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.”
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Is the Toronto condo market in a bubble? Who knows! Yesterday, the Bank of Canada warned that the condo boom is about to get seriously less boomy (apparently, “the supply of completed but unoccupied condominiums is elevated, which suggests a heightened risk of a correction in this market”). Sure, that may sound gloomy, but some indicators of the market’s health aren’t even tracked. For instance, although rumour has it that foreign investors are buying all the condos they can, according to the Globe and Mail, Canada doesn’t track foreign investment in its real estate market. Meanwhile, National Bank analyst Stefane Marion believes a recession is the real threat to the housing market, and Urbanation predicts 2011 will actually be a record year for Toronto condo sales. If you’re not sure what to think, don’t worry: we’re pretty sure nobody really knows (not even The Economist). Read the entire story [Globe and Mail] »
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