Tag: wine

Abdij St. Sixtus

Dan Dickinson1 Comment

Last night: a much-needed break from unpacking, watching the news about carnage in a Connecticut school, and limping around on a broken toe. Our real estate agent sent us off for a meal at Politica, a resto bar off King West, his treat. Except the restaurant didn’t seem to get the memo, so the treat part fell through, but we still had a tasty dinner.

We kept the evening going by skipping over to Crush for a couple of wine flights. Most of what we tried was quite good, but the Eos Cabernet Sauvignon 2008 from Paso Robles was the highlight.

Somewhere between Politica and Crush we hatched a plan for a third stop: Bar Hop. I knew from a tweet earlier in the week that they’d scored some Westvleteren XII in the midst of the mad rush that overtook Toronto this week. We popped in, warmed up with one each (Mill Street Vanilla Porter for me, Sawdust City Lone Pine IPA for Nellie), watched a gaggle of woo-hoo girls come in and order shots, and then dropped the only-moderately-unreasonable $40 on a bottle of Westy. We’d had one while in Amsterdam earlier this year; I’d liked it but not loved it, and Nellie didn’t really remember it. This time around, my assessment was the same — while it’s very good, it’s far from my favourite beer ever — but Nellie really didn’t like it. “Dish soap” was her assessment, I believe. Oh well; it was an adventure (again) and a better bargain than lining up for a six-pack we’d struggle to finish.

We jumped in a cab to get home, a mostly uneventful ride…right up until our cabbie nearly killed a cyclist turning onto our street. Thankfully we’d had all that wine and trappist ale to steady our nerves, and yelled loudly and in time to stop him from creaming the guy.

St. Sixtus: patron saint of cyclists?

Niagara part II: in which service wins the day

Dan Dickinson3 Comments

Having the Gardiner Expressway closed for repairs is a mixed blessing. It makes the trip west out Toronto much more painful (Lakeshore can just suck it) but it appears to make the QEW less clogged. At least, that was our working hypothesis last Saturday.

And why were we heading west on the Gardiner and QEW last weekend?

Wine.

Obviously.

This wasn’t an overnight trip, this was a day trip. A quick down-and-back to fill the rack, driven in no small part by the release that day of Hidden Bench’s 2009 Tête de Cuvée Chardonnay. We made return trips to 13th Street, Foreign Affair, Hidden Bench, Stratus, Tawse, and Thirty Bench. We also tried three for the first time: Di Profio (which now hosts Nyarai), Marynissen, and Organized Crime. I must say, for all I’ve heard about Marynissen, I wasn’t very impressed. It had a very ‘fire sale’ feel inside, possibly because the new owners have told them to have one. Not sure. None of their wines jumped out at us, but the deal for two cases of Cab Franc — $140 — was decent value.  $5.83/bottle of (admittedly, a very weak) Ontario Cab Franc is a decent option for everyday house wine.

The real highlights of the day were Hidden Bench (where I was selling fellow tasters so hard I might as well have been wearing an “I ♥ Felseck!” tshirt), 13th Street (where the awesome Lindsay looked after us, and whose winery should probably coin the phrase “pastoral cool”), and Tawse (where we expected to run in, grab two bottles, and run out, but instead spent time in the cellar with the delightful Catherine serving us all kinds of interesting pours and eventually up-selling us on their wine club). The service really stood out on this trip, but I expect nothing less of those three locations.

We even managed to squeeze in a lunch at Stone Road Grille. We probably should have stopped at Southbrook for a Treadwell pizza, or had a bite on 13th Street’s deck, but it’s hard to pass up the grille.

Here are the friends we brought home with us to live, less the two cases of Marynissen:

And here it is in word form:

  • 13th Street 2010 ‘Essence’ Syrah
  • 13th Street 2008 Premier Cuvee Sparkling
  • 13th Street 2011 Viognier
  • 13th Street 2010 Sauvignon Blanc
  • Di Profio 2010 Cabernet Sauvignon (x2)
  • Foreign Affair 2009 ‘Abbraccio’ Cabernet Sauvignon
  • Hidden Bench 2010 Felseck Riesling
  • Hidden Bench 2008 Terroir Caché Red Blend
  • Hidden Bench 2009 Tête de Cuvée Chardonnay (x3)
  • Nyarai 2010 ‘Cadence’ Red Blend
  • Nyarai 2011 Viognier
  • Organized Crime 2008 ‘Download’ Red Blend
  • Organized Crime 2011 ‘The Mischief’ White Blend
  • Organized Crime 2010 Fumé Blanc
  • Organized Crime 2008 Syrah
  • Stratus 2008 Sauvignon Blanc
  • Tawse 2003 Bench Reserve Chardonnay
  • Tawse 2009 Laidlaw Pinot Noir
  • Tawse 2010 Laundry Vineyard Cab Franc
  • Tawse 2009 Spark Chardonnay
  • Thirty Bench 2011 Steel Post Riesling
  • Thirty Bench 2011 Triangle Riesling

That should last us a week or two.

Order

Dan Dickinson1 Comment

So, for some reason Nellie was all worried that’d not officially celebrated my birthday this year. Birthdays are a big deal to her, and she had a pretty awesome one this year. Meanwhile, I kind of don’t care about birthdays, and anyway we spent my birthday in Amsterdam, so I don’t feel as if I got robbed somehow. Nonetheless, she was determined to impose at least a minor celebration on me. She asked me to pick out a place for a good dinner. I chose Bestellen.

