Tag: wine

Calistoga, etc.

Dan Dickinson3 Comments

A suggestion: always start your day with breakfast made by a trained chef, or at least the partner of a trained chef. Our morning began with a 3-course brekkie: strawberry muffins, stone fruit w/ Syrah reduction sauce and a peach & creme fraiche french toast that I would punch somebody to get my hands on. Ridiculous.

Our bellies full of delicious energy, we walked to the Calistoga Bike Shop and picked up our transportation for the day. It was a bit cool to start but we quickly got warmed up, stopping at August-Briggs for our first tasting. It was okay, but not much more than that. First of all, we were unaccustomed to having to share the tasting bar with other people. Second, none of their wines impressed us. Their zin was okay, but we had a Robert Biale sitting in our room, so we were set for zins, and nothing else rocked us. So we left. Our first (and, as it turned out, only) time not buying a bottle at a winery visit.

Now we had several hours to kill, and were actually getting a mite peckish, so we decided to stop in at Solbar, part of the Solage resort, which we’d just ridden past. We felt we were a bit underdressed, but shag it: we’d heard such great reviews of the place we had to stop. And manoman, were we glad we did. Nellie’s heirloom tomato soup and fancy-ass BLT were great, but my salad and buttermilk fried chicken were stellar. They also gave us some fantastic wine…the Failla pinot noir I had with my chicken was out of this world.

Right, then: on to more tastings. We biked up to Vincent Arroyo, where they poured us…oh, I don’t know, seventy wines. Seriously, though, they poured us nearly a dozen (some named after their dogs) and gave us a tour of the facilities. They spent a ton of time on us, and so did some of their patrons, who were full on crazy and chatty and (only Dickinsons will get this reference, but) Sybil-like, and so we loved our time there. We left with their reserve Petit Sirah and an expectation that it probably wouldn’t get much better.

We were wrong. We got to Zahtila, another tiny producer, whose winemaker’s husband Mike also spent a long time with us, patiently pouring wine after wine. Their dogs also made us feel welcome, practically tackling us when we pulled up on our bikes. We departed there with their estate Zinfandel and the promise that we would try to come up with a cross-border shipping solution.

Our last winery of the day was a very small producer called Shypoke. There was a bit of a mix-up in the appointment, but no matter…we sat on their veranda, drinking wines at a table made from old champagne riddling racks, until the winemaker arrived. They make four wines, and poured four wines (full glasses, mind you…seriously, they poured what you would get in a restaurant) and we fell in love with each. They’re one of the very few bottlers of the Charbono grape, but their Cab Sauv was excellent (and unlike anything we’d tried on this trip), their Sangiovese was superb and their Petit Sirah was incredible. We ended up buying that Petit Sirah, but — duty restrictions aside — we would happily have bought all four. The block of vines that produced the Petit Sirah was named after their daughter Amelia, who we also met. And their dog. God…we wanted to adopt these people. Or be adopted by them. We talked about wine and farming and import laws and weather and craftsmanship and flight times. We were so enamored with them, and their wines, that we didn’t even notice we were about to run out our time limit on the bikes. Egad!

We finished our last glass (leaving with a bottle of the Petit Sirah) jumped on our bikes and took off. Halfway back to the town Peter, the Shypoke winemaker, pulled up alongside in his mini with the bag Nellie had left back at their house. So awesome. We grabbed that and raced south, returning the bikes about 15 seconds before they closed. A close call, but so worth it. If we hadn’t been forced to return the bikes we’d have stayed on Shypoke’s veranda all night.

For dinner we went for simplicity, picking up some salami, cheese, bread and fruit in town, and paired it with the Zahtila Zinfandel and Arroyo Petit Sirah while chatting with a newlywed couple from Denver. It was a good, good, good, good day. And tomorrow will be good too, if we can drag our sorry asses out of bed for 7AM for our hot air balloon ride!

Comin' down the mountain

Dan Dickinson1 Comment

Just before we left Yountville we walked around a little to scout out the dining choices for our next trip. And there will be a next trip. We picked up a couple of pastries from Bouchon bakery, though we forgot about them and they eventually went stale in our car. Quel dommage.

