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David Lawrason offers nine reasons why garnacha makes for great barbecue wine

(Illustration: Jack Dylan)

Backyard sommeliers bored with the usual summer reds (merlot, shiraz, zinfandel) should try fruity garnacha. It is more commonly known by its French name, grenache, but it originated in Spain and thrives in the hot, arid Mediterranean. Despite once being the world’s most widely planted red grape, it was usually considered unfit for fine wine on its own. Its tannin and acidity are low and its alcohol quite high, so it’s most often blended with syrah, mourvèdre and carignan, or torn out of the ground altogether to make way for merlot and cabernet vines. In recent years, however, such leading winemakers as Alvaro Palacios, Hugh Ryman and Norrel Robertson are reviving derelict garnacha vineyards in Spain. The old, gnarled, low-yielding vines make richly fruity, even creamy reds that are dense enough to match red meat textures, smooth enough to drink without aging, and ripe and peppery enough to handle any barbecue sauce yet invented. If you crave something light, garnacha is the base for dry Spanish and French rosés, and there is even a handful of whites made with garnacha blanca. It’s also affordable, so you can mix a case of different styles to keep your deck and dock guests happy all summer long.

The Informer

The New Normal

November 17, 2010 | 10:35 am

Twitter gives Toronto its own “trending topics” section, unironically puts city on same list as New York and London

OMG, it’s #stuffYYZlikes!

Twitter, rather than discover a way to let people share their feelings with more than 140 characters at a time, has decided instead to finesse its “trending topics” service. This is where users can learn the popular subjects of discussion in particular locales. Until recently, the municipality-specific trending topics have been limited to U.S. cities, but the list went global yesterday to include London, São Paulo and, yes, Toronto.

The Goods

Manly Men

July 12, 2010 | 3:44 pm

Louis Vuitton wins World Cup of product placement

Fabio Cannavaro carries a Louis Vuitton case into Soccer City before the final World Cup match on Sunday (Image: Action Images)

Perhaps the real winner of yesterday’s final World Cup game wasn’t Spain at all—it was Louis Vuitton. In one of the most stunning acts of product placement in the history of soccer—or perhaps sports in general—the FIFA trophy was presented on the pitch in the monogrammed Louis Vuitton travel case pictured above (though, frankly, we’re not sure what’s hotter: the designer case, or Fabio Cannavaro, the Italian soccer pro carrying it).

The Dish

From the Print Edition

April 27, 2010 | 2:30 pm

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Mixed marriages: nine excellent blended wines

White blends are red hot By David Lawrason

(Image: Brian Rea)

Before buying a bottle, we all want some idea of what it holds in store, and we often look to the grape variety for clues: chardonnay will likely be creamy and rich, sauvignon blanc crisp and herbal, viognier will bloom with exotic fragrance. The latest white wine trend—blending three or more grape varieties—makes it much harder to predict taste, especially when the wines are given such enigmatic names as Conundrum, Twisted and just plain White. (What exactly does a conundrum taste like?) The new white blends may seem mysterious (and some wineries even market that mystery), but a few rules of thumb still apply. They tend to be floral because they usually contain muscat, gewürztraminer or viognier—grapes with stridently perfumed aromas. Most also feature sauvignon blanc or riesling, as the acidity of these grapes balances the sweeter, fruity notes of the aromatic varieties. And many have background oak spice when chardonnay is mixed in.

The Dish

From the Print Edition

March 29, 2010 | 11:12 am

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Safety in numbers: Are the world’s highest-scoring wines really that good?

A taste test of critics’ picks By David Lawrason

Taste test of critic's picks, Illustration by Dan Page

(Illustration: Dan Page)

It has been three decades since a group of American critics introduced the 100-point scoring system and revolutionized wine reviewing. Some purists still argue that you can’t put a number on a piece of art (assuming wine is art—an unwinnable debate for another day) and that taste can’t be measured. But, like it or not, the system has become the industry standard. Ratings are now so important that retailers worldwide market their wines according to them. Vintages recently grouped more than 30 wines that scored highly among international critics in a special release called North of 90—a 90-point rating being the tipping point to excellence. The idea is to offer consumers what Vintages calls “a low-risk purchasing decision.” The promotion seems to work; the 90-point releases are among its most popular.

The Dish

Aprons & Icons

February 18, 2010 | 4:05 pm

Ferran Adrià is optimistic about the future of El Bulli

The announcement in the New York Times last week that chef Ferran Adrià would permanently close El Bulli, the restaurant many consider the world’s best, at the end of 2011 came as a shock. Previously, the chef said the 15-hour days were getting to him and that he would take a sabbatical in 2012 and reopen two years later. Adrià is now saying that his words were misinterpreted. “To say that El Bulli is ‘to close permanently,’” he told the Times in a follow-up interview, “implies that El Bulli will cease to have any activity after 2012, and that is not the case.’’

