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Allen’s Steak Festival 2012

16 Feb

I have always imagined John Maxwell, proprietor of Allen’s, as the most urban of men, a boulevardier very much at his ease in Manhattan, London’s West End or deepest Toronto. Perhaps he might occasionally be found in a wide-open space but only if it were the location of a rally of vintage Jaguar motor cars. How wrong I was. We can see from the photograph he kindly sent me that Mr. Maxwell is just as much at home in a cow pasture, especially when visiting his own herd of Dexter cattle. He acquired them last year, he tells me, and visits them, often, at their home on Wyatt Farm organics, Flamborough Centre, Ont. Dexters are one of Europe’s oldest domesticated breeds and they produce fabulously good steak, lean as venison when finished on grass and hay.

But don’t take my word for it. You can taste Dexter carpaccio, striploin, ribeye and bone-in rib from Maxwell’s own herd as part of the Steak Festival at Allen’s on the Danforth. It runs until February 25, so there is still time to indulge in the most fascinating forensic exploration of steak you will ever encounter. Maxwell assembles meat from animals personally chosen by himself from a number of different farms – many different breeds of cow, the creatures raised and then finished on many different feeds, the meat aged for many different lengths of time. Most are raised in Ontario but there is also an example of Angus from Prince Edward Island’s increasingly popular and delectable beef program, as well as bison from Quebec, USDA Prime Hereford from Nebraska and “Kobe” Wagyu-Angus from Alberta. Comparisons are encouraged.

Alongside this majestic menagerie is a dazzling wine list comprised of rare and old vintages of Ontario VQA wine. Here are bottlings you won’t find anywhere else – Reif’s Tesoro from 1995, the best vintage of the last century, Cave Spring’s superb 2005 La Penna, Hidden Bench’s 2007 La Brunante, Chateau des Charmes Equuleus going back to 2001, even a 2002 Zweigelt Reserve from Pelee Island Winery, a wine I have never tasted.

Anyone who claims to know about steak and wine has a moral obligation to participate in this amazing event. Allen’s is at 143 Danforth Avenue (as if you didn’t already know) and reservations are strongly recommended. 416 463 3086. www.allens.to/.

 
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Posted in Drink, Events, Extravaganzas, Life in General, Restaurants, Toronto, Wine

 

Writers Tears

02 Feb

I believe in the social benefits of taxation. It’s how those of us who are lucky enough to find jobs can still hold up our heads in a Canada that is being split increasingly cynically into the haves and the have-nots by the Harper government’s divisive policies. Taxation is also responsible for a delicious Irish whiskey I tasted this week. It’s called Writers Tears (the link with the far right’s disdain for the liberal arts is another curious coincidence) and it will be launched at the LCBO on March 3rd, so dip your quills into your bottle of emerald-coloured ink and scratch a shamrock onto that particular square of your calendar. There was a time in the 19th century when Irish malt whiskey ruled the world, accounting for 90 percent of the whiskey or whisky exported from the British Isles. The Westminster government noticed and decided to tax Irish malt whiskey. The response of the Irish distillers was to add lots of unmalted barley into the mash that would end up in their pot stills, to be distilled three times in the labour-intensive way that distinguishes Irish from almost every Scotch.

In 1831, a much more efficient kind of still (the Coffey or patent still) was invented by an Irish excise man called Aeneas Coffey. It produced cleaner, lighter, more insipid spirits and these grain spirits were welcomed by the Scots as a way of lightening single malt Scotch into blended Scotch. There was an outcry in Ireland both from the malt whiskey aficionados and those who enjoyed the recent whiskeys made from malt and unmalted barley. For the rest of the century, the major distillers refused to use the Coffey spirits, remaining loyal to the whiskeys now known as Pure Pot Still. But the world moved on. Especially the world of export commerce. Accountants and auditors had no time for character and loyalty. Gradually Coffey-still whiskeys began to encroach into the old-school Irish spirits. The poets – and Ireland is nothing if not a land of poets – called out in favour of the old ways, but the sons of Fomor prevailed. Blended whiskeys and malt whiskeys supplanted all but a very few examples of the Pure Pot Still style. (I had better add here that I love almost all Irish whiskey and have no personal objection to this lush and infinitely variable blending, except when wearing the tragedian’s mask required for this particular story).

Anyway, the point is that right now we have a lovely opportunity to taste an Irish whiskey that is free of those leavening grain spirits. Writers Tears is a rich and very unusual blend of Pure Pot Still whiskey and pure Irish single malt whiskey from the same company that makes a premixed Irish Coffee beverage and a single malt Irish whiskey called the Irishman, though you won’t find that name on this bottle. Go to the web site however, and you’ll see a picture of Bernard Walsh, who founded and owns the company with his wife, Rosemary. Walsh has access to some fabulous spirits produced by Irish distillers which he purchases and vats into his own blends. Irishman 70, Walsh’s creation from a few years back, was a similar spirit to Writers Tears, that is to say a blend of Pure Pot Still and malt whiskey but with a considerably higher proportion (70 percent) of malt.

            The first thing you notice about Writers Tears is the lovely round body and full rich flavour. Not only is this uncut by cleaner, lighter spirits, it is also allowed to go into the bottle without being chill-filtered. So if it sometimes shows a haze under cool conditions, it has lost none of its original nuances. The aroma reminds me of honey and marmalade streaking the fruity barley. There’s a hint of citrus in the flavour too and an initial flourish of spicy, malty sweetness that quickly leaves the stage to drier, firmer characters. The honey-marmalade comes back as a pianissimo echo of the aroma to provide the final moments of a decently long finish.

