8 Best Wines for St. Patrick’s Day + Irish Food Pairings (Video)

St. Patrick’s Day is often celebrated with a pint or two, but what if you love wine? On CTV News, we chat about the best pairings for Irish food and classic dishes. Is there a wine that pairs with corned beef and cabbage? This begs the question: Can we skip the corned beef and cabbage and just have wine? My Irish grandmother is probably turning over in her grave.     Traditional matches for this meal usually include Irish stout, like Guinness. But what about wine? Corned beef is salty and cabbage can be skunky, so you’ll avoid those wines […]

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9 Best Wines to Pair with Holiday Turkey Dinner (Video)

The holidays are right around the corner. So here with her tips to make your holiday entertaining a breeze is Natalie MacLean who offers Canada’s most popular online wine classes at nataliemaclean.com.   What’s your first tip? Keep it simple. I’m not sure why many of us turn into frantic mini-Martha Stewarts at this time of this year, wanting everything to be perfectly matching, preparing everyone’s side dish, stocking our cellars with more wine than we could possibly drink in a month, but we do. So take a breath, relax and start with bubbly. Sparkling wine is a great aperitif […]

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Best LCBO Wine Reviews: Vintages Ratings December 2, 2023

  You can access the wines that I reviewed as a text wine list with my complete tasting notes, scores, food matches. If you are a Paid Member, you can add my wine picks to your custom shopping list with one click and access that list on your smartphone to find the stock for each wine in your closest LCBO store. You can also see my wine reviews for November 18th. These are just some of the benefits of supporting out wine community as a Paid Member. Inventory stock numbers are usually posted online a day or two before the release based on the LCBO doing so. Curious about […]

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Which Wine Pairings for turkey, fruitcake or cheese?

  The holiday countdown is on and Canadians are scrambling for last-minute gifts for their hosts and loved ones. Wine and food seem like a natural option at this time of year, but with thousands of bottles lining the shelves at liquor outlets, where does one begin? “I’d start with pairing the wine that you’re going to bring to go with the dinner. Wild guess, might be turkey,” says sommelier Natalie MacLean, editor of the wine review site nataliemaclean.com. She suggests a sparkling wine like Cava from Spain, a Pinot Noir from New Zealand, a dry rose from France or […]

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9 Best Wines to Give as Gifts This Holiday and Year-Round (Video)

Looking for a great bottle of wine to give as a gift this year? So tell us why wine is a great gift and your first recommendations? – one size fits all – doubles are fine – it’s easy to re-gift For an extra festive touch, I’d start with sparkling wine such as these two:           Oyster Bay Sparkling Cuvée Rosé Marlborough, New Zealand                     Gray Monk Estate Winery Odyssey Brut Rosé 2018 Okanagan Valley, British Columbia BC V.Q.A., Canada         You’ve got some […]

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The Best Online Wine Tasting & Pairing Classes (Video)

As the kids head back to school, let’s chat about how the adults have changed the way they learn about wine, especially with online courses. It’s a virtual world of wine learning at your fingertips. Yesterday, I chatted with Nicole Dube on CTV’s Morning Live show.   First, tell us why online wine courses have become so popular?   Online courses offer the best of both worlds: they’re accessible to everyone no matter where you live, they’re more comprehensive than a one-off class, but not as technical and time-consuming as college courses.   Plus, there’s no drinking, then driving home, […]

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The 11 Best Wines for Easter and Passover This Year

Easter and Passover are right around the corner. That means it’s time for traditional holiday favorites like roast lamb and chocolate bunnies. But what are the best wines to pair with your celebrations? Wine expert Natalie MacLean is here with some tips.   So when it comes to chocolate we need to have wine that’s sweeter, if we don’t do that, the wine will taste bitter by comparison. So the number one pick that I recommend for chocolate is port. I love a good tawny port like this one. It’s a fortified wine, meaning it has higher alcohol, so it’s […]

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Celebrity Wines from Brad Pitt, Pink, Sarah Jessica Parker, Francis Ford Coppola

Today we’re chatting about wines owned by celebrities. Are the wines any good or is this just a marketing gimmick? Here to give us the inside scoop is Natalie MacLean who offers North America’s most popular online wine and food pairing classes at nataliemaclean.com.   Welcome Natalie.   So let’s start off with why celebrities would want to own a winery?   Owning a sports team or restaurant is just so 2021. These days, if you really want to show some class, you need to own a winery. There’s no better photo opp than one with you getting dirty pruning […]

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8 Best California Wines to Drink Now

A new crop of Californian wines are hitting liquor store shelves this month. Here to tell us about which ones we should look for is Natalie MacLean, who offers North America’s most popular online wine classes at nataliemaclean.com. Give us an overview of California wine, Natalie.   California wine country is vast, stretching from the Oregon border in the north, down to Mexico in the south: wine grapes grown in 49 of California’s 58 counties.   California accounts for more than 80%of U.S. wine production and is the fourth leading wine producer in the world. That said, many wineries are […]

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8 Perfect Gift Wines and Spirits for Your Holiday List (Video)

As the holidays approach, we look forward to entertaining friends and family. Here with her tips and sips is Natalie MacLean, who offers Canada’s most popular online wine classes at nataliemaclean.com.   What’s a good drink to serve to guests when they arrive?   Sparkling wine is the drink of celebration, especially at this time of year. I’d recommend these two:           Queenston Mile Brut Blanc de Noirs St. David’s Bench, Niagara Peninsula, Ontario V.Q.A., Canada                     Cupcake Vineyards Prosecco Veneto D.O.C., Italy         […]

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