I’ve tasted so many wines this past week that I can’t pick one to feature. Furthermore I don’t have tasting notes (yet) on any single one of them, because I don’t know exactly which wines I tasted.
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Top Tuscans
Wine of the WeekGualdo del Ray 2003 Frederico Primo ($41.95, 92 points, www.vinvino.ca, 416-636-3534), Val di Cornia Suvereto IGT, TuscanyMade by rising star oenologist Barbara Tamburini (see below), this 100% cabernet sauvignon comes from Tuscany’s coast, home to legendary bordeaux-styled wines like Sassicaia and Ornellaia. It is as fine, rich and delicious as many high end Napa cabernets and modern Bordeaux, with very deep colour, lifted clove, cedar and mocha from new French oak, and ripe, almost floral, blackberry. Full bodied, plush yet still elegant with fine tannin and some Tuscan minerality on the finish. Excellent length.
Private Order Break Out
Wine of the Week Bodegas Terras Gauda 2006 O Rosel, Rias Baixas, Spain ($26, 91 points, www.thewinecoaches.com)Gorgeous aromatic, fleshy, lively and spicy white made on Spain’s northwest coast in Galicia, primarily from the local albarino grape (70%) with 20% loureira and 10% caino. Youth is so important with this style of wine that can sink into soupiness as it ages. This is as bright as they come, bursting with star anise, pineapple and grapefruit.
Spirit of Hospitality
Last Monday, with the Leafs away and the Raptors resting, a more boisterous gathering took over the Air Canada Centre’s Platinum Club. Youthful chef and porcelain entrepreneur Rudy Guo put together his annual extravaganza of chefs from across the country to raise money for the scholarships and bursaries handed out to student cooks through his Spirit of Hospitality program.
The Real Beaujolais
Did you have your glass of Beaujolais Nouveau this weekend? I know, it’s about as much fun as a flu shot. I have been in four different fine dining Toronto restaurants—plus one in Belleville and one in Prince Edward County—since Beaujolais Nouveau release day last Thursday, and I can only report the virtual silence about Nouveau this year. Very few displays, posters, chat, or bottles on tables. I tried it at the LCBO Thursday morning and the diagnosis was thin, simple and sour,” so I would not recommend spending $13 to $15. I then moved on later in the day to Jamie Kennedy Restaurant and Wine Bar where there was fine, dawdling, conversational mid-afternoon Beaujolais tasting underway with the terrific gamays from Pascal Granger of Julienas.
Chile Showdown in Toronto
First they took Berlin, then Tokyo, then São Paolo. But Toronto proved no pushover.
Wine Fridges and Wine Schools
I spent part of my Labour Day weekend helping my dear friend Carol buy her first wine fridge. We shopped during Ernesto’s deluge on Saturday afternoon, sloshing from store to store along the tacky Dundas Street strip in Mississauga. At Home Depot, after a 2 km-walk through the store, we found one 36-bottle fridge for $499. Not bad but we needed to see others.
Top 12 Wines of August ’06
Watch this space the last Monday of every month, where I’ll be providing a selection of 12 memorable wines encountered over the preceding 30 days. The selection is based on outright quality, surprise, newsworthiness, value, or any combination thereof. All are currently or soon to be available. The picks are arranged in descending price order so you’ll have to read to the end to find the very best values.
Treadwell: A Father and Son Match
Many chefs and sommeliers talk of food and wine matching, but it’s always a joy to walk into a restaurant where chef and sommelier actually talk together—and then deliver outstanding matches at the table. Even better when they are a father and son with a genetically linked sense of flavour, and where the chef father has instilled passion for wine in son. It happened Sunday at Treadwell in Port Dalhousie, Niagara as James Chatto and I, along with group of 30 merrymakers, wound up our annual Tour of Niagara. Treadwell was the bon voyage lunch after a 48-hour matching extravaganza, in which we savoured and poked our way through 20 different courses and 46 wines. (There were several other great dishes and wines, some of which are covered in Chatto’s Digest this week.)
Sommelier School and Washington Whites
While most wine drinkers, buyers and sellers have booked off for a summer hiatus—to finally sit back and enjoy those great value rieslings, rosés and sauvignon blancs— a group of Toronto sommeliers are in summer school, with no relief on hot days. They are the second class to register for the intensive 39-week Sommelier Certificate Program at George Brown College, offered in conjunction with the Canadian Association of Professional Sommeliers. This trade association has chapters in Toronto and Montreal, with links to similar European organizations. Certified members of CAPS can compete in the annual Meilleur Sommelier du Monde Competition being held next year in Spain.
Thirst Calls, Riesling Answers
The peak of summer is also riesling’s peak season. Care to listen to two tempting tales of the enjoyment and wonderment that this naked grape delivers?
Vieux Télégraphe, Single Serve Stone Cellars
When the stakes are high, you gotta know when to hold ‘em. An urbane, mild-mannered French winemaker named Daniel Brunier made two Toronto appearances late last week showcasing two family wineries from the Chateauneuf-du-Pape appellation in the south of France: the renowned Domaine Le Vieux Télégraphe, plus a newer, refurbished estate called Clos La Roquete. The most famed appellation of the southern Rhone is home to the world’s best known, most powerful and long-lived grenache-based reds, usually blended with syrah, mourvedre and other grapes—up to 22 are allowed. Although some Chateauneufs are robust and round enough to enjoy when young, others from top estates have considerable longevity.
Seriously Though
Drought and deluge in a single week…Out there on the starting grid, the Toronto summer coughs and splutters and floods its engine. Just like the smokers who were unexpectedly given a heatwave-last-hurrah on Monday as sidewalk patios scurried to open, crowded with puffing punters flamboyant in shorts and Ts. A man was selling bottles of water on University Avenue. Hogtown goes from Aberdeen to Abu Dhabi in 60 seconds. Then Aberdeen again. The aliens at the controls had to be laughing as they turned the dial back to torrential rain this weekend. What the hell, we’re used to it. And it’s great for the rhubarb. I’ve had two crops out of the garden already this year, turning it all into syrup (2 cups chopped rhubarb, _ cup sugar, 2 cups orange juice, _ cup water, maybe some seeds from a vanilla pod, simmered to a pulp (15 minutes), strained, chilled, mixed with very cold gin in a ratio of 3 to 1 (favouring gin). Perfect last Tuesday, undrinkable in the rain).