            It’s lovely stuff, in other words, and a must-have bottle for anyone who collects Irish whiskeys. Look for it in the Vintages March 3rd release (VINTAGES 271106, 700 mL, $47.95).

 
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Posted in Drink, Life in General, Spirits and Beers

 

Winners of the 2011 Winetasting Challenge!

31 Jan

The news is out. The winners of the 2011 Winetasting Challenge have been announced.

The Challenge was created in 2004 as part of The Renaissance Project, brainchild of Felice Sabatino of Via Allegro Ristorante, to celebrate and encourage excellence in our wine service industry. It was a huge success and, as the competition grew, Brock University’s Cool Climate Oenology and Viticulture Institute was appointed as the organizing, presenting and auditing body in 2005. It is now the most unique and largest wine tasting competition in the world, with the largest prize purse of its kind in the world – upwards of $100,000 including cash, trips, Spiegelau stemware and scholarships.

In the Challenge’s early days, Toronto Life was a media sponsor, an association that has since been dissolved but which made me proud when I was still involved with the magazine. I particularly liked the fact that the competition was open to anyone, professional and amateur, and that no entry fee was required. That is still the case. The event is operated by volunteers and all awards and competition expenses (venue, food, wines, etc.) are provided courtesy of the sponsors. In a healthy spirit of competition, neither The Renaissance Project nor CCOVI keeps or publishes any individual scores. Only the names of the winners and runner-ups for each of the categories are announced.

            It’s a very tough competition – as it should be with so much at stake. All the wines and spirits are presented ‘double blind’ (purchased and at the competition, pre-poured out of sight by “bonded” representatives from CCOVI at Brock University) the “challenge” is to correctly identify the grape varietal, country, region of origin and vintage from a diverse range of world wines. The professionals try to identify seven wines while the amateurs attempt to identify three wines. There are two supplementary rounds where (1) three VQA wines are presented double blind and (2) three spirits are presented double blind.

            You can find out much more and see a list of the noble sponsors who make all this possible at the Challenge’s website, http://winetastingchallenge.com/.

Peter Boyd has something to sing about tonight

            And so to business:

1st Prize, professional: Peter Boyd, Sommelier at Scaramouche and an Instructor with the International Sommelier Guild, songwriter and preternaturally gifted blues musician.

2nd Prize, professional: Jonathan Salem-Wiseman, Professor at the Humber School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, winner of 1st Prize, amateur in 2010.

3rd Prize, professional: Eugene Mlynczyk, Key Account Manager, Sales at Vincor Canada.

1st Prize, amateur: Anthea deSouza

2nd Prize, amateur: Jordan Mills

3rd Prize, amateur: Monika Janek

Spirit Champion: Mark Coster, familiar to all as a contributing writer at Good Food Revolution.

CCOVI VQA Challenge Champion: Peter Bodnar Rod, Director of sales and marketing at 13th Street Winery and the Director Online education, Wine Industry Liaison at the International Sommelier Guild. He was also the first Grand Award winner of the Challenge, back in 2004.

            Huge congratulations to them all!

 
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Massey College Wine Grazing Italy

22 Jan

 

To Massey College for the annual Wine Grazing, where 100 junior and senior fellows of the graduate college get together to roam between the library and the Junior Common Room, tasting lovely wines and the delectable dishes matched to them. I’m honoured to be a part of the event, helping to choose and introduce the wines and figure out the food.

This year our theme was Italy, dalle Alpi in Africa – “from the Alps to Africa.” When Sabrina Bandali, head of the Massey College Wine Committee, and I started planning the evening, almost a year ago, we envisaged a neat and tidy, scientific comparison between the wines of northern Italy and of southern Italy. To put it into zoological terms, we would find the wine that filled the same gastronomic niche in either region and taste them side by side. But Italy has a way of interposing itself, muddling our precise northern intentions. Last summer, we came across a white wine from Tuscany – in the middle of the country – just where we had intended to fold our map – that would not be denied. Like an actress auditioning far too hard for a part, this bianco threw herself onto the table and began to emote until we had to include her. It was the same story for our dessert wine. I had cherished plans to pitch a northern recioto di Soave against a southern Zibibbo – but the same thing happened. Another ravishing Tuscan – more mature, undeniably eccentric, but no less mesmerising – bewitched us again. And then Sardinia shot up its hand, reminding us that Italy has islands too. So our tidy north-south plan turned into a fairly chaotic race around the country. In other words, much more Italian in mood as well as matter. And how could it be otherwise? There are more than 2,500 different grape varieties in Italy, with as many as 600 of them used in a serious, commercial way. I think we work with around 20 varieties in Canada. Choosing 10 Italian wines to represent the country was always going to be a challenge.

We started with a sparkling wine from the north – from Franciacorta in Lombardy, to be precise – a charming, ephemeral bubbly, Ca’ del Bosco’s NV Cuvée Prestige (agent: Lifford Wine Agency). There have been vineyards in Franciacorta, where the Padana plain suddenly bumps into the foothills of the Alps, since Roman times but the idea of using them for sparkling wine is only about 35 years old. Ca’ del Bosco was one of the pioneers, the creation of a teenager fresh out of oenology school, a young man called Maurizio Zanella. He had fallen in love with Champagne and didn’t see why it couldn’t be grown in Lombardy. Fortunately, his family was immensely wealthy – his dad one of Italy’s largest auto parts manufacturers – so the project came to pass, with Chardonnay, Pinot Nero and Pinot Bianco planted in tight rows in the French way and a cellar built where Zanella could mimic the méthode Champenoise. That’s what we drank last night – classic, fresh, crisp Franciacorta bubbly with a nose of green apple and melon, a soft supple mousse that doesn’t last long and a streak of minerality in the finish. It’s still a rarity in Canada, something the millionaires who own the country clubs in that part of Italy like to keep to themselves. We matched it with a parmesan crisp to catch the wine’s buttery, yeasty nuances, and a slice of fresh apple to mirror the fruit.

