wining in Manhattan

(image by Scott Watson)

If you're hitting Manhattan anytime soon, check out the website Local Wine Events for wine tastings and classes during your stay. There is something wine-ish going on in NYC every night of the week, every week of the year.

I was there primarily on vacation last week, but managed a couple of entertaining evenings of wine and food surrounded by New Yorkers. As mentioned below, Unwind With Wine is a themed and regular wine and food appreciation event organized by Hanna Lee at the Jolly Hotel at 38th and Madison. Despite the fact that everyone in New York dresses like a million bucks to go out and get a paper, this event felt relaxed and casual. Hanna Lee is like an introducing machine, a classic American hostess who insists her guests not only speak to each other, but that they charm each other as well. I had it easy because I could play the Canada card, which always seems to go over well in this particular American city. 8 out of 10 New Yorkers have been to Toronto or know someone there, and no-one down there seems to mind so much that our basketball team can beat their basketball team without really trying.

Hanna Lee's wine club is a hidden vein of gold for single New York men as the crowd is primarily young, primarily female and entirely enjoyable to look at. Plus, everyone is there to drink and have a good time. Since there is always a speaker on hand to direct the crowd through the tasting, this is like a dinner date without the pressure to make conversation all the time. If you can manage the occasional witty aside, there's a lot of anxiety-free relaxation time.


Above, Hanna Lee, Chef Peled, Joanna Pruess and Bob Lape (image by John Degen)

There were between 50 and 60 people on hand last Tuesday evening as Unwind With Wine played host to a cookbook launch for Seduced by Bacon, by Joanna Pruess and Bob Lape. Five wines were paired with five different bacon-inspired plates, and if you're wondering how anyone can work that much bacon into a crowd of fit and health-conscious urbanites, you're not alone. The wine definitely helped, but all credit to the two foodies on hand and Chef Pnina L. Peled, who delivered a restrained tasting menu that was heavy on smoky flavours, but not overly filling.

I was still working off the first-night-on-the-town hangover from Monday evening when I sat down, so I'm sure I can't give a fair assessment of the chocolate-covered, bacon-dusted foie gras. I fear no food, but this was a challenge, and I frankly wouldn't have made it without having first downed a delicious glass of bubbly (Mionetta Prosecco di Valdobbiadene DOC) during the foyer reception.

Five other wines were on hand, two sparklers and three great big reds. Judging by how many people surreptitiously stole the leftover glasses of the fifth wine, it looked to be the room favorite. Quinta do Carmo Reserva 2003 a Portugese/French co-production with high alcohol (14%) and a smoky but subtle action, perfect for the evening's flavours. An earlier Amancaya Cab/Malbec 05 really showed its alcohol on the food, while the Tyrrell's Reserve McLaren Vale Shiraz 03 at 14.5% just about took off my head. Any one of these work nicely on their own but bacon is a real matching challenge. That said, the Shiraz with a seared scallop and bacon combo is nothing to turn away from any hangover. It is the hair of several dogs combined, and it works.

Two other Mionetto Proseccos, a Brut and a Rose had nice crisp fruitiness to clean everything out between courses.

...more later

called to the castle -- part two

Continued notes on the Le Clos Jordanne Pinot Noirs at the LCBO -- please see the first part of this posting below:

Ranging from $25 a bottle to $60 (which, again, I don’t manage to taste, though the bottle smells mighty fine), these new Canadian wines are a serious commitment for the average wine fancier. They are also seriously good wines, so viewed as an investment – one of those investments that will eventually turn to pee if used properly, keep in mind – you can’t lose.

The Village Reserve Pinot is the low end at $25. One of the other tasters in the room has a very convincing theory that this is the best buy simply because at the lowest price it is not significantly worse than the rest of the wines -- therefore bang for your buck, and all that. I agree, except that I like one of the $35 bottles (the Le Clos Jordan Vineyard Pinot) quite a bit better, and on a bottle for bottle (as opposed to case for case, at which point my colleague is way right) basis, I might choose to shell out the extra ten clams for what I would consider the more satisfying taste experience.

The Village Reserve is very pale but with a full earthy nose and good long structure. I think the key to all these wines is that they won’t tell you everything about themselves right off the top. You’ll pretty much need the entire glass (bottle?) to get to the bottom of the flavour profile, but if you like it you’ll know right away. I liked it.