The Dish

Aprons & Icons

January 27, 2010 | 4:10 pm

“World’s best restaurant” closing for two years

Parmesan rice cakes served at El Bulli (Photo by Charles Haynes)

Come 2012, the small Spanish coastal town of Roses will have to rely on its natural charm to bring in the tourists. Its primary attraction—El Bulli, often cited as the best restaurant in the world—is closing down. Chef Ferran Adrià said 15-hour workdays and a desire to update his menu were behind his decision to shutter the place for 2012 and 2013. “El Bulli is not closing down. These are not two years on sabbatical,” he told Agence France. “We want the year 2014 to stand out, and I know that when I return it will not be the same.”

The Dish

From the Print Edition

January 2, 2010 | 1:23 pm

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Best 10 wines under $10

Value, not prestige, is the new watchword in the wine world. Here, 10 bottles under $10 that smash the stigma of cheap wine.

(Photo by Daniel Shipp)

Opening Soon

November 24, 2008 | 9:48 am

Smoking my way to a unique charcuterie plate

The cold weather makes for good smoking, so I’ve been in the farm’s smokehouse a lot lately with duck breasts and suckling pork bellies from Cumbrae’s. I’ve been experimenting with Union’s future charcuterie plate: curing the duck breast overnight with a mix of coriander seeds from the garden, brown sugar, salt and some chili flakes, then smoking them with plum wood the next day and slowly roasting them afterward with maple syrup. Sliced thinly, it’s a beautiful mix of sweet, spiced fat and subtle smoked breast that is going to be a great addition to the menu. As for the pork bellies, I am still working on them. I was a little overzealous the first time around, and I gave them an unsavoury “campfire” finish. I think the smokehouse will give the meat the uniqueness I am looking for in the charcuterie plate, so I scrapped the efforts to get it from Spain. It doesn’t feel right anymore for Union to search for stuff beyond what is right here. Keep it local and do great things with it—that’s the idea.

Wine

June 25, 2008 | 8:34 am

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Rivers Run Through It: Vintages’ June 21 Release

The trumped-up theme for Vintages’ June 21 release is Europe’s Wine Rivers: Great Finds From Legendary Riverside Vineyards. South-facing riverside sites can deliver extra quality in northern Europe; they benefit from the increased heat of the better exposure. But winemakers, not riverbank exposure, are responsible for quality. There are some good wines in this selection, but hardly anything legendary. The real theme is Some Decent Wines We Put Together From Europe at About $20 So That We Could Spend Lots of Money on This Glossy Spread in the Catalogue. Here are 10 of the better buys from the Rivers selection, plus other noteworthy wines from elsewhere in the catalogue:

Wine

June 2, 2008 | 3:26 pm

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The LCBO’s blockbuster $10 deals

After tasting virtually the entire LCBO general list in preparation for the annual Toronto Life Eating & Drinking guide, I know it’s rare to find a great value wine for less than $10. This year’s tasting process is just getting underway, and while you may be sipping wines on the deck or dock this June and July, I’m tasting dozens of wines daily and want nothing more than a cleansing ale by shift’s end. (I ask no pity because I know none is forthcoming.) The upside to all this is having an up-to-date repertoire of the best bargains at the LCBO.

Toronto Movie Index

May 16, 2008 | 6:02 am

Savage Grace (***_)

With Savage Grace, Julianne Moore plays a mid-century housewife for the fourth time in her career (the other three were for Far From Heaven, The Hours and The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio), but she shows no signs of fatigue or boredom. She has embraced the character type in a way old movie stars used to embrace them—as a means by which to plumb the conceptual depths of a persona, and to brand it as her own—thus making her performance endlessly fascinating to watch. Granted, Moore’s Barbara Baekeland is no suffering naïf, which is the most significant change from her previous roles. In Savage Grace, Barbara’s victimization draws her, Medea-like, toward a cool, perverse form of vengeance.

Wine

May 12, 2008 | 3:55 pm

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Blooming Whites

If you have never dedicated your wine budget to exploring the world’s aromatic whites, I suggest that now might be an opportune moment—when May is blossoming with fragrance, and some terrific bottles are selling for a song. The June issue of Toronto Life features reviews of 10 great aromatic whites from some of the world’s more obscure wine regions. Several others were tasted in researching the article, so I’ve reviewed them here. Plus, I’ve added a few classic selections from Germany and Niagara also released at Vintages on May 10.

Chatto's Digest

April 15, 2008 | 10:29 am

Hog wild

Chalk one up for the nerds, the diehards, the people who stay to the bitter end of every party. At Pangaea, on Thursday, Michael Tkaczuk of Serrano Imports introduced an extraordinary prize to the city—the famous dry-cured hams of the Ibérico pig (also known as the Pata Negra or Black Foot pig) of southwestern Spain. I remember the night, years ago, when Tkaczuk first brought Serrano ham to Toronto—a soirée at Bouchon. Even then he had his sights set on the superior and world-renowned Ibérico, but it takes time to persuade Canadian bureaucrats of the virtue of foreign delicacies. Now we can taste.