After that we divided the crowd into two groups of 50 and sent the first cohort up to the library to begin the Grazing proper. We started with Tiefenbrunner’s 2010 Pinot Grigio (agent: Rogers & Company), a stunner from the Alto Aldige, that amazingly beautiful area that used to be part of Austria until 1919. The Adige river has carved a profound valley through the Alps and temperatures get as hot as Sicily there during the summer but when you look up –up –up you can still see snow on the tops of the mountains thousands of feet closer to heaven. There are Gothic schlosses, and little alpine stuben where you can get lunch, and some terrific white wines. Vineyards have been planted there since pre-Roman times. Hilde and Herbert Tiefenbrunner started making wines at Schloss Turmhof in 1968 and today they are one of the great bastions of quality in the Alto Adige. This Pinot Grigio had a fairly subtle nose, like yellow plums, but there was so much more texture to it than one might expect – a creaminess balanced by tangy acidity. Those yellow plums are there on the palate too but then it suddenly finishes with an unexpected flourish of peppery spice.

            Alongside the Pinot we poured Silvio Carta’s Badde Alva 2009 Vermentino from Sardinia (find it at Vintages). Vermentino is a lovely, lively, aromatic white grape that loves the climate around Corsica, Sardinia and the Ligurian coast, an enthusiasm it is easy to share when one recalls the sparkling Mediterranean, the cloudless skies and the landscape of yellow hills covered with a herb-scented macchia that gioves way here and there to olive groves and vineyards. Silvio Carta is a family firm based in the Orestano region on the western coast of Sardinia, a relaxed and easygoing place after the bustle of the Alto Adige.

            For these two wines, the brilliant Darlene Naranjo, who is in charge of Massey’s talented kitchen, created something consciously simple, a jumble of boiled potatoes and fresh arugula stirred with grated Piave cheese and plenty of Olio Carli’s super olive oil. The peppery arugula and the oil picked out the citrus element in the Pinot Grigio beautifully while the less acidic Vermentino provided a richer liaison with the food. The crowd appeared to be delighted with the match.

            Our second station also featured two whites, starting with Donna Chiara’s 2010 Greco di Tufo from Campania (agent: The Case for Wine). I love Greco di Tufo. It’s a deceptive wine, appearing rather shy on its own but proving surprisingly self-possessed when you pour it alongside food. We provided a salad of shaved squid and pine nuts liberally dressed with parsley, lemon and olive oil, and the wine rose to meet it. Donna Chiara does something unusual with its Greco, harvesting it late so there’s more flavour and body than usual – a tad less crisp acidity. It was a dazzlingly good marriage.

            The other white at the table was Frescobaldi’s Castello di Pomino 2010 Bianco, a blend of Chardonnay and Pinot Blanc from Tuscany (agent: Lifford Wine Agency). It’s fascinating to see how Chardonnay changes when it gets to central Italy. That uptight, chic, blonde Burgundian ice-queen in the Hermes scarf lets her hair down. It’s still a tightly woven wine but fragrant with peach and a good splash of oaky spice from Frescobaldi’s barrel program. We decided it deserved a salad of its own – grilled asparagus (that picked out the oakiness in the wine) tossed with mushrooms and fennel that isolated some unexpected herbal notes behind the fruit.

            Many of our guests were waiting for the big reds and we plunged deeply in for our next station, whizzing back northwards along the autostrada to Piemonte and Barolo country – steep, up-and-down hills smothered in tightly planted vineyards that look like green corduroy from a distance, the deep valleys filled with white fog on autumn mornings. This is the land of white truffles and of many fabulous red wines, the king of them all being Barolo made from late-ripening, tannic, perfumed – amazingly complex Nebbiolo grapes. In very old age, Barolos are spectacularly beautiful – the colour of orange Victorian brickwork, fragile and heady with the scent of old-fashioned roses. Our Barolo, however, was revelling in the vigour of youth, Fontanafredda’s 2005 Serralunga d’Alba (agent: Noble estates Wines & Spirits). It had a robust acidity with lots of spicy tannins coming in at the end of the palate, but there was so much going on in terms of aroma and flavour – ripe cherries and old oak furniture, the smell of walking through oak woods on a warm afternoon. We served a rich dish of fresh pasta with dried porcini mushrooms and a cream reduction, topped with shredded prosciutto. The richness of the food and the austere structure of the wine cancelled each other out letting the mushrooms find their proper place among the woodsy aromas of the Barolo. A smashing fit.

            Our second red wasn’t quite so well-balanced with the dish but it stood out magnificently on its own, Planeta’s Santa Cecilia 2007 Nero d’Avola from Sicily (agent: Halpern Enterprises). The ancient Greeks brought this grape to Sicily and it settled right in like a native, quite at home in the parched landscape, though it ripens very late, sometimes not until November. Back in the 1990s, when Diego Planeta and a group of other talented pioneers set out to revitalize the island’s wine industry, Nero d’Avola was a natural, native star for them to work with. Planeta bought land in the south-east, far from his own western estates, simply to flatter the grape and it responded beautifully. The wine is profound and opaque, almost black, full of the scent of black and red currants, oak and spice and shoe leather (though it’s Ferragamo shoe leather of the very finest quality), and underneath darker forces are at play – espresso and dark chocolate and a hint of burnt caramel.