We left Yountville and drove along the less-busy Silverado trail, taking a quick detour up Howell Mountain to kill some time. We didn’t stop at any wineries, but did see some nice views. We then drove down a crazy winding narrow barely-paved road (kind of like driving to Rocamadour but without the sheer cliffs) to the main road again, and entered St. Helena.

There’s not much to the town of St. Helena but the main street, and a nice one it is. We parked the car and went in search of a place to eat. Once again, our book saved the day as it recommended a place called Cook. Turns out, it’s the place all the locals go to for a good meal…score! My BLT was awesome, and I don’t even like BLTs. Nellie’s gnocchi in marinara was excellent as well, as was her Chardonnay (I didn’t drink at lunch…I might have been sporting a tiny headache after the previous night) and our dessert — apple crisp with vanilla gelato — sent us on our way with a smile. Now it was time to start with some tastings, so we headed up Spring Mountain road.

Said road is long and winding indeed, and it took us a while to find our first stop: Robert Keenan Winery. A dog ran out to greet us — a dog who is, we discovered, featured in the book Winery Dogs of Napa — and lead us into the tasting room. There we met several other patrons (including another Canadian, natch) and Laura, the hostess, who poured us several wines. Our favourite was a Cab Franc, which we bought, and and we began the long journey back to the main road.

Our next stop was Smith-Madrone, which was even harder to find. What a find this place was. Run by two brothers, both of whom resemble a cross between Richard Attenborough and Santa Claus, it is very much a working winery…no fancy tasting rooms or luxury seating here. Since we arrived earlier than the other tour participants he sent us on a little walk (avec Chardonnay) just up the hill, to find this view:

Not bad, right? We sat there for a few minutes, soaking it all in (including the very tasty chard) before heading back down. By this time the others had arrived, including a guy with his harem of hot women, and the tour started. Well…not a tour so much as a spoken-word art piece by Mr. Smith with some live demonstrations built in. Very educational too. He was just a great old guy, and we spent over an hour with him. We’d have stayed another hour if thought he didn’t have to get back out and tend to the grapes. We left with a bottle of their Riesling, which was entirely unlike anything we’d had in Ontario.

Entirely happy with our tastings we drove back down to the main highway and drove north to Calistoga. We found our B&B, the Chanric Inn, and checked in. Zoinks, this place was nice. The hosts (and their dog Dinnigan!) were great too. We dropped our crap, hit the pool for a rather chilly swim, drank the Smith-Madrone Riesling, chatted with the other guests and got ready for dinner.

Regrettably, dinner was pretty disappointing. We wanted to pair something with the Keenan Cab Franc we’d bought, and fell for the first piece of red meat we saw. We went to a grill that I think we knew we shouldn’t have. Our soup was okay. Our glasses of white were shite. Our mains (my ribs, Nellie’s “filet mignon”) left a lot to be desired. The best we could say about this place was that corkage was free.

Happily, the meal didn’t last long because, after we walked back the room, we fell asleep on the bed like little kids.

Transition

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Okay, I’m going to make this quick as it’s really nice out, I just got back from the pool and we’re eating in an hour.

Our dinner last night at Magnolia was really good, and it was great to get a peek at Haight-Ashbury, but we were just dead tired so we didn’t have as much fun as we might have. Oh, and the cabbie on the way there nearly killed us. He was doing 60 mph on city streets, weaving in and out of traffic…insanity.

Leaving the city this morning was both easy (apart from a little rental car trouble) and awesome (since I got to drive across the Golden Gate Bridge) and we made great time getting up to Napa. We never did find a place to eat, and instead went straight to our first winery.

Before I get into each one, let me just say that if you’re the kind of person who wants to visit smaller, family-owned wineries, and who doesn’t want to see a tour bus in the lot when you pull in, then Tilar Mazzeo’s book Back Lane Wineries of Napa is what you want. There is a similarly named book for Sonoma (find them here and here) if that’s where you’re headed. Virtually all the wineries we will do on this trip were found there, since we had no other frame of reference for California wineries.

So, then: our first visit was to James Cole Winery, and it could not have been a better introduction to Napa. Ben, who hosted us in the tasting room (and is pictured in the book) was an excellent host, welcoming and helpful and not even remotely possessed of the snobbish attitude we’d been told to expect. He poured five wines, all of which were good (Nellie even liked the Malbec, and she usually hates those) but we settled on the Petit Verdot…we knew we were unlikely to see another of those on our trip.

