On Tuesday I joined Dan, Abtin, and three new friends at the King Street Vintage Conservatory. I hadn’t been to this new location before, just the old creaky space on Lombard. Pretty nice spot, and seemed very busy for a Tuesday.
Dan had organized a Burgundy vs. Ontario blind tasting of Chard and Pinot. We didn’t plan it super well and ended up with more Burg than Niag, but the Ontario wines showed up well. Most of them anyway — one participant brought Norman Hardie chard, I think as a bit of a joke/dig. I called it the second I tasted it. But the 2020 Hidden Bench Tête de Cuvée Chardonnay impressed, as did the Dobbin Estates. I kind of knew the HB was there, but think I would’ve had a good chance of calling it nonetheless. The Dobbin stumped me though — I guessed Macon. Really must remember to order some of their stuff.
Dan more or less called the wine I brought — a 2018 1er Cru Beaune — but the others mistook it for Burgundy. Fun event: lots of good food, amazing wine (obviously) and some fun competition.
Not long ago the New York Times asked five hundred people in the entertainment industry to pick their favourite shows made in the 2000s. They then published a top-100 list based on the results. I, being me, quantified my own consumption of the shows listed on it. Here are the highlights, followed by a visualization.
✔️I have watched 49 of these top 100 shows. But I’ve watched 15 of the top 20, and 33 of the top 50.
Note: I counted these as “watched” if I have watched all episodes of the show to date.
▶️I am currently watching two: I’m halfway through The Americans and I’m a few episodes behind on Slow Horses.
🛑I have partially watched seven:
Girls (I watched most of season one, but only parts of the subsequent seasons)
Survivor (I watched the first season or two decades ago, but nothing since)
Happy Valley (I’ve only watched one season but certainly plan to watch the rest)
House of Cards (I watched the first few seasons but fell off somewhere before the Kevin Spacey news broke. I’m honestly not sure if I’ll ever go back and finish it.)
RuPaul’s Drag Race (I’ve watched only a handful of seasons)
The Handmaid’s Tale (I watched maybe half the first season; I stopped because Lindsay did, but then she continued on without me later and I never went back to it)
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (I watched the first several seasons, but certainly not all of them)
📅There are 24 series on the list that I have not watched, but want to. That should keep me busy for a while.
❌There are 18 series on this list which I’m — for the most part — not opposed to watching, but have little interest in. The only one of these in the top 20 is Lost.
I could in theory have counted Lost in the “partial” category since I watched the first few episodes, but I can’t even remember them.
Included in this category are series where I’ve seen random episodes because someone had it on while I was in the room, like Broad City, Dexter, House, Gilmore Girls, or Scandal.
Just back from a few days of meetings in Vancouver. Even when the days are spent in a boardroom, I always love my time there.
WED
I had an atrocious sleep and had to get up at 4am. I somehow dragged my ass to Pearson and got on my flight, watched Project Hail Mary, and landed in Vancouver before 9am. I threw my bag behind the Opus Hotel check-in desk (my room wouldn’t be ready for hours) and went out in search of coffee.
I found it at what would become a daily stop for the rest of my time there: Nine Bar coffee. (Not to be confused with Nine Bars, a long-closed frequent haunt of mine when I used to work at Yonge & St. Clair in Toronto.) I hung out on the patio and caught up on some work.
Eventually I needed some lunch, or rather, late breakfast. I wandered around a bit, eventually being lured in by the “wine bar” sign outside of Provence Marinaside. I had a chorizo scramble w/ piquillo peppers, marinated tomatoes, fresh herbs, gruyère cheese, and dutifully finished eating before ordering any wine. Their by-the-glass list was no joke though: I had a 2015 Chateau Montus Petit Courbu from Gascony, and a 2021 Comte Abbatucci il Faustine Rouge from Corsica. Neither were spectacular, but both were interesting, and that’s what I’m chasing the most these days.
By the time I finished up there my room was ready, so I walked back and promptly had a 2.5 hour nap. That never happens to me, but I was on a crazy sleep deficit. Lil nap, lil shower, right as rain.