            Our next station presented two more red masterpieces, starting with Tenute Girolamo’s 2008 Aglianico (agent: Liberty Wines). Some say Aglianico is another ancient Greek grape; others that it was already here in southern Italy when the Greeks arrived. Either way it is the great red of the south – making Taurasi wines around Avellino and Aglianico del Vulture in Basilicata where it grows on the slopes of the volcano Monte Vulture. Tenute Girolamo brought it over the regional norder into north-western Puglia into a green valley deep in the mountains. In its youth, this wine has been described as dark and feral like the howling of the wolves that still roam these central mountains. This one had mellowed a little but it still spoke of wild places – forests of juniper and smoky evergreens, bramble thickets and dried black fruits, pepper and spice, liquorice and dark chocolate. It has become one of my current favourite reds and I’m delighted it will be appearing at the LCBO any day now.

            Up against it was a super Amarone Riserva, the 2005 vintage from Zenato (agent: J. Cipelli Wines & Spirits). I’m sure I don’t have to tell you about Amarone, how it’s pressed from grapes that have spent the winter drying out on trays, how the sweet, sticky juice slowly ferments itself dry without losing those ripe, raisiny flavours. The 2005 Zenato is a beauty, though it required a little palate-reconfiguration after those three dark, well-structured powerhouses – as if you had spent the evening listening to three very tall, stern and humourless maths teachers in their academic gowns, one after the other, and then suddenly came upon the English professor, sitting by the fire in an old tweed suit, smiling serenely… Do not be fooled! There is an intellect behind that warm and fuzzy manner. And the amarone provided the defining match of the evening, brilliant with our dish of juniper-spiked venison stew served with soft polenta and side orders of hot roasted chestnuts and peperonata.

And so to our finale, Badia a Coltibuono’s 2004 Vin Santo from Tuscany. Vin Santo is made in lots of places in Italy – I’ve had some brilliant ones in Udine, up by the Slovenian border, and some very strange specimens farther south – but Tuscany is surely its homeland. Like an amarone, it is made from dried grapes – but white grapes, usually trebbiano, malvasia and occasionally grechetto. The grapes are hung up in bunches for the winter rather than spread on trays, then they’re pressed and the syrupy juice goes into small barrels made of chestnut or oak where they are left to ferment very slowly, for years. Never topped up, there is loss to evaporation – the angels taking their share. It’s not unlike what happens to whisky. Yeasts die at 18 percent alcohol so that’s the strength these wines reach, usually, though not always, leaving plenty of sugar behind. Our version was simply magical, its nose suggesting everything from dried apricots and raisins to Scotch whisky, instant coffee powder and toffee. Darlene baked some almond-apricot biscotti to go with the Vin Santo and I urged our civil gathering to dunk them into the wine. I suppose it is indecorous to then try to suck the Vin Santo out of the sodden biscuit but it’s hard to resist doing so; better to just bite off the wet bit and enjoy it. I don’t really know why but it’s something that always gives me an enormous, almost visceral pleasure.

            So the gathering ended but no one really wanted to go home. Roberto Martella, co-owner of Grano and Italy’s unofficial cultural ambassador, was there. He had been a huge help all year, suggesting wines and making key introductions to agents on behalf of the Committee – such a generous soul. Brunello Imports provided a loot bag of Rustichella d’Abruzzo pasta for everyone to take home. Any day now, we’ll start thinking about a theme for next year’s gathering.

 
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Four pre-Christmas treats and one post-

19 Dec

Liquored salmon belly at Starfish Oyster Bed: is Patrick McMurray a genius or what?

STARFISH liquored salmon belly. My wife chose Starfish for her birthday dinner over the weekend and the ever-hospitable owner and oyster-genius Patrick McMurray surprised us with his latest invention – liquored salmon belly. He was thinking about the salmon he gets – organic Irish salmon of the highest calibre – and what to do with it… Cure it? But how? With some kind of brine… And what is the purest brine – and always available at Starfish? The ocean water trapped inside the shell of each living oyster. He had some gorgeous Welsh oysters from Anglesey to hand – grown in almost the same water in which that Irish salmon swam when it was pink and carefree in the glory of its youth. Salmo salar! The leaper! The selfsame fish whose avatar once dwelt in a secluded pool on Ireland’s River Boyne, nourished by the hazelnuts of knowledge as they plopped into the water from the tree of wisdom until that salmon was the wisest of all creatures. Alas, not smart enough to elude Patrick McMurray. He opens the deep shell of a Welsh Menai Straits oyster, removes the oyster without losing the brine and lies two slices of the fish’s fatty belly into the viscous, salt-thickened water caught in the empty shell. He poses it on a coupe of crushed ice and sets the oyster itself beside it, still alive but beached on the other flatter half of its shell. The brine starts to cure the salmon – even a moment or two is enough to begin to turn that coral-coloured flesh pale and opaque. It tastes amazing! The soft, buttery salmon belly with that hit of ocean salt… The oyster fat and creamy with a cucumber, minerally finish… A very good reason to go to Starfish asap.

Interesting trivia fact: almost all British oystermen now have a bed or two dedicated to Pacific species! Why? Because their season lasts all year long. Indigenous British flats have distinct seasons and are periodically unavailable.