While mentioning to Ben that we also like Zinfandels, he recommended we try Robert Biale Vineyards just down the road, as it was the best zin he’d ever had. Done! He rang ahead and let them know to expect us. We arrived a minute later to their stunning tasting room overlooking the vines and hills. The host, Austin, told us they make 13 different zins there, and we loved each one we tried, finally settling on the Monte Rosso. He told us the origin of the name of the most popular zin: the Black Chicken. During prohibition and when they lacked proper licensing, customers would call Aldo Biale (on the local party line) and ask for a few Black Chickens…which meant bottles of wine. He had other great stories too, and was an equally amiable host. Two for two, we left here already in love with Napa.

Next we drove a little further north to the outskirts of Yountville where we met Ashley Keever, of Keever Vineyards, and her dog Bones. This was the consummate family winery…only three wines on offer, and pretty much the entire family is involved in the making of them. Ashley gave us a tour of the house, the facilities and the gorgeous caves they’d bored into the hill; Bones followed us for the whole tour and occasionally dropped his tennis ball on me. Farm boy geek moment: the plastic lugs they use to collect their grapes are the same we use to collect blueberries, and the grapes she picked from the vine and let us try tasted almost exactly like blueberries. Anyway…their Sauvignon Blanc was good, their Syrah was very good, but my god…their Cabernet Sauvignon. Pretty much on the spot we declared it one of the four wines we’re bringing back to Canada with us. This place just had so much going for it…the view from their driveway was the best we saw all day, and by the time we left Ashley felt like a lifelong friend. We were there for less than an hour, and pretty much in love with the place.

Keever

Our last stop was at Elyse Winery, a place not mentioned in the book but recommended to our friend T-Bone as a place for great zins. And it was — especially their peppery Howell Mountain offering — but we ended up taking their #33 Mon Chou Bordeaux blend. In fact, we’re drinking it as I type this. Very laid back place too. When we walked in the owner yelled, “What the hell do you want?!?” and then the pouring started.

Tired, and still without lunch, we drove into Yountville and found our hotel, the Hotel Luca. So, so pretty. It’s like being in a little villa. Except one that has wi-fi and heated bathroom floors. We dropped our stuff, had a bite on the bar’s outdoor patio, went for a swim in the heated pool and are now sitting on the little courtyard patio outside the room drinking wine whilst waiting for our dinner reservation. We’d thought about French Laundry but couldn’t be bothered making reservations. We booked Redd instead, but can’t be arsed with that either. So we’re eating at the restaurant in the hotel, because we like the idea of stumbling 40 feet to our door.

All in all it’s been a fucking spectacular first day in wine country. If the second half of this trip is even close to how great the first half has been, it’ll be an all-time classic.

Hotel Luca

Taste Ontario

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Sandwiched in between all these Project FiftyBrew excursions Nellie and I found ourselves on a wine mission last week: the Taste Ontario event at the Art Gallery of Ontario. It was three hours in which to sample a few wines from more than 30 of Ontario’s producers.

By the time we arrived the crowd was at full throng, making my tasting experience somewhat more claustrophobic than I’m used to. Luckily there was food…piles and piles of food. We filled our plates with meats and veggies and sausages (mostly sausages), and didn’t even make it over to whatever risotto they had cooking, and whatever was making that lobster smell (lobster risotto??) as it was too crowded. Anyway, we were there to sip wine, not eat.

We’d already planned out what we were going to do (of course we did!): in the limited time we would ignore the wineries we knew and loved (Fielding, Hidden Bench, Tawse, Southbrook, Stratus) as well as the wineries who’ve just never impressed us (e.g., Jackson-Triggs, Colio, Angel’s Gate) and those which offend our snob sensibilities (Wayne Gretzky, Mike Weir). This was our chance to try something new. It was also a good chance to try some wines from Prince Edward County, which we’d not had much exposure to yet.

