Saturday: dinner at Capocaccia with friends from university. Then Primitivo, softball-sized burrata, brown butter agnalotti, Amarone. Then back to the lair. Then Merlot, Zinfandel. Then something…um, French? Then impromptu cleaning. Then a note that said Sale al Truffulo. Then Lagavulin and (je pense) Dalwhinnie. Then a cab.
Sunday: ouch. Then McDonald’s. Then season 2 of Breaking Bad.
Not elegant. But effective.
What was this email in our inboxes? An event at a brewery? More to the point, a four-course meal? With both beer and wine pairings? Crowds of other people who also like both beer and wine? Bien sûr!
It was like someone custom-made this event for Nellie and I. We bought tickets as soon as we heard about it, and on Thursday rushed down to the Distillery District to enjoy the festivities. This was the second competition (well, third really, but the first wasn’t publicized) between the Mill Street Brewery and 13th Street Winery (hence the name of the event: “Street Fight”) wherein the beer and wine would be evaluated on how well they paired with each course by a panel of judges (officially) and the 60-odd participants (unofficially). Let the games begin!
The staff brought around several sample-sized glasses of beer and wine before the meal even got started. Eventually the appetizers arrived — artichoke and oka cheese fritters with tarragon aioli…tasty! By this time the tables were starting to fill in. Most people were attending in large groups, including the group of four to our right (who we talked to about good places in Ottawa, like the soon-to-be-open Mill St. Brewery, and Les Brasseurs du Temps across the river in Hull), and the group to our left who all work at Opera Bob’s, a pub on the west side of Toronto, and who entertained us for the entire evening. For example, there was a particularly humorous tale about a beautiful Indian lady and some snowballs. Et cetera.
Then the meal really kicked into gear. The first course was two huge chunks of wild boar sausage, paired with a Franconian Bock. And paired beautifully, I might add. By the time I finished mine (and a good part of Nellie’s) I was pretty much stuffed. Then came the main — a huge piece of duck with butternut squash risotto on the side, paired with a Gamay. I’m not the biggest Gamay fan, really, so while I quite liked the duck, I didn’t love the pairing.
I was stuffed, but there was a cheese course to eat. Three cheeses, one of which worked well with the wine (a Merlot; eep!) and two of which went better with the beer (an IPA). So…whew! Great. I’d managed to eat it all, despite being so super-full. All in all a very good meal, so have a good night everyone, and we’ll see you all next t…what’s that? What did you say? More? Seriously? There’s more?!? As in, more food? MORE food?!?
Yep. More food. Very well then. A soldier does his duty. It was an apple & rhubarb crisp and was actually quite good. The wine it was matched with (somewhere between a late harvest and an ice wine) was good, but the vanilla porter was excellent.
So…in the end, we both thought the beer got the better of the wine on the night. The judges, of course, ruled it a draw, but all the opinions I heard around the room leaned toward beer as victor. 13th Street does have some very good wine, but I’m not sure we saw the best of it in this competition. I look forward to them coming out swinging in the next match.
We got back from Australia three weeks ago, but it’s been tough trying to catch up, both at work and in real life. So I was more than a little happy to see this long weekend coming.
Granted, it wasn’t a long weekend for everyone (including Nellie) but it was long a weekend for me. At least, it was supposed to be a long weekend. I actually spent a full day in the office (part of the aforementioned ‘catching up at work’) before heading to old friend the Duke of York for a drink. The Duke pubs have always had a pretty generic draft list, but that night I had two from Muskoka (a Mad Tom and a Dark) and Nellie had a Hop City Barking Squirrel. Anyway, that’s where I’d planned to meet another old friend, someone I hadn’t seen since university. Nellie (who also knew her) joined us a little later and we got caught up. We then took her to Fieramosca where we were well entertained and, predictably, ate ridiculously well — I had the risotto special with prosciutto di parma, butternut squash and…something else that slips my mind, and our wine was some spectacular thing that I can’t remember.
Saturday featured beautiful weather, maybe some the last we’ll see this year, so I found an excuse to go for a walk. That excuse? Wine! Just a few bottles from the new Vintages release, nothing serious. Meanwhile Nellie was buying gifts that we took with us over to T-Bone’s place, to meet the new addition to their family, drink their wine and share some Indian food.
Sunday started with one of my favourite things (breakfast at Hank’s) and just got better from there.
Good weekend. Quiet, but good.
Over a year ago I set out to drink what BeerAdvocate determined to be the fifty best beers made in Canada, labeling the endeavor Project FiftyBrew. Within six months I’d tackled nearly all of them, with only two remaining: The Wellington Iron Duke and the Alley Kat Full Moon Pale Ale. The Iron Duke was no problem; six-packs are available at any number of beer stores near me. But the Full Moon would be trickier. First, Alley Kat is made in Alberta and is hard to find here, even at places like Volo where they have limited stock and sell out quickly. Second, the Full Moon is an older beer, one Alley Kat might not even produce anymore. I couldn’t bear the thought of drinking #49 knowing I could never have #50, so I’ve put off buying the Iron Duke.
