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The Dish

From the Print Edition
October 12, 2011 | 2:59 pm

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David Lawrason picks nine great, affordable pinot noirs from around the world

(Illustration: Jack Dylan)

Pinot noir is my desert island wine. It’s light and refreshing, and it pairs with just about any food. I adore it. For centuries, Burgundy, with its cool climate and limestone-rich soils, was one of the few places on the planet that could coax great wine from the famously precious, thin-skinned grape. As a result, pinot prices were inflated—one of the world’s most expensive reds is Burgundy’s Domaine Romanee-Conti pinot, which sells for $11,000. In the 1970s, under the disapproving gaze of the French, winemakers started planting pinot in Oregon, New Zealand, California and Ontario. The resulting wines were often exciting, though still expensive. Then 2004’s sleeper hit Sideways chronicled a pinot-swilling novelist’s road trip through California wine country and propelled the wine into the limelight. The heartbreak grape, as it’s known to vintners due to its finnicky nature, is now grown all over the globe and is much more affordable. While some may lament the popularization of the once-elite grape, I’m thrilled it’s more widely available. Here, nine bottles under $25 from Ontario, Australia and everywhere in between.

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The Informer

From the Print Edition
October 3, 2011 | 10:25 am

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Tim Hudak spent his life climbing the Tory ladder and now he has a shot at taking over Queen’s Park—but can he convince voters he’s more than just Mike Harris lite?

By Trevor Cole | Photography by Brian Finke

Tim Hudak

Tim Hudak is riding in the back of an RV, a big, bouncy RV wrapped in an enormous picture of his smiling face, and he’s coming to see you. He’s really happy. So happy that he’s tweeting about it on his BlackBerry. “Outstanding,” he types, and, “On my way…” Now he’s peering out the front window, over the driver’s shoulder, toward one of the event venues where he’s going to meet you. “Shit, has this thing started?” He doesn’t want to be late. He wants to look you in the eyes and tell you what he thinks, and he wants to listen to you, too. The whole big meet-and-greet ball of wax: he loves it. This is who he is. “It gets in your blood, right?” he asks. Although that’s not actually a question. Putting “right?” at the end of certain things he says is just Tim Hudak’s way. “You are who you are, right?” he says. “I’m Tim Hudak.”

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The Dish

Restauran-TO
May 31, 2011 | 10:38 am

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Jamie Kennedy back in expansion mode with new Niagara Falls restaurant

Jamie Kennedy takes his local and seasonal show on the road to Niagara Falls this November

A few months ago, Jamie Kennedy told us that for him, 2010 was a year for consolidation and rebuilding. Now, the busy chef—who already runs Gilead Café and Bistro and Jamie Kennedy at the Gardiner Café, in addition to a catering business—is firmly in expansion mode with the recent announcement that he’s opening a new restaurant in Niagara Falls.

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The Dish

From the Print Edition
March 7, 2011 | 9:14 am

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Reinvention tour: Ontario vintners are showing off their chardonnays and changing minds about the infamous ’80s grape

(Illustration: Jack Dylan)

The consumer revolt against chardonnay, known as the ABC (anything but chardonnay) movement, hasn’t stopped Ontario winemakers from producing excellent chardonnays. The province’s cool climate and limestone-rich soils provide similar conditions to those in Burgundy, France—the region that put chardonnay on the map with such wines as chablis, pouilly-fuissé and meursault. As the Ontario industry and its vines mature, home-grown chardonnays are becoming truly impressive, especially the more expensive varieties that are fermented and aged in French oak. To get the word out, Ontario vintners are sending their best bottlings (as selected in a blind tasting by Ontario wine critics) abroad to wine fairs. At the first event in London last year, pundits were pleasantly surprised to discover such high-quality chardonnays from a province known mostly for icewine. The enthusiastic response prompted Ontario wineries to repeat the performance this month for Manhattan’s wine critics. Niagara will also become an international chardonnay hub this July, when it hosts a multi-winery festival in honour of the cool-climate grape. To prime your palates, we’ve selected the region’s most seductive bottles.

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The Dish

From the Print Edition
February 14, 2011 | 3:18 pm

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Just Desserts: sophisticated sweet wines worth the splurge

By David Lawrason

(Illustration: Jack Dylan)

Sweet wines generally get a bad rap. Even avid wine lovers tend to dismiss them as overly expensive, cloying or lacking in refinement. Yet the only wine I ever awarded a perfect 100-point score was a sweet Château d’Yquem 2001 Sauternes from Bordeaux. It was profound, powerful and exquisite. At a tasting of sweet wines—from Mediterranean muscats to Canadian icewines to Australian “stickies”—the quality of almost everything I tried was astounding. Most types are made from grapes that have lingered on the vine until they’re slightly raisiny, resulting in high sugar content, concentrated flavours and low juice volume (the same goes for frozen grapes pressed for icewines). In some cases, the wines are then aged in barrels for anywhere from three months to 40 years. The labour-intensive process accounts for the famously high price of sweet wine. But they aren’t always expensive, and the value is generally excellent, with each bottle presenting a range of flavours as complex as any pastry chef can conjure up. They make a terrific dinner party gift, paired with rich cheeses (port and blue is a no‑brainer), or sipped solo instead of dessert. Here, 10 great sweeties at the LCBO.