Our favourites on the night were:

  • Château Des Charmes Old Vines Riesling 2007 and Equuleus 2007
  • Creekside Estate Laura Red 2007
  • Konzelmann Late Harvest Gewurztraminer 2008 and Reserve Pinot Grigio 2009
  • Megalomaniac Cabernet Franc 2007 (surprising, since I didn’t like anything I tried at the winery)
  • Reif Estate Gewürztraminer 2008
  • Norman Hardie County Pinot Noir 2008
  • Closson Chase S. Kocsis Vineyard Chardonnay 2007 and South Clos Chardonnay 2008

Nellie also liked the Reif Estate Silver Meritage 2007, the Malivoire Musqué 2009 and the Grange Of Prince Edward Sparkling Brut 2007, but none were really my thing.

We ordered a bunch of those, and planned to buy a few more in the LCBO when they hit the shelves.

All in all, a pretty enjoyable event. We eventually ran out of a) wine to try, and b) patience the crowds, and decided to get a proper meal. We stopped at reds on the way home, pleaded with the sommelier to let us have the Norm Hardie County Pinot by the glass (no dice) and got some advice on a New Zealand side trip when we visit Australia next year.

Right, that’s done. Back to beer then.

23…is that a winemaker's two dozen?

Dan Dickinson3 Comments

Coming to Niagara back in May might have been a mistake. I fear I’m hooked now.

Friday after work Nellie, T-Bone, The Sof and I drove to Niagara-on-the-Lake to begin a weekend of good food and flowing wine. After fighting off traffic we had a drink and some lobster poutine at the Shaw Club hotel’s bar, then left for our dinner reservations at Stone Road Grille. We’d enjoyed it so much last time that T-Bone wanted to try it too. Lucky for her, it was even better this time. All four starters — my scallops wrapped in duck breast bacon, The Sof’s poutine (he is from Montreal, after all) and the sweet corn, chantrelle and lobster risotto that Nellie and T-Bone each had — were fantastic. The mains — perfect flank steak frites for me, T-Bone’s shepherd’s pie with lamb, Nellie’s halibut with sea asparagus and The Sof’s duck confit — were also top-notch. We all took the easy way out and just did their suggested wine pairings, but they really did work perfectly. None of us had room for dessert; most of us had dessert wine, but then they brought out some cotton candy (!) for us to share, so…sweet overload. Quite a meal. We wisely decided to walk it off, but then foolishly decided to drink a bottle of Megalomaniac cab sauv when we got to the hotel. Ah well. When in Rome.

Saturday morning we again ate on the beautiful patio at the Shaw Club, then began the wine touring. We started with Stratus, whose wines were good and whose tasting room is gorgeous. Like, I want to live there gorgeous. Next was Southbrook, where our pouring needs were attended to by the most delightful Scottish lady. At this point we were getting hungry so we drove to Port Dalhousie where we had reservations at Treadwell. Our lunch there was excellent: a charcuterie plate to start, then fish & chips, soup, sandwiches and wine, all of it local. Oh, and our patio seats overlooked the water. So, yeah…pretty nice. But no time to rest, we had more wineries to visit.

We stopped at A Foreign Affair, then Alvento, then the beautiful cellar at Tawse, then the room at Megalomaniac tucked into a hill. By this time our trunk was full of wine and our energy levels flagging, so we checked in to our little inn, the Black Walnut Manor. The owners poured us another glass of wine (mercy!) and put out some brie and crackers and red pepper jelly and we sat and ate it on the deck under an enormous tree and felt sooooooooo relaxed. We sat by the pool and dipped our feet and played with dogs and wanted to stay forever or make them an offer to buy or maybe just have a nap or whatever. But we were happy.

A more casual dinner was in order, and luckily the proprietor was able to sneak us into About Thyme at the last minute. It didn’t look like much on the outside, but had good food and a great wine selection. Nothing about anyone’s meal was too remarkable, except Nellie’s steak with an atomic pile of mushroom poutine and my first experience tasting NYARAI‘s wines, but it was a very solid meal. It also provided a very relaxed atmosphere, conducive to us crashing immediately after dinner following the 2km walk home. I, for one, slept like the freaking dead.

The next morning was my happy place. I awoke at 8 to find juice, tea, nectarines and a newspaper outside our door. I adjourned to the balcony with laptop and wi-fi in tow, enjoying the fresh air. I luxuriated in my warm, quiet morning  until it was time for breakfast, prepared by the owners. Sitting with the four other guests (two different couples, both from Cincinnati oddly enough) we were treated to pancetta & melon, chocolatines and broccoli + cheese frittatas. But enough dilly-dallying: we had wineries to visit.