First though: a drink. Or two. We stopped at Loire, another first-time visit for us, for a little wine. We were actually really impressed with the menu; if we didn’t already have reservations elsewhere we’d have stayed for dinner. But we did, so we didn’t, and instead ordered some charcuterie and a little wine: sparkling rosé and Chablis for Nellie, and Sancerre, Vouvray, and a white Côtes du Rhône. We summoned an Uber car and made plans to return to Loire for dinner some night.

We pulled up to Bestellen right on time, and liked it immediately: laid-back vibe, friendly greetings, good music (Radiohead, Dan Auerbach, Oasis, early Dylan, etc.) and a giant painting of meat on the wall. That’s right: a meat mural.

We settled in to our table and our server Chris began leading us through the evening. We started with cocktails:

  • Nellie: The Scarlet (white wine, elderflower liquor, cucumber, mint, lemon)
  • Dan: The Hunter (Buffalo Trace bourbon, cherry heering, moonshine cherry)

With those gone the first course arrived:

  • Nellie: heirloom tomatoes and watermelon (with purple basil, garlic chips, and chili oil; paired with a a white whine that neither of us can remember)
  • Dan: seared scallops (in parsley root puree, lobster mushrooms, and brown butter; paired with a Muscadet)

Then, the main event: we shared the 32oz côte de bœuf (accompanied by string beans, lentils, shallots, and mint, as well as ontario corn, crispy shallots, and tarragon) which came with two huge bones full of roasted marrow.

Hard to believe we were both vegetarian not so long ago.

Anyway, at Chris’ recommendation we’d decided to pair this with a 2002 Nichols “Whispering Pines” Pinot Noir. Much like the Sea Smoke Pinot we’d had in Arizona, we discovered that an older vintage of tougher, coastal-California could stand up to a hunk of meat like this one. It was a splurge, but it was worth it.

We opted to take much of the steak home, partly so that we could enjoy it again the following day, and partly to leave room for dessert: sticky toffee pudding. Nellie got a glass of Bugey-Cerdon bubbly to go with it; I ordered the barrel-aged Negroni.

We also ordered a menu item we’d only ever seen on Stone Road Grille‘s menu before:a six-pack of beer for the kitchen. Being where we were (on College, but with more of an Ossington feel) it was a sixer of PBR, but the guys in the kitchen gave us a happy wave as they downed their cans.

On my actual birthday we toured Amsterdam, tried some fantastic beer places, and met a crazy/eccentric American ex-Senator, and I thought that made for a pretty goddamn good way to celebrate. But last night was pretty good too.

"If I grew up on a farm, and was retarded, Bruges might impress me but I didn't, so it doesn't."

Dan Dickinson2 Comments

I’ve noticed something: I only remember to blog about movies when I watch a good movie. Hence:

  • In Bruges (imdb | rotten tomatoes), something we’ve been meaning to see since it premiered at TIFF several years ago, was quite funny. Probably more so since we’ve actually been to Bruges and didn’t really care for it.
  • Retreat (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was better than I expected for a film I’d never heard of and found randomly on TMN. I like the Cillian Murphy almost as much as I dislike the Thandie Newton, so it was balanced up until Jamie Bell appeared. On the whole: pretty good.
  • I’ve never seen the original version of The Thing, but we had the remake (imdb | rotten tomatoes) recorded on the PVR and a couple of hours to kill, and so that happened. It was rubbish.

.:.

This weekend was broken up more or less by what we were drinking at the time:

Friday: Foreign Affair Riesling, Fielding Pinot Gris, Norm Hardie Pinot Noir, and Hamelin Bay Rampant Red (which made us regret not getting down to Hamelin Bay last fall whilst in the Margaret River) at REDS; Cattail Creek Four Mile Creek Riesling, Weingut Hirsch Gruner Veltliner, Argiolas Costera Cannonau, Ca del Monte Valpolicella Ripasso, Bilogia  Tempranillo, Indigena Garnaxta, and something else I don’t remember at Midfield

Saturday: Weihenstephaner Kristall, Beau’s Lugtread, Blanche de Chambly, La Trappe Tripel, and a sunburn at Against The Grain Urban Tavern; a bottle of Hidden Bench 2008 Terroir Caché with dinner (after which I felt like crap, though I don’t blame the wine)

Sunday: an ill-advised Rickard’s White on the temporary on-Yonge-Street patio at the Firkin on Yonge (!); bottles of Kacaba 2008 Syrah and Daniel Lenko 2008 Unoaked Chardonnay when our friend Kaylea dropped in for an impromptu visit; a bottle of Norm Hardie 2010 County Chardonnay with dinner.