I’d still love to finish off the list some day, so if any Western Canadian readers come across a bottle of Alley Kat Full Moon Pale Ale, could you please wrap it up and mail it to me? Otherwise, I’ll admit defeat and call off the project.
Still, even if that officially ends the journey, I’m pretty happy with the 31 new beers that I probably never would have tried had I not given myself this little challenge. Thanks beer, for all you do!
Yup, I know we just got back from a 3-week trip and our to-do list is still blazing out of control, but the hell with it…we felt like driving down to Niagara and stocking up on wine for the fall and winter. The weather gods were certainly with us — it was a beautiful, sunny fall weekend. We hit nine (!) wineries on Saturday and had an amazing lunch at Stone Road Grille as well as dinner at On The Twenty, across the street from the Inn On The Twenty in Jordan where we stayed. The soup we had at the former and the duck at the latter were among the best things I’ve eaten all year.
On Sunday we had a bit of a stroll on the Twenty Valley Trail, and then visited seven more wineries, including Vineland Estates — where we ate yet another spectacular meal. After pillaging the region for all it was worth we drove home, dropped the car and produced the final tally:
We had two purposes on this trip: stock up for the winter, but also try some places for the first time. Calamus, Creekside, Featherstone/2027, Kacaba, Lailey, Malivoire, Staff and Vineland Estates were all first-time visits for us. Flat Rock and Megalomaniac were more proximity plays since we had to drive right past them to get to others on our list and we knew each had wines we wanted to pick up. Hidden Bench, Jackson-Triggs (for the Clos Jordanne), Southbrook, Stratus and Thirty Bench are practically must-hits whenever we’re in the area. And, in case you’re wondering, Cave Spring only happened because it’s the house winery at Inn On The Twenty and we felt bad leaving without one.
I’d classify most of the new places as good, not great. Only Kacaba really wowed us…their reds were terrific, and very reasonably priced. And it wasn’t even in our original plans for this weekend — several people responded to my tweet announcing our agenda, telling us not going to Kacaba would be a miss. They were right, and we left with two bottles. And there may be a case in our future. I should also point out that we didn’t spend nearly enough time at Vineland tasting their wine; we just tried three in the few minutes before our lunch reservation, but liked two of them enough to buy bottles, so more investigation is probably warranted.
And now, the classic follow-up problem…where do we put all this freaking wine?!?
I really thought my calves would be better the next today. Man, was I wrong. I think they got worse. I was stepping rather gingerly.
My brother had arranged for a harbour cruise thingy, so we went back to Circular Quay and met our ride. The water was pretty choppy and we weren’t sure how well we’d fare, but everything turned out fine. In any case we were only headed to Goat Island, right there in the harbour, for a bit of history. It was fairly interesting, but the poor tour company employee’s routine was marred by the unexpected appearance of the Kids Crazy Island Tea Party. Seriously. It was hilarious and awful at the same time. Here he was trying to recount the interesting and oft-bloody history of 19-century Sydney while standing in front of the Lindt Teddy Bear’s Picnic. He did his best but you could tell he was getting pissed off.
After leaving the island the boat went on a longer ride around the harbour. The rest of the group sat inside and listened to trivia; Nellie and I walked out to the front of the ship, stood on the bow and enjoyed the sights. It was grey and a little cool outside, but we loved it. It felt like we were in Halifax for a minute. Except for a few key landmarks.
We went back home, got changed, then jumped back on the train downtown to stake out a spot at Porteno. It’s a very popular spot in Surry Hills. How popular? Well, we got there ten minutes before it opened and we were about twentieth in line to get in. Because our entire party wasn’t there we waited upstairs in the bar. Nellie had single malt; I had a pork slider and some kind of delicious bourbon, vermouth and smoked maple syrup concoction. The rest of the party showed up and downstairs we went. We didn’t bother with anything fancy: just two giant plates of slow-roasted meat and some wine to go with it. Us: pork. Them: lamb. It was SOOOOOOO GOOOOOOOOOOOOD. The place was very cool too…very Spanish/South American vibe.
We left, stopped at a drive-through beer store (seriously!) and somehow, once home, drank another four bottles of wine between us. What a day.
Ow ow yiggity yow. That was the sound our legs made the day after that hike. I guess we didn’t stretch enough to prepare for the 2000+ steps we faced. Either way, Nellie’s knees and my calves were entirely unhappy with us. So it made walking a bit of a ginger exercise.
We ate breakfast and caught a train back to Sydney (more crazy people on this train; pro tip for traveling to the Blue Mountains: take earplugs) needing to find a way to kill most of a day until we could meet up with the brother. We stashed our bags at a storage company and took the train down to Circular Quay once again. We spent an hour or so at the tiny Museum of Sydney, then killed a few hours back at Harts Pub. My brother was nice enough to come pick us up, collect our bags and take us to The Local Taphouse, reportedly one of the best beer bars in Sydney. Our beers were, indeed, all quite tasty, as was my excellent pizza (note: it was only while typing all these blog posts that I realized just how much wood-fired pizza I’d been eating on this trip) and everyone else’s food. Top marks to The Local.