 

SOMA chocolatemaker Green Tangerine 66%. Proprietor-chocolatier David Castelan has an unerring sense of what constitutes the most delectable chocolate in the world. With this slender bar he blends sharp, fruity Madagascar Trinitario and Criollo beans, rendering a chocolate of 66% cacao content and flavouring it with essence of green tangerine. The chocolate is intense and fruitily acidic to begin with – but not as bitter as it would have been at, say, 70%. The green tangerine aroma/flavour is perfectly pitched – a citrus fruit that is more interesting than lemon or orange or grapefruit but less floral than yuzu or kumquat – the ideal chocolate corollary. I tried to make my dainty little 80-gram slab last until nightfall. Yeah right…

 

ALIMENTO is the new Italian gourmet emporium at 522 King Street West that took forever to open but is now up and running. Judging by the empty aisles and the empty chairs in the attractive mozzarella bar, it is still a well-kept secret but we went down and checked it out last weekend. There’s a charming décor of old wooden floors and extravagant displays of imported (and a few local) Italian treats. Great strengths: the salumi bar featuring dozens of fab Italian and Canadian meats, plus real Spanish Iberico ham at a very reasonable price. An impressive cheese selection. A predictably strong wall of Italian olive oils. Decent canned items, antipasti and pastries. Lots more… We ended up going home and cooking up a lunch from what we bought, built around a spectacularly good dried angel-hair egg noodle, Spinosini 2000. It cooks in two minutes and has a gorgeous grainy flavour. Our sauce was simplicity itself – sliced cremini mushrooms sautéed with finely chopped shallot, dried porcini reconstituted in chicken stock, pepper, plenty of cream and a tablespoonful of President’s Choice black truffle aioli. This last is a product that had been sitting in my fridge for a while, waiting to learn what its fate might be. I wasn’t sure whether it would have that rank, locker-room aroma that some truffle-flavoured products lend to a dish so I had hesitated to use it. As things turned out, it was surprisingly subtle, pleasing and just the ticket for our mushroom sauce – the sort of thing that disappears texturally in a sauce or dressing but leaves a ripe and poignant memory of truffle in the air.

 

ACE Christmas berry jam and fig bread. ACE bakery always does something special for the holidays. The berry jam is divine – like a rumtopf turned into jam with whole cranberries popping in a runny, spiced-up red-berry matrix. The fig bread is a tasty brown loaf with a good crunchy crust and great big dried figs in it. Slice it and toast it and your kitchen will smell like Christmas. The jam is great on the toasted bread – but so is a creamy blue cheese like Cambazola, spread quickly while the toast is still hot so that the cheese starts to soften and think about melting. Be merciful – scrunch – and put it out of its misery.

 

TOMMASI makes a single-vineyard Amarone Classico called Il Sestante (“The Sextant”) and it’s coming to Ontario in January, on the General List at around $39.95. It’s a beauty – old style amarone, which Tommasi does so well – complex and intense that will be perfectly delicious with a knob of parmiggiano reggiano or a well-hung grouse roasted and served with its own juices on toast or a firm slab of polenta. I was lucky enough to taste a preview bottle and I’m still smiling. It’s full of the sense of cold autumnal larch forests in the Italian pre-Alps, of liquorice and dark spicy honey, smoky firesides and cherries that have been spiced and preserved for months. The finish is all about dried figs and raisined grapes – sweet but dry, if you know what I mean – like a great amarone can be. Worth waiting for.

 
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Posted in Drink, Events, Life in General, Treats, Wine

 

The uses of icewine

17 Dec

Sue-Ann Staff unexpectedly attacked by a wine barrel

To Sopra for a lunchtime tasting of 18 icewines and a sort of live seminar of food-and-icewine matching organized by the Wine Council of Ontario for “Wine Country Ontario.” It turned out to be a fascinating few hours for the food-writing brigade and for the wine-writing fleet, who rarely get invited to the same event. Being neither fish nor fowl myself (I’ve always preferred to forage in the tidal areas where food and drink overlap) I know both groups. It was heartening to see how well they all got along, thanks, perhaps, to the charm and engagingly easy manner of our two hosts, Sue-Ann Staff, winemaker and proprietor of Sue-Ann Staff Estate Winery, who introduced the wines, and Jason Parsons, chef of Peller Estates. It was Parsons who determined the format of the tasting – taste nine icewines to demonstrate the range of the style, then nine more with accompanying food – some savoury dishes, some spicy, some sweet. The intention, of course, was to demonstrate that icewine had more versatility as a food wine than is generally thought to be the case. The experiment was a success.

            As chef of a winery, Parsons gets to play with icewine in the kitchen to his heart’s content. For January’s Icewine Festival, for example, he will marinate a whole sucking pig in icewine for two days before roasting it off. He also, famously and delectably, poaches lobster in icewine. Despite the fact that icewine is so very sweet (at least 35 brix – in other words, more than one third of the liquid is pure sugar (imagine that ratio in your cup of coffee)), this leaves neither meat inordinately sweet. Rather it brings out the natural sweetness of the pork or lobster. The very high acidity in icewine that balances all that concentrated sugar  has much more of an effect in the kitchen. Parsons even uses it to cure ceviche.

            It’s also the key in the dining room – as was demonstrated by the first confrontation. Sopra’s chef Massimo Capra had devised the menu but it was executed brilliantly for us by chef de cuisine Derek Von Raesfeld. Not every wine and food pairing was spectacular but there were more than enough bullseyes to allow the project to make its point. Here are the matches that impressed me most.