Zipping west to Beamsville, we started at Rosewood. Next was Thirty Bench, just across the street, where we loaded up on the cab franc. Then quick visits to Fielding and Hidden Bench (where we didn’t buy anything, but T-Bone did) followed by an experience at Daniel Lenko. Actually, it’d be more accurate to say an experience with Daniel Lenko, as he was the one pouring the wines right at his kitchen table. Sadly he was sold out of his white Cabernet, which was Nellie’s one required purchase for this trip. Major sad face.

Food was next on the agenda, so we took our innkeeper’s advice and visited The Good Earth for lunch. What a recommendation it was: nestled in this beautiful space among the vines and fruit trees, they served us lunch outdoors at a harvest table next to a wood-fired oven. Yet another charcuterie plate to start, and then a pile of meat for T-Bone and pizzas for the rest of us. The tomato, bocconcini and basil pizza was good, but Nellie’s prosciutto, peach and blue cheese pizza kicked ass. The food, the wine, the setting, the people, the day…none of us wanted to leave. And yet, it was time to go. The trunk could hold no more anyway. An hour later we were back in Toronto, wondering where the hell to put all these bottles. Storage issues aside, though, it was just a fantastic weekend. And so, I present the spoils:

This is what we bought:

  • Stratus 2006 White
  • Stratus 2008 Ice Wine White
  • Southbrook Whimsy 2007 Cabernet Franc
  • Southbrook Whimsy 2007 Lot no. 20 Cabernet Sauvignon
  • The Foreign Affair 2007 Chardonnay
  • The Foreign Affair 2008 Riesling
  • The Foreign Affair 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon
  • Alvento 2007 Viognier
  • Tawse 2007 Meritage
  • Tawse 2007 Chardonnay
  • Megalomaniac 2007 Narcissist Riesling
  • Rosewood 2008 Pinot Noir
  • Rosewood 2008 Trois Femmes Rosé
  • Thirty Bench Small Lot 2009 Triangle Riesling
  • Thirty Bench Small Lot 2009 Gewurztraminer
  • Thirty Bench Small Lot 2007 Cabernet Franc (x3)
  • Fielding 2007 Sauvignon Blanc
  • Fielding 2007 Chardonnay Musque
  • Daniel Lenko 2005 Meritage
  • Daniel Lenko 2007 Old Vines Chardonnay (French Oak)
  • also: a Thirty Bench Merlot, which we intended to give away as a gift, because there will be no Merlot in this house

11 whites, 9 reds and 2 others. Probably a more even mix than I expected. I did not expect to come home with four chardonnays though.

Salut!

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No blogging for the next few days as I’m off for a weekend. If you’re looking for me I’ll be with Nellie, T-Bone and The Sof, seeing Beamsville and Niagara from their lovely tasting rooms, celebrating the end of my 35th year as a human.

Cheers, everyone.

My advice: just don't mix them

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I don’t know when I started enjoying wine. The last few years, certainly; I distinctly remember not drinking wine until at least 2001 and wouldn’t have started enjoying it until much later. It probably coincided with Nellie discovering  good wine, whatever that means.

Nowadays, while I’m hardly an aficionado, I quite enjoy it. I know enough to have favourite varietals and regions. I like Italian whites and California Cab Sauv, and I (naturally) hate Merlot. I like lighter, thinner wines like Pinot over robust wines like Bordeaux or Amarone. I don’t generally like French wine, except when I’m in France, which I can’t really explain. And I’ve developed a real fondness for, and interest in, Ontario wines. To wit: we’ve finally taken advantage of living next door to the Niagara region, and plan to soon visit the burgeoning Prince Edward County region. Our upcoming trip to San Francisco with a side trip to Napa has morphed into Napa-Sonoma-Healdsburg with San Francisco bookends. Our last lengthy trip to Nova Scotia included a visit to their young & interesting wine region. I’m even regretting not making a jaunt through the Okanagan part of our last trip to BC. And, of course, I’m hoping for one or two wine region outings when we visit the brother in Australia next year.

