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Nine West Coast wines that are flying off the shelves
(Image: Jack Dylan)
California wine has always had a certain easygoing appeal, and the region’s big-ticket bottles have been a staple in collectors’ cellars for the last three decades. In my opinion, however, they’ve also suffered from excess—they’re too expensive, too candy-coated, too oaky and too hot on the finish. I get angry when I taste a $300 Napa Valley icon wine and discover it barely deserves 90 points—the quality doesn’t match the price. But a new generation of California winemakers is breaking away from tradition and working with new blends and grape varieties. Regions like Mendocino County, the Sonoma Coast and Paso Robles, which typically live in the shadow of Napa and Sonoma, are producing wine that’s more refined, better balanced and much more affordable (in the $20 to $40 range). This improvement, combined with a strong Canadian dollar, has boosted sales at the LCBO’s Vintages stores, where, for the first time ever, California wines are outselling those from Italy and France. In 2010, they brought in $70.8 million, which is a 21.5 per cent increase from 2009 and accounts for a fifth of all Vintages sales. I recently tasted several dozen of these top sellers and picked the best of the bunch.
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What a waste: UN reports that one third of the world’s food becomes garbage
(Image: Alfred Ng)
We already knew we probably waste way more food than we should, but we didn’t know it was this bad. As the BBC reports, a recently released United Nations study has found that one billion tons of food is discarded across the globe every year, prompting food retailers to re-evaluate their practices. After the jump, five things we learned from the study.
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Holiday Gift Guide: 13 edible present ideas
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 >>
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Inside the fridge of chef Marc Thuet and restaurateur Biana Zorich
In our new series, Crisper Chronicles, we ask the city’s top food personalities to let us into their most intimate alimentary enclave: the home refrigerator. This week, chef Marc Thuet and his wife, front-of-house master Biana Zorich—both back in Toronto after shooting a new season of Conviction Kitchen in Vancouver—talk about the treasures (and trash) that lurk in their icebox.
A new study presents the following theoretical formula: lime + beer + sun = skin disease
Keep out of reach of sunlight (Image: Misserion)
Aside from being a painful reminder that one’s beer is practically tasteless, squeezing lime juice into a bottle of brew can apparently have some nasty physical side effects. Dr. Scott Flugman, a medical practitioner from New York state, writes in October’s issue of Archives of Dermatology that the chemicals in lime juice, when combined with ultraviolet-A rays from the sun, can produce skin lesions he calls “Mexican beer dermatitis.”
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The TIFF cocktail list is out: this year’s celebrity-themed drinks
The Oh Golly Molly! looks suspiciously like a regular martini (Image: James Mulholland)
With September looming, the annual swarm of boozers and cruisers is about to descend upon our city. No, not incoming U of T students—the Toronto International Film Festival is nigh. The Hazelton Hotel played host to the first of many TIFF events (and our first celeb sighting of the season—Brandon Walsh, oops, Jason Priestley, hanging in the lobby, talking about a visit to the Astral Media studios), with official sponsor Skyy vodka unveiling its annual celebrity-themed cocktails. In years past, such Canucks as Don McKellar, Ellen Page and Lisa Ray have been immortalized in alcohol. Here, the cocktails a lucky few will be sipping on the party circuit.
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Tiny bubbles: top picks from Prince Edward County’s first sparkling wines
Prince Edward County’s first sparklers are incredible: you’d swear you were drinking champagne
(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. Read the rest of this entry »
America’s newest pastime: driving 10 hours to Canada for mangoes
Fruits of their neighbour: honey mangoes on display at a London market (Image: Jay Bergesen)
This week’s example of the “U.S. acknowledges Canada’s existence” trend comes in the form of mangoes, which seem to be right up there with prescription drugs on the list of items that Americans are willing to cross the border to buy. The Star reports that some Yanks are so in love with the fruit—Pakistani ones, to be exact—that they’re driving to Toronto to load up on cases of the stuff because the U.S. banned them for not meeting pest control standards.