I had an early solo dinner at Elisa, a Michelin-recognized steakhouse a block from the hotel. Fantastic meal, and a type of steak I don’t ever remember trying before.
glass of 2023 Domaine de Chantemerle Petit Chablis
Main
12oz holstein ribeye, USDA prime
fried brussels sprouts w/ brown butter, parmesan
glass of 2023 Brancaia No.2 Cabernet Sauvignon
Dessert
glass of 2010 Chateau Monteils Sauternes
It was then I was glad that my hotel was nearby. I did take a little loop down by False Creek to get some fresh air and walk off a tiny bit of what I’d just eaten, but then wandered back to the hotel and crashed.
THU
Back to Nine Bar for coffee. Breakfast pastries from Faubourg. Work in the morning, meetings in the afternoon. Group dinner at Acquafarina, which I thought was pretty good.
Appetizer
caesar salad: baby gem lettuce, parmigiano reggiano, house-made dressing
fried brussels sprouts w/ pickled granny smith apple, lemon-tahini, grana padano cheese
crispy humboldt calamari w/ calamansi black pepper jam, scallion
Glass(es) of The Hatch Pinot Blanc from the Okanagan
Main
8oz Canadian Black Angus tenderloin
broccolini
glass(es) of Burrowing Owl Cabernet Franc
Dessert
glass of Auslese Riesling
I was glad to once again have a walk back to the hotel, because…holy moly. Someone get me a fruit plate.
SAT
Up at 5am for my flight home, but I didn’t mind. I thought of it like pre-adjusting to Eastern time. I watched Pressure on the flight.
This visit was way too short, but any time I can spend in Vancouver always feels a little magical. It feels like home, even though I never lived there.
As they have for several years, WineAlign recently held the National Wine Awards of Canada. As I did last year, I plugged all the results into a spreadsheet, cleaned it up, and looked at what it told me.
Again, a few notes about how I handled the data:
The ‘score’ metric I refer to below is my calculation and not WineAlign’s. For each wine I assigned a score of 1 for a bronze, 2 for a silver, 3 for a gold, and 5 for a platinum.
I excluded mead, cider, and fruit wine.
They don’t publish how many of each wine type are submitted, just how many win awards, so I can’t determine any kind of efficiency metric per winery or region.
Here’s what jumped out at me once I compiled everything:
BC and Ontario continued to dominate. BC won 52% of the medals, up from 49% last year. Ontario won 46%, down from 48% last year. Nova Scotia and Quebec regressed slightly, with NS winning only 11 medals (0.9% of the total) down from 15 last year, while Quebec wineries took 9 medals (0.8% of the total), down from 13 last year.
Some historic powerhouse varieties lost ground in 2026. In BC the top five wines were red blends, rosés, Pinot Noir, sparkling, and Riesling — Cab Franc was 6th, while perennial BC powerhouses like Chardonnay and Syrah finished 7th and 12th respectively. Perhaps that in combination with the jump in BC’;’s rosé scores points to impact from wildfire smoke? In Ontario much remained the same: Chardonnay, Sparkling, Pinot Noir, and red blends repeated in the top five, while Cabernet Franc squeaked ahead of Riesling.
The benches dominate again. Naramata Bench in BC ruled the west, while the Beamsville bench in Niagara led Ontario. A further note on Beamsville: when Winealign announced their top ten Ontario wineries, four of the top ten — Fielding, Hidden Bench, Organized Crime, and Thomas Bachelder’s “bat cave” — are in one little 1km-loop just west of town. After you finish that loop, you can stop in at Le Clos Jordanne, Rosewood, or Thirty Bench which, by my calculations, was the 13th-highest ranked Ontario winery.
About that: Peller? Again, I don’t know exactly how WineAlign calculates their “best wineries” lists, but their rankings and mine tend to line up. For example, this year my score said Tawse was the top-scoring winery, and WineAlign duly named them the top winery in the country. But I noticed something weird this year, noted by italics below.