Nellie and I are (for a number of reasons beyond this one, it’s safe to say) odd: we both really enjoy beer and wine. I’d say I still prefer beer to wine, if I could pick only one, and I’m sure Nellie would say the opposite, but I think there aren’t many people who don’t prefer one and tolerate the other…let alone a pair of them. By the way, guys, if you’d like to get your wine-loving missus on-board with ze bier, check this out. Anyway, back to that California trip: for our five days in Napa we’re (obviously) drinking nothing but wine, whereas in San Francisco we’ve scoped out all the best beer places and can’t wait to try all the Trappist and microbrew goodness that we can’t get here in Toronto. We’re weird that way.

Side note, though: barley wine may sound like the best of these worlds. It is not. It most definitely not.

é

Why yes, I had a nice weekend, thank you. And you?

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Beerbistro patio: Weihenstephaner, Anchor Steam, Maudite. St. Louis Wings (!): 10 original buffalo and a sneak preview of Montreal’s next opponent. Slight hangover. Vet appointment: (reasonably) clean bill of health. Kittens. St. Lawrence Market. Practically the entire first season of Veronica Mars. A bottle of Southbrook Cabernet rosé. California trip planning. Cumbrae’s steaks and a bottle of 2007 Thirty Bench Cabernet Franc (the Johnny Cash wine) and Ontario strawberries. The Informant! (imdb | rotten tomatoes). Up early. Starbucks, so help me. A little work. Bier Markt: patio seats and Blanche de Chambly and two Weihenstephaner (seriously, when summer hits I just cannot pass up this beer) and lots of wurst. The dramatic conclusion of Veronica Mars season one. Desperate need for — and frustrating inability to — nap.

Now, game one of the NHL’s Eastern Conference semifinals. Be still, my yawning and yet overly nervous heart.

"Better a drop of the extraordinary than an ocean of the ordinary."

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I’ll let you in on a little secret: I’ve lived in Toronto since 1997 and I’ve never seen Niagara Falls. One of the natural wonders of the world ninety minutes away and I’d never gone to see it. I’d also never visited the Niagara wine country, but that’s a little less shocking since it was only a few years ago I began to care that there was a wine region nearby. So, we thought we’d cure both ills at once. We took the day off, rented a car and set sail.

The weather wasn’t bad when we left Toronto, passing Mississauga and Oakville (first time past highway 403 woo!) and crossing the lovely skyway bridge to…to…oh my GOD Hamilton is ugly. Ugh. I closed my eyes until we reached Beamsville. We stopped there as I had it on good authority that there are three fantastic wineries there, practically next door to each other: Fielding, Hidden Bench and Thirty Bench.

As we walked into Fielding (whose tagline constitutes the subject of this blog post, by the way) Nellie said that it felt to her like going to church. We’ve never tried a Fielding wine we didn’t love, and their building is rather like a cathedral. The staff was awfully nice, very helpful and fairly convincing: we tasted nine wines, and left with bottles of the Lot 17 Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc, Meritage, and White Conception.

Hidden Bench, just around the corner, was different: smaller, quieter, more intimate. The lady working the tasting counter took a chunk out of her day to talk all the about the wines, the history of the winery and the vines. Their wine tasted so clean that we ended buying three bottles: a Fume Blanc (which Nellie realized later we’d drunk before) and two bottles of their Terroir Caché Meritage. We’ll drink one soon, and stash one for a few years.

We loved Thirty Bench for two reasons: the clever tasting notes (see above) and the more structured tasting. We’d enjoyed the benefits of near-empty tasting rooms at all three spots, but at 30 Bench they brought us to the comfy tasting bar and threw seven (!) samples at us. We settled on their Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon, and left startled that we’d so far collected more red than white.

The lady at Hidden Bench had recommended a spot called August for lunch, and when a local with good taste recommends a spot for lunch, you go. We weren’t disappointed; my pasta with andouille sausage in a pesto sauce was very good, as was Nellie’s salad. Happily she was able to get a glass of Daniel Lenko white Cabernet to go with it, and I had a glass of Creekside Pinot Grigio. All was right with the world.