 

Next on NBC: Crotch Mahogany & Sweetbreads McQueen

Dan Dickinson2 Comments

On Saturday, not two hours after returning the rental car that took us on our cottage excursion, we were off to Enoteca Sociale for dinner with some old university friends. Since there were eight of us we sat in their private room downstairs amongst the wine, and were served an amazing meal in the family style: several common plates shared among us. Using their menu and my fuzzy memory I think I can piece together roughly what we ate that night:

  • a 4-foot long board full of charcuterie and some very boozy pears
  • beef carpaccio
  • some kind of salad with dandelion in it
  • smoked sweetbreads w/ sweet pea & fava bean salad (note: this was my first team eating sweetbreads, and they were delicious)
  • whole roasted sea bream w/ linguica sausage & romesco
  • rigatoni w/ pork, tomato & pea
  • mussels
  • asparagus & ricotta ravioli w/ mint, hazelnut & parmigiano reggiano
  • PEI 20 oz grass fed striploin w/ roasted bone marrow & rosemary potatoes
  • sticky toffee pudding w/ homemade vanilla ice cream

We had to out of there by 9, so we walked a few blocks down the street to Midfield for some more wine. We just let Chris pick out a couple of bottles for us; I remember the Sigalas Assyrtiko; I don’t remember which Portuguese red he brought though.

Finally we retired back to a friend’s place, where we proceeded to drink his wine and beer and gin while sitting on his roof, admiring the view. We also admired his red Alexander McQueen pants with black splotches and his giant egg-shaped crotch mahogany whisky display case. And lest anyone think I’m making either one of those things up, here be proof:

(7 x 7 – 1) = 48 = we need a bigger condo

Dan Dickinson1 Comment

“It’s always exciting for Niagara wineries when you come to town!” –Rick VanSickle

It’s been more than eight months since we last visited the Niagara wine region, and guiding our friends CBJ+M around seemed like a perfectly good excuse. Last weekend we decided to see what kind of fun we could get up to with thirty hours and an Autoshare Prius.

We decided to keep it to a very respectable five or six wineries per day (what?), and give them a mix of small and large wineries. Within reason, mind you; we can’t deal with the crowds at Jackson Triggs or Inniskillin or what have you. We started with Southbrook, then did a tasting at Ravine before eating lunch there (next to Jason Spezza), then moved on to Five Rows and Colaneri.

Five Rows (whose website I would link to except that it seems to be infected with malware) might have been the highlight of the whole trip. It was only our second time there, and it was as every bit good as the first. We had a great chat with Wilma Lowrey; we recounted our first visit and she told us no end of stories while pouring us wine. We learned the history of their labels (best: their ‘Single Press’ ice wine) and bought an 08 and 09 Cab Sauv. She actually gave us bottle #1 of the 09 (they hand-number the labels of all their bottles so customers can record them on their website) and we can’t wait for the day we’re able to open it up.

After that stop we did a 180 and hit Colaneri, the palatial and showy winery a little further west. Sure, it looks like a Disney-fied Tuscan villa from the outside, but we’d heard they were making good wines lately. I thought the wine was okay, but the tasting room rammed with tourists (and Jason Spezza again!) was hard to deal with after the personal, intimate experience we’d had at Five Rows. Nice bathrooms though. We grabbed a bottle or two and moved on.

Our penultimate stop was Kacaba, where they were happy to have interested, paying customers at the counter and not party-goers trying to scam multiple samples. Us, we left with a case. By this point we were running out of afternoon, so we zipped up to Vineland Estates to hit their tasting room. Again, we quickly became staff favourites for not asking bizarre questions or trying to scam free tastings. We delved into the Pinot family: Grigio, Blanc, Meunier.

We figured that was enough wine for one day (we had 24 bottles already; guessing CBJ+M had about 10) so we drove the few clicks to Black Walnut Manor, our B&B. We were greeted warmly, taken to our rooms and prompted to come have wine and cheese and cantaloupe jam by the pool. So we did. We said hi to the other guests and played with their dogs and took long, cooling swims and felt pretty goddamn happy, thank you very much.

For dinner that night we returned to Vineland Estates, and ate on their patio under that huge tree, overlooking the vines and trees and lake in the distance. I had east coast lobster bisque w/ vanilla chantilly; Upper Canada ricotta gnocchi w/ Cumbrae smoked chicken, grilled zucchini and rich cream; and marinated lamb loin w/ sous vide lamb sausage, celeriac and salsa verde. Nellie had the lobster bisque; fresh linguine w/ roasted peppers, sea asparagus, eggplant caviar and Toscano shavings; and Cumbrae beef tenderloin w/ blue haze, smashed mini reds and Shiitake reduction. Most of us split a bottle of Vineland’s 05 Cabernet; alas, I was driving and couldn’t have much. None of us had room for dessert; in any case it’d grown sweltering hot outside around the second course, so I was ready to head home to some air conditioning and chilled wine. We spent a few minutes on CBJ+M’s deck, drinking the Pinot Grigio we’d picked up at Vineland that afternoon and trying not to wake the other guests with our talk of Gordon Lightfoot and Stan Rogers.

The next morning, after another swim, we inhaled Carole’s unbelievable breakfast, featuring sausage and ricotta-stuffed french toast made from a chocolate croissant. Followed by a sticky bun. Even for a guy with an industrial-strength sweet tooth it was pretty rich, but I’d asked for it in a tweet about a month before, so I couldn’t very well back down at the moment of truth. I must say though, my oatmeal this morning was a sad replacement indeed.

We had five more wineries to hit, so we said goodbye and went on our way. We stopped at Tawse so they could ooh and aah at both scenery and wine, and then drove up the hill to Megalomaniac for more scenic views and a tour of the cave. We snapped them back into quiet low-key winery mode with a visit to Daniel Lenko (where we snapped up another case), and finished them off with stops at Hidden Bench and Fielding. By this point the trunk was full to bursting; we either had to come home or start carrying boxes on laps.

