executive headhunter; Simona Shnaider, the wife of the billionaire steel magnate Alex Shnaider; and socialites Stacey Kimel and Catherine Nugent (who wore an original custom-made Halston suit). The dapper designer Wayne Clark rubbed shoulders with then-MTV Canada host Jessi Cruickshank, who bopped in wearing a Halston onesie. An immaculately coiffed Laureen Harper was toured around by Jeanne Beker. The in-store event was followed by a dinner at One Restaurant at the Hazelton Hotel for executives and VIPs. A Studio 54–themed after party was held for 700 slightly less important guests, who danced and drank the night away on a custom-constructed light-up dance floor at the nightclub This Is London.

Sarah Jessica Parker (Image: George Pimentel)

If you believe what you read on Twitter, this campaign to seduce the city’s most sought-after shoppers worked. During the event, Flare editor-in-chief Lisa Tant tweeted that Toronto’s socialites and Canada’s first lady were “breathless” in the company of Parker. Cruickshank overshared about nearly “wetting” herself with excitement. Another party guest compared the vibe in the room to “a bunch of eight-year-old girls waiting to meet Barbie.”

Earlier that night, before Parker arrived in a pair of four-inch silver Ferragamo heels, The Bay’s president and CEO, Bonnie Brooks, had some last-minute business to attend to. A female security guard wearing a poly-blend outfit was stationed at the party’s entrance and looked as frumpy as, well, a Hudson’s Bay security guard. Taking one look at the guard, Brooks instructed an office minion, “Get her out of here.” The order, like all of Brooks’ wishes, was immediately carried out. Such gaffes are small compared to what Brooks faces on her mission to remake the dowdy institution into a major fashion player. She can banish all the badly dressed people she wants, but will The Bay ever be seen as the most glamorous department store in Toronto? Not if the current holder of that title has anything to say about it.

Not since The Bay flogged beaver pelts has the company set its sights so high

The Bay is enormous. It’s Canada’s original big box chain, with 92 outlets from coast to coast, and it thought big from the beginning. Famously founded in the mid–17th century as a string of British-run trading posts (King Charles II signed the Royal Charter granting the company land and trading rights), the Hudson’s Bay Company didn’t branch into department store retail until 1913, when it launched its original six outlets in Western Canada. The first stores were modelled after Harrods in London—sprawling, diverse, one-stop shopping emporiums. They carried everything from stockings to liquor to tinned fish.

Holt Renfrew, The Bay’s main competitor for fashion shoppers, is small and chic—the little black dress of department store chains, with only nine outlets across Canada. Founded in 1837 (the same year as Tiffany and Hermès), it began as a hat store in Quebec City and for several decades served as the official furrier to the royal family. Holts hit its stride by bringing Christian Dior’s New Look to Canada in 1947. Exclusive accounts with other major European fashion houses soon followed, and Holts was established in its modern role as the country’s major high-end fashion retailer.

(Image: Jack Dylan)

The first three sparkling wines to come out of Prince Edward County are taut, tender and dance across the palate: they taste more like champagne than any non-French bubbly I’ve ever tasted. The secret is in the dirt. The sunny farming region south of Belleville has almost as high a concentration of limestone in its soil as France’s Champagne district. Limestone is fissured and spongy, which allows vine roots to penetrate deep into the bedrock, and the wine it yields is full of refreshing minerality. The similarities in terroir and climate were so striking that two expat Torontonians, Jonas Newman, a former maître d’ at Scara­mouche, and his partner, Vicki Samaras, have opened Hinterland winery, the County’s first dedicated exclusively to bubbly. It’s one of 14 launches in the past year, bringing the total number of wineries to 31. The region once considered laughably marginal is full of undercapitalized but pioneering vintners. Many are eking out fewer than 1,000 cases from small acreages, making their wines scarce (most are unavailable at the LCBO) and expensive. But low yields create better quality wines. Here are some examples of PEC’s finest to seek out on your next, or first, trip.

SPARKLING

The Grange of Prince Edward
2007 Brut $29.95 | Prince Edward County | 90 points
The debut sparkler from the County’s largest winery has great minerality and depth of flavour. A mix of pinot and chardonnay and aged two years, it’s lighter than champagne. There’s good tension and ping, with toasty aromas and a mouth-watering finish. Try with oysters. grangeofprinceedward.com

Hinterland 2007 Les Etoiles
$39.20 | Prince Edward County | 90 points
Out of their converted dairy barn in Hillier, Jonas Newman and Vicki Samaras have crafted a standout pinot noir–based sparkler. Smelling of dried cherry, peach and almond, the pale pink wine is bone dry, with typical County mineral grip and excellent flavour concentration. hinterlandwine.com

Huff Estates 2006 Cuvée Peter F. Huff
$39.95 | Prince Edward County | 91 points
This chardonnay bubbly is a fine follow-up to the winery’s historic 2004—the County’s first sparkling wine. The nose wafts almond, lemon and apple pastry. It’s light bodied and creamy; the finish is slightly sweet, but brisk acidity keeps it in balance. Excellent length. huffestates.ca

Shinan Govani at the launch party for his book, Boldface Names (Photo by Jen McNeely)

Local gossip king Shinan Govani landed the cover of the premiere issue of In Toronto magazine this week (it’s like Xtra or Fab for the Yorkville crowd), and while we already know too much about the party pundit, the story revealed some tidbits that might be useful for amateur celebrity spotters. The highlights of the 1,400-word Q&A:

Govani’s picks for celebrity sightings:
Drew Barrymore was spotted at Sweaty Betty’s twice when she was in town for TIFF, Robin Williams once visited the Dora Keogh, Daniel Craig and Megan Fox have dined at Avenue Road’s L’Unità, and Toufik Sarwa’s Cinq 01 on College is the go-to place for local celebs.

His answer to the tired “will Toronto ever be like New York” question:
Up the population by one million. “Toronto is plenty engaging and glam—what we’re still lacking is scale,” he tells the magazine, adding that a Toronto party may have 10 “cool” people, but a New York or London party may have 100 “cool” people.

…Not that Toronto’s D-list status is a bad thing:
Govani is asked why so many celebrities have their meltdowns in Canadian cities (we’re pretty sure L.A. still holds the title for most train-wrecky city. See: Lohan, L.). He answers, “Partly, I would imagine, it’s because celebs feel a psychological fence around them being in these hinterlands.” Famous people apparently think Canada is so far north and isolated that they can get away with bar brawls. Oh wait…

He had a speech impediment that prevented him from saying his name:
Govani says that he couldn’t pronounce the “sh” sound and had to work with a therapist to overcome it. “I couldn’t say my own name! Now I make a living off other people’s names.”

Covering TIFF sucks:
It’s something we already know first-hand, but unlike us (who divvied up the work among a team of reporters), last year, Govani had to attend 40 parties, write his columns, do his TV and radio bits and promote Boldface Names at the same time. It’s not all champagne and blini. It’s writing columns and voice-overs while downing champagne and scarfing down free blini.

• Talk it up [In Toronto]