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The Dish

From the Print Edition
January 31, 2011 | 8:52 am

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12 wines under $10: good, affordable wine is no longer an oxymoron

WHITE

BIG HOUSE WHITE 2009
(California, U.S.)
A sharply reduced price makes one of California’s most amusing whites—a fresh, perfumed, multi-grape blend—a no-brainer for parties (The cost of this wine has increased to over $10 since this article was published.). LBCO 173286

CASAL THAULERO 2009 OSCO PINOT GRIGIO
(Abruzzi, Italy)
Casal Thaulero’s flavourful and refreshing pinot grigio blows away the rest of the Italian competition. LCBO 73163

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The Informer

The New Normal
January 20, 2011 | 10:24 am

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New interactive map shows which baby names are popular in all of Toronto’s neighbourhoods

Click on the map to visit the interactive version

What’s in a name? Apparently, quite a bit.

A new interactive map by Toronto’s master of geo-data, Patrick Cain—he’s the guy who created the map showing a suburban-downtown division after Rob Ford’s election—reveals the top baby names in most postal codes in the GTA. The names speak to the cultural and religious enclaves that make up the city. The most popular boy’s name around Forest Hill (postal codes starting with M4V)? William. At McCowan and Steeles (L36)? Muhammad. In Parkdale (M6K)? Tenzin—a traditional name for Buddhists and Tibetans, as it was the name of the first Dalai Lama. Wildly popular names for girls that seem to know no postal boundaries: Sophia, Chloe, Emma, Ava and Emily.

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The Dish

From the Print Edition
January 20, 2011 | 8:45 am

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All that sparkles: nine outstanding bottles of bubbly without the elitism

(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.

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The Dish

Bottoms Up
January 14, 2011 | 1:48 pm

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World’s largest wine flute record about to be broken in Niagara Falls

A normal-sized champagne flute (Image: Katie Lips)

Guinness World Records attempts are decidedly bizarre affairs. But for those who have a fascination with that kind of thing, the Wine Council of Ontario will attempt to break the record for the world’s largest wine flute this afternoon. The gargantuan glass, which stands around four feet tall, has already been constructed (it’s modelled after Riedel’s icewine glass). But in order to be officially recorded in the Guinness annals, the flute has to hold more wine than the previous contender (the record was set in Italy in 2008, with a wine flute that held 16.5 litres).

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The Hype

From the Print Edition
August 4, 2010 | 12:17 pm

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Best of the City 2010: nine fun-filled activities, from karaoke to tennis

Family memberships at the Rosedale Tennis Club are a steal; Right: the 5 Drive-In offers malt shakes and cotton candy alongside summer blockbusters (Images: Jay Shuster)

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The Dish

From the Print Edition
August 4, 2010 | 11:47 am

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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 By David Lawrason

(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.

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The Goods

Shop Talk
July 30, 2010 | 10:12 am

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Bonnie Brooks is singing along to the Black Eyed Peas

Bonnie Brooks with Sarah Jessica Parker (Image: George Pimentel)

Bonnie Brooks, president and CEO of The Bay, is no stranger to the media, but we’re always hearing the same stuff about her: she’s from London, she worked in Hong Kong for retail giant Lane Crawford, and she is going to revitalize The Bay. But for some reason, the Globe and Mail’s auto section was able to draw out some details we hadn’t read before. Here’s four things we learned:

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The Informer

Quibbling Rivalries
July 21, 2010 | 3:23 pm

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Outrage of the week: Niagara takes out ads slamming Toronto, Toronto takes offence

Any Torontonian wondering what he or she should be angry about next, wonder no longer: the Niagara Parks Commission has released a couple of ads suggesting that there might be some downsides to spending the summer in the city, and that some of us might enjoy a weekend away. George Smitherman, with “simmering anger,” lays down the law in a Cnews piece: nobody but nobody talks about his city that way.

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The Dish

From the Print Edition
July 5, 2010 | 12:20 pm

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Bio Picks: 10 top eco-wines

Eco-wines that taste so good your guests will never know they’re saving the planet By David Lawrason

(Illustration: Brian Rea)

I’m all for protecting the environment, but when it comes to wine, what I care about most is taste. Fortunately, there’s good news on the eco-friendly front. Like organics, biodynamic wines are free of pesticides, fungicides, herbicides and chemical fertilizers, but the eco-balanced regimen is even more stringent. One of biodynamic vintners’ main aims is to strengthen the soil and, therefore, the vines. They bury cows’ horns filled with compost material in the soil and take cues from lunar cycles for planting and pruning. The techniques might sound paganistic, but such meticulous attention often results in better tasting wine. I’ve also found that biodynamic wines offer unparalleled expressions of terroir. The best I’ve tasted was a famous Loire Valley chenin blanc made by French biodynamic proponent Nicolas Joly. The Coulée de Serrant is a sinewy, incredibly intense wine that radiates flint and oyster shell—there’s no question that it comes from chalk soil vineyards in a maritime climate on the banks of the broad Loire.

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The Dish

Pantry Raid
July 5, 2010 | 11:49 am

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The great scapes: five ways that Toronto chefs are using garlic shoots

A bunch of garlic scapes (Image: Joe Shlabotnik)

For the past few weeks, garlic scapes have been cropping up on menus throughout the city. An early summer treat, these shoots are the sweeter, mellower off-growth of the more pungent bulbs that come later in the season (cutting them from young plants helps the bulbs grow plumper). But as they are delectable in their own right, scapes have lately found a following from locavore chefs. Below, five ways of the best ways to enjoy scapes in Toronto right now.

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