We stopped at Good Earth for some lunch — inside, alas, since the fly epidemic remains. After that it was a pretty uneventful ride back to Toronto, except for the last few kilometres when we drove into yesterday’s miniature monsoon season on the Gardiner. There was standing water being shot every which way by speeding cars, waves crashing over the median…it was nuts. It took us a little longer to drop CBJ+M and unload our wine at home than we’d planned, but that’s the joy of Autoshare. A few clicks of the Android and we had an extra hour. Once we dried off we took stock of the new additions, and set about trying to find them a home in the various fridges and racks.

Here was the final haul, not including the bottle we got for Nellie’s mom and a gift for another set of friends:

  • Colaneri 2009 ‘Unita’ Cabernet Franc
  • Colaneri 2010 ‘Cavallone’ Pinot Grigio
  • Daniel Lenko 2007 Signature Chardonnay
  • Daniel Lenko 2007 Old Vines American Oak Chardonnay (x2)
  • Daniel Lenko 2007 Viognier
  • Daniel Lenko 2008 White Cabernet (x4)
  • Daniel Lenko 2008 Unoaked Chardonnay
  • Daniel Lenko 2008 Unoaked Chardonn(g)ay
  • Daniel Lenko 2009 Reserve Riesling (x2)
  • Fielding 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon
  • Fielding 2010 Viognier
  • Fielding 2011 Lot 17 Riesling
  • Fielding 2011 Pinot Gris
  • Fielding 2011 Gamay
  • Five Rows 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon
  • Five Rows 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon
  • Five Rows 2009 ‘Single Press’ Icewine
  • Hidden Bench 2008 Felseck Vineyards Chardonnay
  • Hidden Bench 2009 Felseck Vineyards Pinot Noir
  • Hidden Bench 2009 Nuit Blanche
  • Kacaba 2007 Reserve Meritage
  • Kacaba 2007 Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon
  • Kacaba 2008 Cabernet Franc (x3)
  • Kacaba 2008 Syrah
  • Kacaba 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon (x3)
  • Kacaba 2011 Reserve Riesling (x2)
  • Kacaba 2011 Rosé
  • Megalomaniac 2008 Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon
  • Megalomaniac 2011 ‘Pink Slip’ Rosé (x2)
  • Ravine 2009 Sand & Gravel Sauvignon Blanc
  • Ravine 2010 Piccone Vineyard Reserve Cabernet Franc
  • Southbrook 2010 Triomphe Chardonnay
  • Southbrook 2011 Connect White
  • Tawse 2010 Sketches Riesling
  • Vineland Estates 2008 Pinot Blanc
  • Vineland Estates 2011 Pinot Grigio (which we drank Saturday night)
  • Vineland Estates 2011 Pinot Meunier

"Honk if you've come for wine"

Dan Dickinson4 Comments

Sometimes your first trips to a place aren’t great, but you learn enough to make a fantastic repeat visit. Other times your first visit is a great one, and no return trip ever lives up to your first memories. However, once in a blue moon a first trip to a place so good it doesn’t seem repeatable is followed by a second trip that’s very nearly perfect. This past weekend, our second time in Prince Edward County (after a very good first visit in 2010) was just that: very nearly perfect.

Friday

That’s right, kids: we took the day off work to go drink wine. The night before we left we decided to have some extra fun on the way: we met our good friend Kaylea for lunch in Port Hope. She gave us a box of chocolates made right there in Port Hope and treated us to a tasty meal on the patio at Gusto overlooking the river, where we drank some Closson Chase Pinot Noir, gave her a bottle of Benjamin Bridge Nova 7 and her fiancé Matt’s USB charger (which we’ve had for months), and saw a deer run up-river.

We said our goodbyes and returned to our car not ten seconds before it was about to get slapped with a parking ticket. We hadn’t even noticed the meter behind a large sign. Or maybe the cop had seen our rental sticker and given us a break. Either way, it was an early bit of luck, and luck like that is what perfect weekends are made of. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

We drove a little further and entered Prince Edward County at its west end, making our first stop By Chadsey’s Cairns. We’d never been before, and hadn’t planned on going this time either, but a friend’s request via Facebook to pick up a bottle swayed us. We pulled into the farmhouse, met Richard, and walked around the lane to the little apple house where they now sell their wine. We spoke with him a while, picked up a few atypical bottles (like their Gamay/Pinot blend) for ourselves and the friend-requested Chenins, and continued on down the road. Just then, it felt like a switch had been flipped: we’d been in the county less than ten minutes and already we felt right at home at this pace, among this scenery, with these people.

Our next stop was a favourite from the first visit: Keint-He. As we got out of the car we saw a deer, the second that day, on the edge of a field across the road. It stood stock still, and we wondered if it was a decoy the locals put up to make the tourists gawk. Self-conscious, we walked into the tasting room and ran their table, walking out with four bottles. The deer was gone. We sighed with relief and tried to look confident.

A few minutes later we checked in at the Newsroom Suites, our killer lodging find from the previous visit. Seriously: a roomy, convenient, non-frilly suite with free wi-fi situated directly across the street from the best restaurant in PEC. There wasn’t even a question of staying anywhere else. We dropped our bags and turned right back around, though — we had more wineries to hit.