            A rich, smooth chicken liver paté coated in butter and strewn with grains of salt, served with a clove-scented, very sweet onion marmalade, was overpowered by two Riesling icewines (made me long for a Select Late Harvest) but was great with 2008 Harbor Estates Cabernet Franc Icewine. Why? The red icewine lacked the intensely tangy citrus kick of the Rieslings, offering red berry aromas instead and an illusion of lower acidity.

            Those two Riesling icewines worked much better with crumbled Bleu Elizabeth blue cheese served in a bitter endive leaf with dried cranberries. The sweetness of the wine and the intense saltiness of the cheese mute each other slightly, letting the wine’s fruit and the cheese’s more subtle flavours stand out. Like port and Stilton.

The spicy trio: (from left) duck confit with curried squash puree; seared scallop with chili butter honey glaze, chestnuts and carrot puree; slow-cooked Iberico pork cheek

            Icewine has a lovely ability to counterbalance intense spicing. Chef Parsons found this out by accident once when his kitchen accidentally over-spiced a piece of venison then sent it out into the dining room where he was introducing the match. The meat was too spicy to enjoy on its own, but paired with icewine, it worked beautifully.

So our next flight was of three spicy dishes with three different icewines. The epiphany was a duck confit with mostarda, curried squash purée, baby green cabbage leaves and caramelized roasted onions. All three icewines were delicious with it, each one muting what would otherwise have been an over-seasoned dish, but angels sang when I tasted the duck alongside Reif Estates Winery 2005 Vidal icewine. It reached right into my palate and dismantled the spicing in an extraordinary way, as if it were shining a bright yellow light on the recipe putting each flavour into sharp relief. But the same wine was too sweet and thick for another of the three savoury treats – a slow-braised Iberico pork cheek with chili-apple braised radish and spiced apple-celery salad. This time it was another red icewine, Hillebrand Showcase 2008 Cabernet Franc icewine, that lifted the spices away from the rich sweetness of the meat and spread them like a hand of cards.

The trio of desserts

            Throughout these experiments, the sweetness of the icewines was not an issue at all. The spicy seasoning or the saltiness of the food balanced the sugar out of the equation leaving the field to the acidity and the array of fresh fruit flavours that an icewine wears so beautifully.

            Three desserts had their own tales to tell. German apple cake with salted icewine caramel was overwhelmed by a young Riesling icewine, okay with a simpler Vidal icewine but absolutely lovely with an old icewine that had lost some of its sweetness and mellowed with age, the 1999 Mountain Road Company Vidal Icewine.

            Best match of this end of the meal was a pear poached in icewine and served with lots of dulce de leche and whipped vanilla mascarpone. This time the balance was absolutely perfect with the Peller Estates 2010 Vidal Icewine. I suspect that was the very wine in which the pear had been poached.

            In sum, everyone around the table agreed that our eyes had been opened to new uses for icewine beyond dessert. With blue cheese, certainly; with spicy duck; with richly braised and glazed meats. I’m tempted to open an icewine and try it with barbecued ribs or very hot buffalo wings. Could be interesting.

            Thanks to the Wine Council of Ontario for organizing the event and for the lovely parting gift – a white icewine aroma kit made by Wine Awakenings that contains samples of the 12 aromas most commonly found in white icewine, from passion fruit to raisins and caramel to kerosene. So interesting – and a good way to sharpen olfactory acuity. They will be on sale at Niagara wineries during the January Icewine Festival.

 
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Easton’s charcuterie + Lillet Rouge = *

27 Nov

Easton's - a meaty new star in the Market

A new store opened in Kensington Market about six weeks ago – Easton’s Charcuterie and Prepared Foods. It’s the brainchild of Derek Easton, formerly one of the team at Sanagan’s Meat locker, just around the corner on Baldwin, and its purpose is to provide the neighbourhood with an impressive variety of local charcuterie, artisanal deli meats and a superior line of house-made prepared foods. A veteran cook who worked at Mistura and Auberge du Pommier before specializing in meats, Easton has exactly the personal connections to find smashing product and, judging by the line-up at the till this afternoon, he has also found an eager clientele.

What does he offer? A couple of dozen different kinds of charcuterie to begin with, including real Parma prosciutto, Spanish chorizo and real, spectacularly delicious, garnet-coloured Serrano ham, all at bargain prices. Other treats, including gently spiced soppressata, pungently salty smoked duck prosciutto, wild boar prosciutto and richly flavoured venison sausage, come from Seed to Sausage, a small company north of Kingston, together with a wide range of the excellent salumi from Romagna Mia restaurant right here in Toronto.

Today's charcuterie - click on the blackboard to read it

Easton also makes super sandwiches (a brisket melt looked awfully tempting) and his partner, Jade Kay Pollack, provides a range of ready made South East Asian curries plus invaluable basics such as duck fat, veal demi glace, vegetable stock, duck confit, and many other delights. Jars of Bumpercrop preserved vegetables and pickles from McClure, out of Detroit, will also pry the coin from your pocket.

And what should one drink with this array of carnivorous treasures? I stumbled upon a most successful pairing – Lillet Rouge on the rocks. Lillet, of course, is that vermouth-like elixir from Bordeaux, best known for its white version (a key component of the Vesper, James Bond’s original Martini from Casino Royale). The red is just as delicious, mildly herbal, verging on sweet, tasting of red fruits shot through with bitter orange and a hint of quinine.

Somehow it works remarkably well with the charcuterie, zeroing in on the spicing in the sausages while supporting the natural sweetness of the meats and using its citrus element to soothe the saltiness. Lovely stuff.