My preference for the Clos Jordanne Vineyard is based on expression, more than on any particular fruit or flavour characteristic. There’s a bit more heat here; you breathe in slightly more alcohol off the top, I think, and it follows through with a dustier, firmer finish. All of these wines expertly blend earth and fruit, but this one is probably the earthier, or dirtier I’d say, with some mushroomy stuff near the end. It’s this dirtiness I’m attracted too, I think. If I’m going anywhere north of $15 for a wine, I want to feel like there’s more than just fruit juice in my glass.

This is also the reason I prefer the Clos Jordanne Vineyard to the Petite Vineyard Pinot (the 2nd of the $35 bottles). The Petite Vineyard is fruitier and less earthy, though it does have an attractive pepperiness up front. Same length, same fine dusty finish.

The final $35 bottle from Le Clos Jordanne, the Claystone Terrace Pinot distinguishes herself from her sisters with a subtle whiff of strawberries just under that first hit of forest floor. Really intriguing.

There are three Chardonnays on offer from this new winery as well (they make four, but the $35 Claystone Terrace Chardonnay was missing from the tasting). As with the reds, you’re not going to go wrong with any of these, and they range from a pricey-yet-worth-it $25 to an even-pricier-and-more-worth-it $55. The word that keeps hitting me with all of these wines is subtle. There’s a lot going on in the glass, yet it's not at all busy or confused. The Le Grand Clos Chardonnay ($55) has honey on the nose, but then is dry and balanced and moves your mouth through soft, shifting fruits to a refreshing finish.

Le Clos Jordanne is more a story than a wine right now. Everyone is waiting to see how they will market, how they will sell and what the wine world will have to say about Canada’s Burgundies. The general mood in the small white room at the LCBO suggests these first wines won’t be around long after they launch, so get yourself a taste of them any way you can.

called to the castle

(image by John Degen)

I’m at the Liquor Control Board of Ontario’s head office to get an advance taste of Le Clos Jordanne Pinot Noirs and Chardonnay. Le Clos Jordanne is a Niagara cooperative effort between Canadian firm Vincor and the Burgundy house Boisset, and they are getting set to release their 2004s, the first commercial release of wines from this experiment in true Burgundy-style wine making in Canada. The release is in March.

A frigid, windblown walk from the streetcar brings me to the LCBO’s industrial gothic pile by the lake, and after signing in (twice), I’m escorted to a tasting room by Vintages catalogue writer David Churchill, an easy-going, inviting guy whose ‘office job’ is to taste and assess some of the world’s best wines and liquors. He seems happy.

The third floor of the LCBO head office is as bureaucratic and corporate an atmosphere as you’ll find in bureaucratic and corporate Toronto. After all, the LCBO is the world’s largest wholesale purchaser of alcohol – a huge, multi-billion dollar business, with all that entails. Security guards, glass doors, quiet corridors, warren rows of office cubicles with the occasional cluster of low-talking co-workers huddled together for human comfort. I remember my corporate writing days at Sun Life Financial. I try to memorize the way out, but quickly lose my way.

David leads me through a white door into a starkly lit small white room that smells like the plastic bucket I’ve been making homekit wine in for the last few years. Sour and airless. Everything is white or silver. There are several sinks and plenty of instructive posters on the wall. It’s high school science class all over again, only with booze. There’s a few other tasters there already, kibitzing and laughing, their noses never far from a glass. Stainless steel spit canisters stand at the ready. The walls are lined with racks of wine glasses, and the white counter tops contain the latest LCBO releases, all opened and ready. Outside the windows, traffic races by on the Gardiner and the downtown canyons smoke in frigid air.

(image by John Degen)

I feel like a rent-a-goalie in the change room before a game. No one knows me; no one knows what I do or how well (or poorly) I do it. Worse yet, it’s clear to me I’m the only non-expert in the room. And yet, there are all those open bottles and a wall full of empty glasses. What else is there to do? I grab a relatively empty spit canister and work my way through the seven available Le Clos Jordanne bottles. There’s actually eight in the room but one, the $60 Grand Clos Pinot Noir, is empty. I’ve arrived at the tail end of a tasting, and it’s clear which bottle received the most concentrated attention. Lesson learned.