We’d planned to visit Closson Chase next, but realized we’d drive right past The Old Third on the way. This had been a ‘maybe’ on our list, but a tweet from Rick Van Sickle (“Please don’t take all the Old Third Pinot!”) had piqued my curiousity, so in we pulled. And Rick wasn’t kidding about the Pinot…it’s all they sell (the sign outside didn’t say “wine” or “tasting room open”, it said “Pinot Noir”) and they do a magnificent job of it. We walked out with two bottles of their 2010 Pinot, got to the car, then realized we needed to go back in and get one of the few remaining bottles of the 2009. There wasn’t even a label on that one. I loved that.

Then: back toward Closson Chase, as planned. We loved everything we got there on our last visit, and all their wines we’d tried since. We left with four things: three bottles, and their opinion that the 2001 Chardonnay I won at auction a while back should be drinking beautifully right now. Thank heavens; I was worried I’d won some vinegar.

We had one more new winery to visit: Stanners. It was good. Not great, but good. And not expensive either, which is always welcome in PEC. We left with two bottles.

Our final stop of the day was the one most likely to be the busiest: Norman Hardie. We bought four bottles for ourselves and one for a friend, and dished some dirt with the employees about our mutual friend Duarte.

We had an hour or so to unload the car and relax in our suite before dinner at East & Main, definitely our favourite restaurant in the county, and right  across the street. We had a fantastic meal, even if we (okay, I) probably annoyed our server a little. Pro tip: don’t ask the vegetarians where they can buy cured meats. Anyawkward, here’s what we ate:

  • Dan
    • seared scallops w/ double smoked bacon, onion soubise, crispy parsnips
    • breast of moscovy duck w/ frites, fresh berry demi-glaze
    • maple crème brûlée
  • Nellie
    • fresh ravioli w/ braised beef, highline mushroom
    • 10oz grass fed striploin w/ celery root & potato purée, caramelized onion sauce
    • lemon tart w/ fresh fruit
  • Both
    • Biale 2007 “Party Line” Zinfandel from Napa (I know, I know: it was sacrilege to leave the County’s bottle list, but we couldn’t find a Pinot that we thought would hold up to Nellie’s steak. So we went with an old favourite from our Napa trip)

After dinner, relaxing in our room, all we could think was: that was one badass first day of vacation.

Saturday

We slept in a little, despite the bird outside our window that sounded like a car alarm, then got up and had breakfast just down the street at the Tall Poppy Cafe. Nellie had a “Bob”, which was kind of like a McMuffin for grown-ups, while I had some killer French toast. Suitably powered up, we resumed our winery pillaging.

We aimed for the southern part of the county, to some less-frequented but well-regarded wineries. The terrain changed again here: more twisting roads, more rolling hills. It felt a little bit like home…there was even a community named Athol. Along the way we saw yet another deer sitting calmly in a field, with only its head and neck sticking up, looking at us like we were interrupting brunch.

Our first stop in the area was Lighthall, a winery we’d never heard of until Kaylea recommended it earlier in the week. We weren’t expecting much, but…wow. Great find. Glenn, the winemaker, was so friendly, so informative, so helpful, so funny. And the wine was terrific: we left with two bottles of wine and two, ahem, bundles of top-secret material about which we’re sworn to secrecy. We’d thought about picking up a bottle of the 2009 Reserve Pinot Noir, but it was slightly pricey for something we couldn’t taste, especially when we’re already so well-stocked for pricey Pinot.

We finished our time in that part of the county with a visit to Exultet (where we got a nice crisp white and a top-flight Pinot that’s going straight into the wine fridge) and Long Dog (where we found zero dogs, sadly, but one very affectionate cat, a loud and somewhat annoying tour group, and a few nice bottles of plonk) before turning back to the north.

Since Fifth Town Cheese is now out of business we stopped in at Black River Cheese, but — apart from the ice cream-loving biker convention outside — it was pretty disappointing. As was Waupoos, by the way: it certainly offered a pretty venue, but when we parked the car and looked inside the tasting room we just…we couldn’t do it. It was too crowded, too touristy, too much. We started the car and got back on the road. Nearby tourist attraction Lake On The Mountain wasn’t terribly impressive either (looks-wise, at least…it’s still kind of interesting), but the views of the Bay of Quinte from up high were worth the stop.

At this point we were getting hungry, so we stopped for lunch in Picton at Buddha Dog, a magical place where tiny hot dogs come covered in interesting sauces like jerk and red pepper jelly and beef chili. We listened to 80s music (Frankie Goes To Hollywood!) and drank local root beer, and had three dogs each, and it all hit the spot perfectly. Full of mini-dog, we rescued our car from the Giant Tiger parking lot and pressed on.

We stopped briefly at the Marshmallow Room in Bloomfield to arm ourselves for dinner that night: meat, cheese, bread, and preserves to go with the dessert we’d picked up that morning at the Tall Poppy. Our plan was to have a simple meal at our place that night along with some of the wine we picked up that day.