My ten highest-scoring Ontario wineries
WineAlign’s top ten Ontario wineries
1. Tawse 2. Fielding 3. Malivoire 4. Bachelder 5. Hidden Bench 6. The Organized Crime 7. 13th Street 8. Black Bank Hill 9. Queenston Mile 10. Inniskillin
1. Tawse 2. Fielding 3. Black Bank Hill 4. Bachelder 5. The Organized Crime 6. Malivoire 7. Hidden Bench 8. Queenston Mile 9. Palatine Hills 10. Peller
I’m not sure why Palatine Hills and Peller are there. No offense to Palatine Hills; my surprise is more directed at Peller wines which, outside of their smaller brands like Thirty Bench, I find pretty pedestrian. In addition to 13th Street and Inniskillin, I had Huff Estates, Redstone, Thirty Bench, Divergence Wines, Henry of Pelham, Domaine Queylus, and Grange of Prince Edward all finishing ahead of Peller or Palatine Hills when it came to total points scored
My first guess is that WineAlign picked their top eight using total score, but awarded Palatine Hills and Peller the last two spots because their average score per awarded bottle was high. If average score per bottle awarded had been the criteria for the whole list, Tawse wouldn’t have even made the top ten.
But no: in terms of average score among the top highest-scoring Ontario wineries, Black Bank Hill is first, Palatine second, and Inniskilling third. Peller is tied for fourth with Bachelder. Now, that small a difference could be chalked up to a difference in how I calculate things vs. WineAlign does. To the best of my knowledge they don’t publish their scoring rubric. But it’s hard not to feel like Inniskilling got cheated a little.
[Disclosing my bias: I used to work for Arterra, which owns Inniskillin, and I always thought Inniskillin was underrated.]
Platinums. Only 20 wines were awarded platinum this year, down from 30 last year, but there was more varietal diversity (10 varieties/types winning vs. 7 last year). Only two wineries — Laughing Stock in BC and Malivoire in Ontario — had more than one platinum award. By the way, Laughing Stock had the highest average award score of any winery in the country. Also of note: a Sauvignon Blanc!
Saturday morning we had brunch at Bonjour Brioche for the first time in…god, I don’t even know how long. Pre-pandemic, I’m pretty sure. We’d almost forgotten how great it was, and with a few new improvements — like, credit card payments, and a retail window that keeps the bread line outside vs. through the middle of the restaurant — I can see it returning as a regular staple like it was when we first moved to their neighbourhood.
Saturday night the Jays lost again, all but eliminating them from playoff contention. But the Canadiens opened their NHL pre-season with twowins over the split-squad Leafs, so it might be time to put my hopes elsewhere.
Also last night: our neighbours had a big blowout backyard party until 2am as they’re moving soon, which means we’ll have new neighbours on either side of us.
Daylight Saving Time is an absurd concept. A relic of WWII policies, it stuck around at the behest of merchants and, more recently, golfers. Twice a year we jar our limbic systems unnecessarily — but a more civilized future might be rolling eastward across the country.
BC has gotten rid of it. Alberta has gotten rid of it. Saskatchewan never took part. And, as of a couple days ago, Manitoba has gotten rid of it. Granted, that will cause a few quirks — like western Ontario being out of sync with everyone for half the year — but if Ontario gets its shit together and makes this happen too, the quirks subside.
Speaking of Ontario, it has said that it will abandon this folly only if Quebec and New York State do the same. That doesn’t give me a lot of hope — while the US is inching toward eliminating DST too*, my personal observation has been that Quebec will deliberately do the opposite of anything Ontario does. So time will tell.
Last night I enjoyed the delayed portion of my birthday present: seeing Kim Gordon live at The Opera House. It was our first visit back to that venue since seeing Waxahatchee there eight years ago, and man do I wish they would book more shows I’m into. It’s a good venue, and it’s SO close to my house. Anyway.
After a hefty meal at White Lily we got to the OH just before the opener, Voyeur, went on. They were…well, embarrassing. I couldn’t shake the feeling that the whole band is an art project that just got away from them. It’s like they put up a poster for band members that specified “Must not be able to sing.” It seemed a little on the nose that they’re on tour with Kim Gordon given how hard they’re trying to sound like long-ago Sonic Youth, managing only the affect and not the substance. Anyway, they weren’t on long.
Kim Gordon (and her excellent backing band) came out and played her entire new album, PLAY ME, front to back. Lots of the electronic elements remained, but propelled by such a talented band, the songs took on so much more depth and impact. After those 12 short songs they pivoted into three consecutive songs from her last album The Collective, followed by two more from her debut solo album — and my personal favourite — No Home Record. After that they walked off. I wasn’t expecting an encore, but they came out for one: an unreleased song called “Cigarette”.