On we drove (don’t worry, I was sipping and spitting, not drinking) to Niagara on the Lake. We checked in to the one hotel I could find in NotL that didn’t fit the dictionary definition of “frou-frou”: The Shaw Club. Beautiful hotel, beautiful room, just top-notch all around. Highly recommended if you’re staying in that town. That town, by the way, is a little too precious…a walk up and down the main strip was like one long gift shop. On the stroll back to the hotel we decided to stop in at the Olde Angel Inn and get at least a bit of the local quaffing culture. Despite my tasty Amsterdam Two-Fisted stout, I was miserable as a headache was hitting me with both barrels. We went back to the room to relax before dinner.

Dinner was at Stone Road Grille, the de facto NotL dining champion according to Chowhound. The joint was packed when we arrived and, despite the fact that we’d made reservations a month ago, we had to wait half an hour for a table. My mood might have been soured had the host not been a bizarre combination of charming and unhinged…if I didn’t know better I’d swear he was from Newfoundland.

Anyway, the meals. In a word: superb. I started with — and I’m quoting from the menu here — the scallops wrapped in smoked duck breast bacon, sweet onion puree, mache salad, icewine salmis vinaigrette, paired with…well, with the giant glass of Fielding Pinot Gris the host had poured me while we waited. Nellie had a truffle and asparagus risotto paired with a 13th street sparkling white. Nellie declared it the best risotto she’d ever tasted. As for me, I don’t even really like scallops and I loved this.

My main was the Charlie Baker fried chicken with buttermilk potato puree, braised leeks, sauteed greens and bubbly sauce, while Nellie had the grilled flat iron steak frites with sauce béarnaise and garlicky beans. We sought out a wine that would work with both (!) and settled on a 2007 Southbrook “Whimsy” Cabernet Franc. And wow, did it work. We were still enjoying it when our strawberry & rhubarb clafouti arrived.

Perhaps the oddest part of the night was when we asked for a cab. Despite being warned by T-Bone about the scarcity of cabs in the city, we were hopeful…and we were to be disappointed. The nearest one was 30-40 minutes away. So, much to our amazement, the semi-crazy host pulled around in a giant purple minivan and offered to drive us home. Weird, but pretty cool too. More than made up for the long wait for a table, and also made for a great laugh the next morning.

Day two started with an excellent breakfast at the Shaw Club’s restaurant before checking out and driving south to see Niagara Falls itself.

Never mind the schlocky shops on the way into town, the outrageous cost of parking, the mind-numbing tackiness of the gift shops you’re forced through to gain a vantage point…the falls are amazing. I could probably stand at the river’s edge all day and watch the water plunge over, but not today…it was freezing, and spitting rain. We stayed long enough for me to really soak it in, get some pictures and get even wetter from the spray, and then walked back to the car. A sudden storm burst just long enough to soak us as we ran to the car. It wouldn’t be the last time.

We did have a break in the rain long enough to visit Ravine Vineyards, another recommendation. Their tasting room wasn’t quite open yet so we had some tasty treats at their bakery first. Once the sun was over the yardarm we picked up a bottle each of their 2006 Cabernet Franc and their Redcoat blend, and got some recommendations from their staff about the next stop on our tour.

Southbrook‘s beautiful LEED-certified building suits their organic and biodynamic wine. We’d already decided to pick up a bottle of the Whimsy, since we’d loved it the night before, and while we expected to walk out with their rosé, we instead left with a bottle of their “Fresh” white blend, which won us both over during the tasting.

As we’d pulled into Southbrook the weather had turned vile. Rather than visit one more we decided to take nature’s hint and just hit the road. When the rain comes in sideways, it’s time to go home. It was tough going just outside of Niagara on the Lake because of the driving rain, and then on the Skyway as we passed Hamilton the wind actually blew our car halfway into the next lane. All the dreary, windy driving made us both sluggish, so we dropped the wine, dropped the car, helped an Australian man figure out how to adjust the seat in his rental and happily deposited ourselves on our couch and admired our new wine collection.

13 bottles of wine, 3 great meals and a wonder of the world…not bad for 28 hours.

[     Rut     ] –> Me

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Wow. What a game. Tense. Awesome, but tense.

This past week was frenetic; I’ve definitely earned my day off tomorrow. We’re headed out for a wine excursion in Niagara-On-The-Lake, the first time we’ve left the city since we went to France last fall. The weather is supposed to be shit but I don’t care. I need this. And I need some good food. And I need some fresh air. And I need a comfy hotel bed.

And I need to be back for game five.