But first, we had three more wineries we wanted to visit. Hinterland was all about sparkling, so not my bag, but certainly right in Nellie’s wheelhouse…and also appealing to the bachelorette party that came in after us. Grange of Prince Edward was disappointing — busy, touristy, and with lacklustre wines. Frankly, when we pulled into Karlo next we were expecting more of the same given all the cars and tour vans, but we were pleasantly surprised — we left with three bottles (though they charged us for only two, for some reason) including a Petit Verdot. And this helpful crowd control tip:

We passed a few hours back at our hotel, snacking and drinking wine on the porch. We watched the staff of East & Main get ready for their dinner service across the street, thinking back to how great our meal had been the night before. We kept thinking about it, and thinking about it, and comparing it to how our compilation-of-the-county dinner was going to be, and before long we said “fuck it” and called East & Main to make a reservation for that evening. That’s right, the same restaurant two nights in a row. Don’t judge us.

Our second dinner there was even better: the food may actually have not been quite as good on the second go-round, but two other things really made the night: first, they had the Lighthall ’09 Reserve Pinot that we’d eyed earlier in the day; second, our server was amazeballs.

Ze lineup:

  • Dan
    • fresh ravioli w/ braised beef, highline mushrooms (yup, we just flipped the apps from the night before)
    • pork loin w/ grilled vegetables and lentils in a mushroom and merlot reduction sauce
    • cinnamon apple pie ice cream
  • Nellie
    • seared scallops w/ double smoked bacon, onion soubise, crispy parsnips
    • fresh rigatoni alfredo w/ shrimp, grilled red onion, highline mushrooms, spinach, garlic white wine cream
    • lemon sorbet (but only because they were out of the lemon tart)
  • Both
    • Lighthall Vineyards 2009 Pinot Noir Réserve (Having visited Lighthall earlier that day and seeing what this bottle cost retail, we knew that it was a STEAL here)

Like I said, our server — Laura — was sweet, and seemed to find us amusing, and really looked after us. At one point we forced her take a bite of my dessert even though it’s against the rules, just because it felt like we should. Years ago we realized you get far more out of being great to the people looking after you in bars and restaurants (sometimes they buy you lunch and give you chocolates and invite you to special occasions) than you do by being mean or bossy, and this was a perfect example of that tenet. Even though the meal didn’t quite measure up to what we’d had the night before, I’d rank it among the best dining experiences we’ve ever had.

Sunday

I let Nellie sleep in Sunday morning while I went for a somewhat greasier breakfast back at the Tall Poppy. Bacon, eggs, toast, cappuccino: everything a growing boy needs. We took our time getting ready, packed, and loaded up the car with our wine purchases (at this point we were pretty close to the three dozen mark) and took off. Our only plans for the day were to visit a lavender farm (seriously), eat some pizza, make one more winery stop on the way out of the county and make haste back to Toronto.

We stopped at PEC Lavender, where they had lots of (brace yourself) lavender, as well as a well-maintained Farmall that reminded me of my youth, even if it wasn’t quite the same model I grew up with.

Not long after that we were sitting outside at Norm Hardie’s winery, eating thin-crust pizza baked in wood-fired ovens, drinking glasses of his Chardonnay, chatting with a lovely British gentleman named John. The pizzas were superb, the weather was perfect, and the wine was — as always — immaculate. We bought a lone bottle of the Melon de Bourgogne, re-packed the trunk to minimize bottle-sliding and bid John and the rest of Hardie adieu.

Nellie did have a few more sips of wine, at Harwood, a winery on the way to the 401. Our main reason for stopping was to pick up a bottle of Pinot Gris for our friend but Nellie also decided to take a bottle of their St. Laurent, something you don’t see every day. I opted not to sample — I was driving, and anyway, I couldn’t think of a better final taste of the county than the Hardie chardonnay I’d paired with lunch.

Our drive home was easy, and we listened to Allo Darlin’ and Sloan, and made fun of other drivers, and talked our next trip. Woofstock caused a minor inconvenience when returning the car, but it was worth it for the rampant cuteness we saw on the way home. And then came the unpacking:

In total, that’s 32 bottles from 13 different wineries:

  1. By Chadsey’s Cairns 2009 Gamay/Pinot Noir
  2. By Chadsey’s Cairns 2011 Muscat
  3. Closson Chase 2009 Churchside Pinot Noir
  4. Closson Chase 2009 S. Kocsis Chardonnay
  5. Closson Chase 2009 K.J. Watson Chardonnay
  6. Exultet 2009 Pinot Noir
  7. Exultet 2011 White Light Vidal/Pinot Noir
  8. Grange of Prince Edward 2007 Victoria Block Chardonnay (which we drank last night)
  9. Harwood 2009 St. Laurent
  10. Hinterland 2009 Rose
  11. Karlo 2010 Choa Chardonnay
  12. Karlo 2010 Cabernet Franc
  13. Karlo 2010 5th Element Petit Verdot
  14. Keint-He 2008 Pinot2 Pinot Noir/Pinot Meunier
  15. Keint-He 2008 Pinot2 Pinot Noir/Pinot Meunier
  16. Keint-He 2009 Little Creek-Benway Pinot Noir
  17. Keint-He 2008 Pineaux Sauvage Pinot Noir (Botrytis-affected)
  18. Lighthall 2009 Cabernet Franc
  19. Lighthall [**REDACTED**]
  20. Lighthall 2011 Progression Vidal
  21. Long Dog 2007 Otto Riserva Pinot Noir
  22. Long Dog 2008 Bella Riserva Chardonnay
  23. Norman Hardie 2008 Cuvee “L” Chardonnay
  24. Norman Hardie 2009 County Pinot Noir
  25. Norman Hardie 2010 County Chardonnay
  26. Norman Hardie 2011 County Melon de Bourgogne
  27. Norman Hardie 2011 County Pinot Gris
  28. The Old Third 2009 Pinot Noir
  29. The Old Third 2010 Pinot Noir
  30. The Old Third 2010 Pinot Noir
  31. Stanners 2010 Cabernet Franc
  32. Stanners 2010 Lincoln Lakeshore Chardonnay (which we drank on our front porch Saturday afternoon)

We also picked up a few bottles for friends: 2010 & 2011 Chenin Blanc from By Chadsey’s Cairns, a Harwood 2010 Pinot Gris, another [**REDACTED**] from Lighthall, and a Norman Hardie 2010 County Chardonnay.