Easton’s is at 61 Kensington Avenue, 416 518 0051. Tuesday to Saturday, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., Sunday noon to 6 p.m., closed Mondays.

 
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Parties for wine lovers

26 Oct

Everyone knows how good Prince Edward County bubbly is getting. It’s a style that suits the terroir perfectly and it’s going to grow in importance with every passing vintage. How to keep up with the latest wines and enjoy them at their very best? Here’s a great opportunity that also supports Slow Food the County. More details below, courtesy of Peter C. Fleming, chair of Slow Food the County:

 

Slow Food the County has changed the format for its annual fundraising event and announces a beginning of winter celebration of Sparkling Wine. Local sparkling wine producers and area chefs will partner to produce an evening of delectable bites each paired with its perfect liquid partner. Proceeds will go to supporting our ongoing food education activities, including the Healthy Lunch program and to other County food charities.

The gala event will take place on Saturday 19 November from 6:30 to 10:30 at Highline Hall in Wellington and will feature an auction of wine, art and other unique items as well as a chance to bid on dinner prepared in your home by one of our fine chefs. The event will feature music from the Lenni Stewart Jazz Trio.

Sparkling wine is a growing sector of the County wine industry with 8-10 sparkling wines now being produced in a variety of styles including méthode champenoise, méthode ancestral, Charmat and Prosecco. The following wineries have confirmed their participation – Huff Estates, The Grange of Prince Edward, Hinterland Estates, 3660 Vineyard and County Cider. Our chef partners are Michael Hoy, Heinz Haas, Sebastien Schwab, Luis de Sousa, David Dee, Paula and Victoria from Pasta Tavola and apprentice chefs from the Loyalist College hospitality program.

Tickets are $75 per person and are only available in advance. They can be purchased online at County Tix http://www.countytix.ca/events?view=list.

 And…

 Ottawa wine-writer Natalie MacLean is coming to town, on tour with her new book, Unquenchable, A Tipsy Quest for the World’s Best Bargain Wines. Natalie has so many devoted readers in print and online that she needs no endorsement from me but it’s rare to have a chance to meet her in person in Toronto. By way of a launch party, she’s hosting two events – the first being a multi-course gourmet dinner with matching wines at Grano Restaurant in Toronto on November 23. Anyone can go simply by buying a ticket and great food and wine, merriment and story-telling is guaranteed. More info can be found at http://bit.ly/GranoDinner. Call 416-361-0032 or email Ben McNally (ben@benmcnallybooks.com) to buy a ticket.
The day before, which would be November 22, according to my calculations, Natalie’s hosting a wine tasting in Niagara. More details on that at http://tktwb.tw/NiagaraWine.
Unquenchable is an excellent read, chronicling the travels of a perpetually curious and often thirsty wine writer, visiting great characters around the world and listening to their enthusiasms. Natalie’s writing is always vivid and entertaining so that one feels more like a travelling companion than a reader. For more information about the book and an amusing video trailer about it, please visit www.nataliemaclean.com/book.

 
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The Hennessys

16 Oct

Not sure how many people read Noël Coward’s short stories any more but I found a copy of The Complete Stories at a garage sale last week and have been enjoying them enormously. No one else describes children as “artificial-looking” or an elderly Englishwoman as “wriggling a little, like a dog waiting to have a ball thrown for it.” Somehow these tales read like loving parodies of Somerset Maugham, written by someone who wished he had the romantic sincerity to be Maugham but was far too witty and ironic for that to be possible. They are an absolute delight.

            As are the other two precious things on my desk tonight – a bottle of Hennessy Paradis and another of Richard Hennessy, both on loan from a kind friend and to be returned tomorrow. I have enjoyed many treats over the years but these two are right up there near the very pinnacle of treatdom, the Kanchenjunga of self-indulgence. Paradis is simply spectacular in its subtlety, complexity and length. It’s a blend of “several hundred” rare eaux-de-vie from the Hennessy archives, aged between 25 and 130 years old and first created in 1979 by Maurice Filioux, the company’s master blender at the time. The bottle before me was blended by Maurice’s grandson, Yann Filioux, from the seventh generation of the same family of Hennessy’s master blenders. Even as he bottles this batch, the man must be setting aside young spirits that his great-great grand-descendant will blend for future Paradis…

Richard Hennessy (left) and Paradis (right).

            It’s the length that impresses so much. It just lingers on the palate for ages and ages so there’s no need to raise the old crystal snifter again until at least ten minutes have ticked by. The aromas lifting into the room are very hard to describe. Like very good Cognac only much more so. I could list the fleeting impressions but it would be like a painting-by-numbers kit of some Turner masterpiece – not a great deal of use. Okay, there’s dried cherry and tangerine, spiced prunes and lots of floral notes… No, it’s no use. It just smells like sublime Cognac, as smooth and elegant as a silk dressing gown but rather more expensive at $652 a bottle.

            But bargains are relative. The other bottle beside me, Richard Hennessy, takes everything very much farther. It’s named for the Richard Hennessy who came across to France from Ireland and founded the house in 1765. This is a blend of over a hundred separate eaux-de-vie, some of them distilled in the early 19th century. Almost two hundred years old, in fact. Older than Napoleon (Napoleon III, that is, the emperor for whom “Napoleon Brandy” is named), and older than phylloxera – an astonishing time capsule that is somehow still vibrant and muscular. It costs about $6,000 and just to taste it is an extraordinary privilege. Some very old brown spirits (a handful of glorious old rums and whiskies, for instance) have a ribald, fruity old age, like Christmas puddings or plum cakes, beloved old grandpas sitting by the fire with excellent stories to tell and a twinkle in their eye. These superb antique Cognacs are more awe-inspiring than that – still so elegant, so powerful, so disciplined. The tales they tell are immortal truths, as plangent and as perfectly phrased as Mr. Coward’s dialogue.