The last three songs might have been the highlight for me, but the whole set was remarkable. There’s no other word for being in a band as seminal as Sonic Youth and now, in a solo career at age 73, producing music this vital. She’s about as indie-iconic as it gets live too: no banter with the audience (except to apologize for the American president), just the presentation of her art as she choose to issue it.
Saturday we decided to visit an old favourite: Richmond Station. Lindsay had spotted the rotating chef’s menu, and everything on it appealed, so we booked in. A terrific meal as always, and the wine pairings really shone. Not as close to to home as their wine list bias would suggest, but everything worked beautifully. And it’s not often you see a Duras.
Ontario Poached Peaches w/ fior di latte ice cream, black tea gel
.:.
On Wednesday I had to drive to the office, and ended up driving home just as that crazy thunderstorm hit. I could see it coming as I crawled along the Gardiner — it looked like a black green wall coming at us — and it hit when my navigation said I was 20 minutes from home. Of course, it ended up taking longer than that. Rain came in faster than I’d ever seen it. Hail hit the car, though not the ping-pong ball sized stones that fell north of the city. Something hit the car in front of me, presumably something that had flown off a balcony on the surrounding condo towers. Water pooled immediately on the Gardiner, and five minutes after it started the water had flooded parts of Lakeshore. I managed to avoid the worst of the flooding — the deepest water I drove through was 12, maybe 15 inches deep — and got home relatively unscathed, amidst blaring emergency alerts on my phone. Our house got away scot-free too: no flooding, and no fallen trees, unlike a neighbor a few doors down, whose tree crushed a parked car.
Immediately after I got home, we lost power — one street over, a tree had brought down a power line, which was sparking everywhere — but candles got us through the evening and our lights came back on around 1am.
Pretty freaky experience, but compared to a lot of other people, we got off easy.
Last weekend I had to drive down to St. David’s to pick up my annual case of Five Rows. I decided that, on our way down, we should visit Fat Rabbit in St. Catharines for lunch. And so we did. Once we figured out parking — which was not easy — we squeezed our way through crowds to our table. Seriously, the place was packed. Even when we left at 3pm it was ~3/4 full.
As much as the burgers looked incredible, we wanted to try a few things. In the end, we let the kitchen choose.
crispy humboldt squid w/ scallion mayo
mixed grill w/ sausage, pork rib, and steak (I think it was skirt steak?)
tomato salad: w/ chez nous heirloom & cherry tomatoes, melon, whipped feta, kalamata olives, and coriander vinaigrette
Now, I know what you’re thinking: that doesn’t seem like much food, right? But oh, it was. There was quite a lot of squid for an app, but then the mixed grill came with an enormous sausage, an even enormous-er rib, and a hefty pile of steak that was a little too rare for Lindsay to eat much of. Naturally, I finished it off. The tomato salad was tasty, but tiny; I wasn’t happy about the RoI given the cost, but I couldn’t have eaten much more anyway.
Anyway, we drove on to St. David’s and picked up our wine. We also tasted a couple of their reds that I more or less stopped buying a few years back — the Syrah and Cab Sauv. Both were extremely good, so we left with four more bottles than expected. We slunk back to Toronto, still full.
My first thought was: sweet jittery Moses, Columbia House still exists?!?!
My second thought was: wow, did I ever get a lot of music from Columbia House. I know they made their money on people forgetting to send back the negative-option card that said, “Please DON’T send me that Michael McDonald album.” but I was on top of it. I did the math…I got the intro offer and bought my minimum commitment and cancelled my subscription and waited for their even better “We want you back!” offer, and then repeated the process over and over. I remember at one point cancelling my subscription in a letter and specifically saying, “Just go ahead and send me the offer you send people when they cancel ASAP.” and they did.
Somewhere in my basement are 487 physical CDs. I stopped buying physical media in April 2006, but I always kept them around in case some day I decide to re-rip them at a lossless bitrate. (When I originally ripped them to MP3 storage on both my desktop and my Creative Labs mp3 player was at a premium, so the songs were all at 128kbps.) I would have sold or traded away a lot of the CDs I bought as a teenager, but still…I bet more than a few of the discs down there came from a Columbia House 1¢ sale.