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Best eight farmers’ markets
Nearly every downtown ’hood has a farmers’ market now, and although the best one is almost always the one closest to you, these markets are worth the trek.
Ontario tomatoes (Photo by Daniel Shipp)
À la mode: re-purposed food becomes the stuff of fashion
Sweet sartorialism: Fulvio Bonavia's book of delicious photos (Image: Hachette Australia)
We’ve seen and written about plenty of food porn in our day, but this is the first time we’ve seen food as fashion porn. We’re loving this series of photos of handbags, shoes and other accessories made from food—all plucked from A Matter of Taste by Italian photographer Fulvio Bonavia. The book is available on Amazon, but the items themselves can’t be bought. We wish some were, though. We’d feel more badass riding our bike wearing a watermelon helmet (and, conversely, a lot daintier if there were purple flowers glued on it). What better way to cultivate a cat lady persona than by trotting about in a cat magnet like this shimmering sardine belt? And we think Mom would have preferred to receive an elegant silver necklace with linguine strands over the shabbily painted macaroni one we gave her in Grade 2 (though we’re less certain about the parmesan purse).
A Matter of Taste, by Fulvio Bonavia. Hachette Australia.
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- Sweet sartorialism: Fulvio Bonavia’s book of photos (Image: Hachette Australia)
Mickey’s pushing mushrooms: Disney sells out to big veggie
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Proving that children are an easily swayed mass of consumption, Disney is now shilling fresh vegetables and seeing major success. The Times-Columnist reports, “Although Imagination Farms, the licensee for Disney Garden, won’t reveal dollar figures, the company reports sales of more than 10 million servings of fresh produce in Canada last year through the Disney Garden line.” And, apparently, Canadian sales are up 300 per cent over last year. That’s a lot of Nemo-coloured oranges.
How to be Martha Stewart’s intern, Elizabeth Hurley’s low-calorie beef jerky, the best kinds of cheeseburgers
(Photo by Kyle T. Ramirez)
• While covering the cheeseburger beat for the Chicago Tribune, Kevin Pang scarfed down 60 different versions of the patty-and-bun classic. Now on a beef detox program of carrot sticks and flax seeds, Pang serves up his collected wisdom. On condiments: hold the ketchup and the mustard, but don’t forget the mayo. On french fries: while greasing them in duck fat is trendy, beef tallow provides a more robust taste. On flavour combinations: nothing beats cheese, bacon and caramelized onions. [Chicago Tribune]
• One lucky bidder will get the chance to work as Martha Stewart’s intern for the bargain-basement cost of $3,600. The American tastemaker is auctioning off a six-week paid internship to raise money for her eponymous centre at Mount Sinai Mission. Is this her take on stimulus spending or a version of home economics she picked up in prison? [Eat Me Daily]
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Seth Rogen as Martin Picard, obtaining a perfect peach, America’s most bizarre restaurants
Life's a peach: this year's crop is the best in years (Photo by Bruce Tuten)
• The cool, rainy spring that kept tomatoes green has actually been good for the peach crop. The New Jersey Peach Council says this is the best peach season in years. While the Peach Council may be biased, we say bring on the cobblers. [New York Times]
• With the success of Julie and Julia, the National Post is predicting that more foodie flicks are on the way. Brad Frenette wonders why no one’s made a movie about Marie-Antoine Careme, the orphan turned pâtissière who cooked for Napoleon, George IV and Tsar Alexander. Other suggestions: a film about wild chef Martin Picard played by Seth Rogen, and a Daniel Craig rendition of Gordon Ramsay. [National Post]
Local cherries are here, but going fast
The pits: Ontario cherries will last only three weeks (Photo by bensonkua)
A rainy June delayed the season, but Ontario cherries are finally making their annual appearance in desserts across the city. Farmers say the fruit will be around for three weeks, max, so we suggest all 100-mile dieters stock up now. Here, we look at what Toronto chefs are doing with Ontario cherries and list where to find fresh ones in the city. Read the rest of this entry »
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