            Hennessy is the biggest Cognac house, responsible for 40% of Cognac sold in the world. It’s important to them to be seen as more than just large and successful, however. Hence these two masterpieces, on sale at the LCBO right now and most handsomely packaged. I will never own a Turner or a snow leopard or a Caribbean island, but it’s good to know they exist.

 

 
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Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc

13 Oct

Time is a whirligig, says Feste in Twelfth Night. I think it’s a bit more complicated than that. An orrery, more like – with each mechanical planet spinning in its unique orbit around a brazen sun, now distant, now aligned. Sometimes thing coincide, apparently serendipitously, quite probably in an entirely random way, unless you happen to believe in Fate or God or other supernatures. This week was like that. First (and I wish I could tiptoe around this tragedy), France defeated England at the Rugby World Cup. BLOW WINDS AND CRACK YOUR CHEEKS, SPOUT , SPOUT YOU HURRICANOES… !! I know… I know. Hush, my love… There is no more to be said. Calma… Calma… It happened in New Zealand. So perhaps you can appreciate my surprise when a bottle of the new vintage of Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc appeared before me.

I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that this is THE wine that started the whole New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc thing, back in the late 1980s. I was brought up to appreciate Sauvignon Blanc as one of the two grapes in the holy partnership of dry white Bordeaux and sweet Sauternes and also as the tart, tight-lipped spinster responsible for Sancerre. Then, circa 1988, we uncorked a SB from New Zealand’s South Island – from Marlborough – and WOW! It was like bright green light streaming up from the glass, filling the room with the aroma of gooseberries and passion fruit, the very definition of the word “tangy.” We looked at the label – that vaguely Chinese depiction of tiered mountain ranges – Cloudy Bay. It had the romance – New Zealand was a very long way away – the opposite side of the world if you gazed into the brightly lit well at the Commonwealth Institute in Kensington (always a destination for birthday parties when I was about seven years old). It was also a really well-made wine, perfectly balanced, intense, gliding into a long vibrant finish. The French have drifted slyly towards the style, without admitting it, and a bunch of Sancerres are now much more fruit-forward and generous than they ever were before New Zealand made its mark on the world. Meanwhile, other NZ SBs have lured us, priced at about a quarter of the dollars demanded by Cloudy Bay. But there’s something to be said for the original.

I was lucky enough to spend a couple of days at Cloudy Bay back in 1997, when Kevin Judd was still the winemaker. They put me up in the “Shack,” an extremely comfortable bungalow surrounded by lush gardens (only the English are more conscientious gardeners than the New Zealanders) on the edge of the vineyards. England’s cricket team had stayed there just before me – so that was extremely exciting.

There had been no vines planted in the South Island before 1973 – the experts had declared it was too cold (which may ring a bell amongst winemakers in Niagara and Prince Edward County). Montana took the chance, up in Marlborough, the very northernmost part of the island, and lo, the vines took root and multiplied. Cloudy Bay was established in 1985 by Cape Mentelle, the Western Australian company which was a partnership between Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin and David Hohnen, the immensely courageous pioneer of the Margaret River region. Presumably Veuve Clicquot had their eyes on making bubbly in these cold but gifted hills – and they weren’t wrong. Cloudy Bay’s Pelorus is a lovely sparkler made from Pinot Noir and Chardonnay with pin-prick mousse and a classic yeasty nose. I tasted the 1993 when I was in Marlborough and loved it. But the 1991 was already showing its age – a tad jammy and oxidized. I have no doubt that the team has figured out the solution by now.

The Cloudy Bay, however, was simply dazzling – lean and svelt but sophisticated, powerful but elegant – I’m trying to think of an analogous movie star but no one springs to mind – wines are more perfect than actors. Kevin Judd poured three for me. The young 1997, just months old, was smashing – all gooseberries and passion fruit and the scent of green grass, full-bodied yet creamy, rich… There’s a dash of Semillon in there, à la Bordelaise, and some very discreet oak ageing – maybe 10 percent – just enough to add a little enriching cadmium yellow to the singing green of the Sauvignon Blanc.

We also tasted the 1994 which was going through some kind of in-vitro mid-life crisis, the fruit vanished from the nose, replaced by the scent of canned white asparagus. Then we opened a 1991 and the asparagus had completely disappeared, giving way to mature petrolly notes, a toastiness, as different from its own youth as a mature gasoline-citrus Mosel is from its steep, slate-clenched, lime-washed, minerally childhood. I asked if the 1991 had had more oak but Judd said no, it was just the maturity of the wine.

It was interesting to glimpse the future of the young, vibrant Cloudy Bay I had just tasted – to see what would become of the world-class athlete’s physical perfection when the whirligig of time had brought in his revenges.

And today I drank the latest vintage, now on sale at the LCBO. Still all youth and vigour and brilliance and creamy skin. The Apollonian God of Sauvignon Blanc. I tasted it alongside another treat, the cheddar and black pepper butter-based shortbread savoury figure-destroyers that are one of President’s Choice new Black Label products. Little drum-shaped temptations. Really really good. Right up there with Harbord Bakery’s spicy, anchovy-laced cheese straws – and that is praise indeed. The combo worked for me. But it was the Cloudy Bay that had the true cachet of genius.

 
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