To be continued…

first taste of industry

I attended a trade tasting of Napa Valley CA wines yesterday, and had my eyes opened about the wine industry and related pursuits in Canada. What a mob scene --perhaps not all that surprising considering the event was a room full of wine and cheese. I've been to a lot of trade shows in my time, but this was my first at which the attendees were encouraged to spit in strategically placed buckets. I haven't quite worked up the nerve to do that in public, and as a result I walked out of the event a lot looser than when I walked into it.

Hosted by the Napa Valley Vintners association, the tasting showcased recent releases, some of which (if not all) I assume will be available for purchase in Canadian liquor stores and fine restaurants. My notes show me tasting 20 of approximately 70 bottles in the room, and as might be expected I discovered quite a spectrum from I never want to think about this wine again, to now we're talking.

Quickly then, keep an eye out for the 2005 Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc from Peju. Both very fragrant, expressive wines that act with great subtlety in the mouth. There was a lot of clumsily sweet white wine in the room. Peju, in my opinion, has produced some superior whites.

Heitz Wine Cellars 2001 Cabernet Sauvignon, Martha's Vineyard is a winner, but my favorites overall in the room were the 02 Cab Sauv and the 03 Merlot from Stag's Leap Winery. Both very full, very subtle wines with great staying power and a beautiful balance of spice and fruit.

I was pleased to meet Tony Aspler as he wandered the floor, and I'm grateful to him for pointing me in the direction of one of the finer wines in the room.

Quick note: I have started reading Natalie MacLean's book, Red, White and Drunk All Over, and will report on it fully here on the blog. So far it has many promising elements -- dusty old wine cellars and an honest admission of wine anxiety. Very entertaining.

Ontari-ari-ario

I come to the world of wine from the world of writing and publishing, and to work in writing and publishing in Canada is to understand at a visceral level the limitations of the Canadian marketplace. I've written elsewhere that the 44% market share Canadian wine 'enjoys' in its own country is actually an impressive figure seen through the lens of Canada's cultural industries. Our most successful domestic cultural product -- magazines -- currently struggles to maintain 45% of the real estate on Canadian newsstands (and those are the better newsstands), while Canadian films are regularly shown on less than 5% of Canadian movie screens.

Living and working in this reality quickly turns a person into a booster, or 'homer' in sports phraseology. Even while researching my very first wine article from last year, I could feel my inner homer awakening. Why shouldn't Canadian wines be considered as good, if not better than all that foreign product crowding my liquor store shelves? At one point during my recent friendly weekend tasting (see previous posting), one of my gang used the word Ontario as a negative and I felt the burn of injustice. Another taster wrote Ontari-ari-ario as a note, recalling the slightly embarassing place to stand, place to grow days of Ontario pride. I've no doubt this is an unconscious prejudice in my friends, built on early cheap wine experiences from twenty years ago, and a palate now trained by a somewhat homogenized mass market. Unconcscious or not, it persists, despite a revolutionized Canadian industry producing excellent wines.

The Henry of Pelham Reserve Riesling (2003) we tried on the weekend was clearly not to everyone's taste, yet it was the bottle to which I returned most often because its complexity revealed something new to me with every sip. It was also popular, perhaps not surprisingly, with the only citizen of Switzerland in the farmhouse.

Here are my notes on the Pelham:

Henry of Pelham Reserve Riesling (2003 -- $13.95 LCBO)

A deep straw colour. Surprisingly strong evergreen with some lime. More pine on the tongue with grapefruit. Medium body with a satisfyingly crisp finish.

I took a glass of the Riesling with me when I walked the dog around the yard and the crisp fresh air made it even better.

the smell of the country

I took my column research to some friends' farmhouse this weekend. James and Laurel have an idyllic little place north of Lake Ontario a way out east of Toronto, and they'd invited folks up for a last bit of holidaying. With the mild winter we're having in Ontario, the weekend felt more like early spring than early new year. We took a long walk in woods that would normally be knee deep in snow by now, breathed a lot of clean air, and marvelled at how green everything still is in January. There were eight of us altogether, plus a dog and two cats. Plus wine -- lots of wine -- and a little bit of Czech Absinthe that maybe should have stayed in its pretty bottle.