We left there and had a drink at some basement bar, Downtown at the Commons, and then zoomed home on the train. We went no further as the next day brought work for the brother and a harbour cruise for us, and it wouldn’t do to be hung over for either.
So, kangaroos were a pretty common sight now. They lounged all over the villa’s grounds in the mornings when we awoke, gnawing on grass, just like the sheep. Roos + sheep: it was confirmed, we were most definitely in Australia.
We started our day at a nearby beach, watching the waves crash into the western shore and taking a bit of a stroll. We very definitely saw a whale that day, breaching and blowing just off the shore, on a common migration route back to cooler waters.
We drove into the town of Yallingup itself for coffee and some bacon sandwiches. There we again saw waves crashing, and saw several people riding them — Yallingup being very much a surfing town. But surfing, whales and bacon be damned, today was about wine!
We visited eight wineries (!) in total:
In between cellar doors we stopped at Bootleg Brewery for an excellent sampler of beer, and returned to Swings & Roundabouts for a lunch of wood-fired pizzas on their outdoor patio. This, incidentally, was the first time during our first week in Australia that we had warm, sunny weather.
Earlier in the afternoon we’d decided to have a simple dinner back in the cottage, and so we picked up lots of meat, cheese, bread, pate and produce to go with all the wine we now needed to drink rather than carry it back on the plane.
You can’t see the many bottles of wine but trust me, they’re there.
Before we began the day’s wine tastings we decided to expore another of the area’s features: caves. We drove to the southern end (more or less) of the region and booked in at Lake Cave. We had a little time to kill before getting started so we tried zooming down the road to Eagle Vale, but they weren’t open.
The cave itself was better than I expected. It wasn’t cheesy and, as the name suggests, featured a small lake on the floor of the cave. We had an interesting tour, saw some beautiful underground sights, even spent a few moments in complete darkness. It was a worthwhile visit, even though we had to climb some 300+ steps on the way out.
Our first winery of the day wound up being Redgate, which was okay. They were sold out of the Cab Franc that we’d wanted to try, but we picked up a very nice Chenin.
By this time our rummies were tumbling, so we stopped in the actual town of Margaret River for lunch at Must. It was very good — the brother claimed his burger was one of the best he’d ever had — but it took a long time. Not that we were on a tight timeline or anything, though, so we didn’t particularly care.
We hit four wineries in quick succession after lunch:
It was late afternoon by this point, and we decided we needed more of that fresh bread. We returned to the bakery and saw people literally hugging their bread as they walked to their car. One gentleman was so hungry he began biting chunks off the bread cradled in his arms while walking to his car. After we picked up our loaves, Nellie took a page from his book and ripped into the white bread just as he had done. The bread would not be denied.
We were a little too tired for a giant meal, and the first place we called was booked up anyway, so we visited a nearby wine bar and had tapas. Decent food, and blessedly small. The weather turned foul on the way home — lightning and heavy rain — so there was naught to do but hunker down and plan the next day’s visits.
We returned to Tart, the previous night’s restaurant, for a coffee to fuel our drive south, toward the Margaret River. Within a few minutes of leaving Perth, the view turned far more countryside-y than anything we’d seen so far. We even saw kangaroos in the distance, though not nearly close enough for Nellie’s liking. We stopped off in Bunbury to see their beach and pick up supplies, and in Busselton to see their beach and ginormous jetty.
After leaving Busselton we drove up to the Eagle Bay Brewing Company, where we enjoyed great food, tremendous beer and amazing views.
Our first winery stop of the day was Wise Vineyards, just down the road from our lunch spot. It too featured incredible views, and was hosting a couple of weddings. We picked up a bottle of Verdelho, which was quite decent, and debated as to whether we’d seen a whale breaching in the distant Indian Ocean.
We then arrived at our heretofore-secret accommodations: the Wildwood Valley Villa. We had a nice 3-bedroom cabin to ourselves with a proper kitchen, grill, deck, etc. tucked into the rolling hills just outside Yallingup: a perfect base from which to launch our excursions.
Our host gave us the lay of the land, suggested restaurants for dinners and — perhaps most importantly — told us about a local bakery adored by locals and which would be producing bread fresh from their ovens in just twenty minutes. Fresh hot bread? Allons-y! We jumped in the car and headed that way with all speed, slowing only when we got a close-up of some roos hopping alongside the car.
The bakery was hard to find, but was swarmed by cars of people coming to get the bread. We took a sourdough loaf for later and a fruit loaf for breakfast and drove home to nap and strategize before dinner.
Our dinner that evening was at Studio Bistro. Because of the large lunch, constant snacking and tired bones none of us felt quite up to the gastronomic (read: tasting) menu, though it looked fantastic. Still, all our meals were excellent, and the red I randomly selected from the list — a Cab Sauv from Laurance — earned the winery a spot on our must-visit list over the next two days.
That was enough excitement for one day, so we drove home and crashed hard.
Skirl | Dan Dickinson 