Cheers

In March 2007, I will begin a regular wine column in the excellent TORO Magazine, a Canadian men's lifestyle title regularly featuring Canada's best writers and photographers. As column space is naturally limited, this blog will function to collect, ferment and clarify my research and musings on wine -- the drink, the product, the style, the industry, the science, the politics and the culture.

I approach the column not as a "wine expert;" rather I am a learned amateur, a sometime hobbyist winemaker, a fearless questioner and well-practiced consumer. In 2006, I wrote a long feature about unconventional wine-producing regions for Cottage Life magazine. The research for that article opened up the world of wine to me, and just about took off the top of my head. The novelist in me was captured by the characters, stories and crazy plots I uncovered in my travels around Ontario wine and cottage country.

I can't promise comprehensive tasting notes or a typical wine vocabulary, but I do promise if something strikes me as particularly interesting about wine, I will present it here in as engaging a way as possible.

I will also, where possible, link to all my published writing on wine. To start, there's a snip of my Cottage Life article at this link. And here is a blog piece I wrote for THIS Magazine.

Check out the links section over there to the right. I am indebted to the wisdom and expertise of all the good folks behind those links, particularly the witty Richard Best and the totally insane Larry Paterson. I hope my column lives up to their sometimes disparate and always exacting standards.

Enjoy.