So yeah…this might just have been the perfect weekend getaway. We had amazing weather. We had incredible dining experiences, on and off the table. We picked up plenty of our favourite wines and were surprised with some fantastic new finds. Our car & hotel rentals were problem-free, which is pretty much all you can ask for. We saw beautiful scenery, and felt relaxed practically the moment we arrived. We even managed an impromptu visit with a dear friend. Best of all we returned refreshed, relaxed and loaded down with tasty wine. What the hell else do we need out of a weekend, I ask you?

Rien. Absolument rien.

The big barese

Dan Dickinson1 Comment

This past Friday, to the detriment of both our waistlines and wallets (but utter joy of our taste buds) we revisited the previous Friday’s theatre of operations: Dundas West / Brockton Village / whatever. It was even better this week.

It started out in the very same way: leave work late and head straight to Midfield Wine Bar. I’ll be honest, we made dinner reservations in the area that Tuesday when we decided we wanted an excuse to go back to Midfield. Anyway, we sat at the bar and were greeted by Chris as warmly as if we were regulars and not just second-timers. Peckish, we ordered a board (much the same as last week’s, but with Serrano ham and an excellent clothbound Red Leicester cheese this time) and let him start picking wines. I had a white from Vouvray that I don’t quite remember, the Santagostino Nero d’Avola/Syrah I’d enjoyed so much the previous week, the Castello di Verduno Basadone (I’d never had a wine like that before) and an 04 Chateau Lescalle from Bordeaux. All excellent, especially the reds. Nellie had a Stratus Tollgate white, a Sauvignon Blanc of some kind and two more reds which have since slipped her mind.

Midway through our drinks & eats, our friend Duarte showed up. Socialite that he is, he knew all three couples sitting at the bar, even though none of us knew the other. I think it’d been a few years since we’d seen him face-to-face so it was good to catch up with him while he waited for his friend.

We had dinner reservations for 10:00 just down the street at Enoteca Sociale, erstwhile (just) hotspot and still darling of the Toronto dining scene. We usually try to wait until some of the scene-buzz has worn off a place before trying it out, so the time seemed right. I don’t know if the food is better or worse than when it first opened (note: if it were much better I don’t think I could have stood it) but I think the vibe was more to our liking now than it would have been then. It was charming and efficient, and classy and tousled, and just the right level of noisy. All of which to say, it was completely unlike our experience at Salt the previous weekend.

Now then, down to the important stuff: ze food. I’m copying and pasting straight off the menu*:

  • Starter: Spicy barese sausage, grilled artichokes & shishito peppers, pecorino fresco
    • Dan: Aglianico del Vulture “Liscone” 2008 DOC, Cantine Madonna delle Grazie, Basilicata
    • Nellie: Frascati Superiore 2010 DOC, Casale Marchese, Lazio
  • Dan’s main: trecce, pork sausage, charred broccoli & tomato peperonata
    • Gutturnio “Fermo” 2010 DOC, Roberto Manara, Emilia Romagna
  • Nellie’s main: lobster spaghetti, tomato, chili, basil
    • NV Franciacorta Brut DOCG, Majolini, Lombardia
  • Dessert: sticky toffee pudding, cardamom syrup & vanilla bean ice cream

My trecce (braided pasta) was really good. So was Nellie’s spaghetti, though there was so much lobster she couldn’t finish it. But my god…my god, that barese sausage. It might have been the most flavourful meat I’ve ever tasted. And if you took a bite with some of the shishito pepper? Goddamn! Unreal. I wanted to run back into the kitchen and steal the rest. I composed an ode to barese sausage on the spot. I considered nominating that sausage to be named to the order of Canada. So yeah, I liked the barese sausage.

Sigh…clearly, with Midfield and Enoteca being three blocks apart, this wallet & waistline problem isn’t going away.

* Seriously, restaurants who publish their entire menu, with wine pairings, on the website (not in a PDF) are a blogger’s best friend.

 

Salt: mediocre, like the Angelina Jolie film. Midfield: anything but middlin'.

Dan Dickinson1 Comment

Since by Friday my sickness was gone — meaning I could once again breathe through my nose and taste things — we finished the week with a bit of a double-hit, deciding to try out a couple of wine bars in a part of town that we just never get to. I mean, literally…we have never walked around this neighbourhood. Shocking.