I have an idea about my April column, and wanted to work out some tasting details, so I brought three white wines with me, chilled them appropriately in the unheated garage, and then set them out on a sideboard in the dining room. We had a Saint Bris Sauvignon Blanc, a Sancerre and an Ontario Riesling (full notes later once I've figured things out). I provided everyone with evaluation sheets, and a cheat sheet lexicon of white wine tasting notes. We had local goat cheese and crackers to sustain us. Over the next hour we eight circled James' handmade harvest table, holding our glasses to the windows, sniffing deeply, sipping, and checking in with each other on just how much cat urine, cut grass or gooseberry we were getting from the wines. One bottle emerged a clear winner, but none of them escaped unemptied, and I got just exactly the impression I'd been looking for from the exercise.

My favorite tasting note from the afternoon was from Kim, who wrote down "mop 'n glo." And once she'd said it, we all tasted it. And while some never returned to that bottle, others found the piney fresh scent a perfect accompaniment to the location and atmosphere. I learned that my critical perception of wine is sharpened immensely by having others drink it and discuss it with me.

Later we switched to Laurel's collection of reds, while we ate homemade tortiere and chicken-and-stuffing pie with rhubarb chutney. By the time the absinthe came out, the music was very loud and we were playing no-mercy crocinole in front of a fire in the family room. Really, a perfect evening.

On the way up to the farm, I had listened to a radio show from Niagara, and heard Debbie Zimmerman, CEO of the Grape Growers of Ontario speculating about this global-warming winter of ours and whether or not there will be anything left to press out of the ice-wine grapes by the time the temperature drops low enough for harvesting. On a more positive note, she mentioned that the regular 2006 grape harvest in Ontario was the second largest on record.

happier than that

The Adam Gopnik article I've linked to over there on the right is just one illustration of how the world of wine can be fraught with anxiety and confusion. So too the world of wine writing. There is an implicit choice to be made every time you stick your nose in a glass, a side to be taken. Will I react (and write) as an expert, grading wines on a numerical scale, or will I refuse to quantify my enjoyment of wine and focus instead on the art of the trade.

I've written about politics long enough to know that at some level choosing sides is for suckers; and I don't know enough about wine to make such a choice. So I won't. I will attempt, over and over, to answer one question. What does wine do for me?

Yesterday evening, at the liquor store, I stopped in the tasting room to try a couple of new arrivals I'd seen in the Vintages catalogue. I had my notebook with me, and some numerical grading evaluation sheets I'd downloaded. I took my two glasses, a Poggia al Tufo Rompicollo 2004, and a Monsanto Chianti Classico Riserva 2003 off to a side table because tasting in front of a line of other shoppers makes me feel self-conscious.

I'd had one glance, sniff and taste of the Poggia al Tufo and was trying to settle on the early impressions when a young woman approached me. She and her husband/boyfriend had been at the tasting bar, and had tried this wine as well, but couldn't decide on it. What were my impressions of it?

Here we were, fully immersed in a stew of wine anxiety. This woman was not confident enough in her own taste impressions to make a decision on the wine, and I was certainly not confident enough in one quick taste to have anything intelligent to say to her. As well, when she asked her question she was looking down at my evaluation sheet. She was looking not just for someone else's opinion, but for authority. She wanted me to be an expert for her. Finally, her boyfriend had not approached with her. He remained at the bar, and I thought I saw a scowl.

Here's what I said:

"Well, that was the very first taste I had of this new wine, but here is something I noticed. The very first smell of it has a strong lush fruit, like ripe raspberry, which is why the first taste surprised me because that fruit did not come through. Instead it has a much lighter body than I expected and is quite tannic. But I like that."

And then, in the pause while she considered my opinion... "Does that help?"

"Actually," she said, smiling widely, "that was a perfect description of what I tasted as well. Thank you."

So, now go back and reread Gopnick on the power of suggestion in wine tasting.

I was certainly being tested. Did I get it exactly right? Who knows? I was just giving my honest first impression. So what does wine do for me? It gives me a moment when I can impress a woman right in front of her boyfriend, for whatever reason.

And that's enough for now.