Midfield Wine Bar is a new spot on Dundas West that we liked immediately. The decor feels a bit rugged and minimalist at first, but it’s not an oversight — it’s by design. Everything here is dead simple. Small tables, simple chairs, cash only, a healthy bar, a brief menu (charcuterie, oysters, terrines, bread) and a well-curated wine list. I’m trying to remember everything I had…I remember the Stratus Charlie Baker Riesling, some Sangiovese or another, and a fantastic Santagostino Nero D’Avola/Syrah. Our charcuterie board was fantastic too…smearing some honeycomb on the spicy sopressata was the smartest thing I did all day. It’s not the place to go if you’re looking for a ginormous meal, but if you love interesting wine (and maybe fancy a snack) then make your way to Midfield. And let them pick the glasses for you; it’s just more fun that way.

Alas, it was time to leave Midfield. We had a dinner reservation down the street at Salt Wine Bar (sense a theme?) at 9:30. In retrospect we should have just stayed at Midfield and ordered a second board. It’s not that Salt was bad…it was just a rather soul-jerking shift to decamp a truly authentic place like Midfield for a minor outpost of Ossington hipster-douchery. It was the usual loud/cramped scenario in there. Our server was nice, but she couldn’t tell me a thing about the wine list; I don’t remember what bottle we ended up with or how it tasted. Food: the lamb tacos and lobster risotto were just okay, but the scallops and pork belly were both pretty good. So considering we got a pretty modest amount of food and wine, the bill felt outsized. It’s not a strict avoid in my books — that is, I wouldn’t warn somebody away from there if they wanted to try it — but I don’t see us making a return trip anytime soon.

.:.

Thankfully, after all that wine we had a beer respite (note to self: copyright the term beerespite) on Saturday. We met up with CBGB at Beerbistro for our friend Lisa’s birthday, in an attempt to turn her — an avowed disliker of beer — into a fan of the suds. Thankfully Beerbistro offers flights of three small glasses, and groups their menu by type of beer (and orders it roughly from lightest-to-strongest), so I did the picking and began the indoctrination.

  • Flight 1:Blanche de Chambly, Bitburger Pils, De Koninck. the Blanche was a hit. The Pils and De Koninck weren’t quite as well received, but they weren’t rejected either.
  • Flight 2:Weihenstephaner Hefe Weiss, Innis & Gunn Oak Aged, Muskoka Mad Tom IPA. The Weihenstephaner was also well received, though not quite as well as the Chambly. The Innis & Gunn went over better than I thought too, probably because of the sweetness. The Mad Tom, however, produced a response best summarized as “Ewwwww!!!” and was quickly given away. We had hit on it: the enemy, then, was hops.
  • Flight 3:Affligem Blonde, Young’s Double Chocolate Stout, Paulaner Salvator. The Affligem sits in the same category as my beloved Maudite, which I happened to be drinking just prior to this round. Since the birthday girl had tried a sip and not liked it, I opted for the other ‘spicy’ beer; luckily the Affligem fared better than La Maudite would have. The Young’s was a gamble, since serving stout to a professed non-beer-drinker seems antithetical, but the chocolate might have just salvaged it. I believe the Salvator was the least popular of this flight, but still wasn’t met with the venom shown to the Mad Tom.

So, if nothing else we showed our friend last night that she doesn’t have to resort to drinking the bad house wine at a pub if they have a weissbeer on tap. Mission tastily accomplished!

A week of drinking well

Dan Dickinson1 Comment

Our recycling pile and credit card bill would suggest that we drank very, very well this past week:

On Sunday we had a bottle of 2007 Le Clos Jordanne Claystone Terrace Chardonnay. On Monday we had a 2009 Twenty Twenty Seven Featherstone Vineyard Riesling. On Tuesday it was a 2009 Thirty Bench Triangle Vineyard Riesling. Wednesday was a 2009 Le Clos Jordanne Village Reserve Pinot Noir, and on Thursday (after I had two pints by Great Lakes at Volo, the Katy Brown Ale and the Karma Stoutra) we had a bottle of 2009 Tawse Misek Riesling to go with our Thai takeout.

By Friday we’d decided we’d done our part for the Ontario wine economy and branched out somewhat. We had a few glasses each at REDS (2008 Foreign Affair Conspiracy, 2009 Nuestro Ribera del Duero and 2009 Jean Luc Colombo Les Abeilles Cotes du Rhone for me; 2008 Flat Rock Chardonnay, 2008 Foreign Affair Conspiracy and 2008 Rubrato Aglianico dei Feudi for Nellie) before strolling down to Wellington Street and trying Trevor for the first (!) time. We appeared to be the only non-Winterlicious people in the place, and the bartender expressed his appreciation when we ordered a full bottle of wine; I think we may have been the first to do so that night. We warmed up with a 2008 Bogle Zinfandel (me) and 2010 Bogle Chardonnay (her), and drank a bottle of 2010 McManis Petite Sirah with our mini Kobe burgers, tempura shrimp and truffle goat cheese poutine.

Yesterday we slept in (obv) before picking up supplies for the week, including a bunch of Garrison beer, one of our Halifax favourites which happens to be on feature at the LCBO this week. Last night we had a pretty disappointing dinner at a pub near the theatre where our movie was playing, so we made it up to our taste buds with a visit to Paese before the screening. I know I had a Malbec and a Foreign Affair Cabernet Sauvignon, while Nellie had an Amarone (in fact, they recognized her from the last time we were in and, remembering her affection for the last Amarone they sold by the glass, immediately poured her their new one) and a California Chardonnay; I don’t recall the details beyond that.

All in all it was a smashing good week of wine drinking, punctuated by the odd burst of beer and decadent food. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to the gym.