Our Wine Tasting Hack-a-Thons are gaining momentum, with a palpable excitement as we all gathered yesterday to taste great wines, compare notes and share our discoveries live on social media. In the last 24 hours, we’ve posted more than 900 reviews (more to come) and almost as many shares on Facebook, Twitter and other social media. You see videos and pictures from our previous wine tasting hack-a-thon in October here. Martha Kelly is the wine expert on the Rogers Daytime Television and the owner of the Capital Wine School, where she teaches the Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET) courses. […]
Best Wines
South Africa’s Spier Wines Respect What the Vineyard Hands Them
New Life on the Old Werf Life on the Spier farm is textured, diverse, nurturing. Our Fair Trade accredited hotel and modern conference facilities offers peace in the vineyards, riverside rambles, food experiences and encounters with eagles. Our restored historical farmyard, the Werf, is surrounded by the original farm precinct buildings. These feature 21 architecturally noteworthy Cape Dutch gables – the most on any South African wine estate – making Spier a landmark destination in the Cape winelands. At our wine tasting room on the farm, we give visitors an opportunity to experience what we value most at Spier, in […]
Best LCBO Wine Reviews: Vintages Ratings November 12
You can access the 164 wines that I reviewed for November 12 as a text wine list with my complete tasting notes, scores, food matches. You can also see my wine reviews for October 29. 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. 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 […]
Pascual Toso Proves There’s More to Argentina Than Malbec
By Priya & Alex, A Vine Romance The only thing better than enjoying a good bottle of wine is getting to meet the person who made it. We were fortunate to have that opportunity recently as we sat down with winemaker, Felipe Stahlschmidt from Pascual Toso. This Argentinian winery is celebrating it’s 125th anniversary. That’s a nice age for a “New World” region. They describe their production facility as “an old Chevy with a brand new Mercedes engine inside”. It’s a great analogy for an older building that has been completely updated with state-of-the-art production equipment. Alex: Pascual Toso is a fairly large […]
Win a Trip to London, England, with a Toast to 19 Crimes Wine
The full-bodied Australian wine “19 Crimes” pays tribute to British criminals who were punished by transportation. The name 19 Crimes comes from a list of 19 violations that, in the 18th-century Britain, would get someone banished from Britain and shipped to what is now Australia. You can win a trip to London, England, and help three convicts get a royal pardon, by entering this contest before November 15: 19Crimes.com/RoyalPardon There are also hundreds of secondary prizes to be won, so enter today! The wine labels feature black and white mug shots of real-life convicts who were handed a sentence in the […]
Frescobaldi Wines Find New Respect with Old World Elegance
Recently, Canada’s top wine writers and sommeliers gathered in Toronto to taste an impressive line-up of wines from the Italian estate Frescobaldi with Stefano Benini, the winery’s export director. You can watch the video above to hear Stefano discuss Frescobaldi wines. Priya & Alex, A Vine Romance Wine Show Hosts & Sommeliers Alex: Overall we both enjoyed the Frescobaldi style. They’re like a bridge between traditional Italian winemaking techniques, coupled with powerful Californian-style fruit, which makes their wines appealing to all sides of the wine-drinking spectrum. Priya: It’s true. Alex and I don’t always agree on red wines especially – he […]
Tale of Two Niagara Wineries: Reif Winery Makes Big Impression
As a photographer, I capture many wonderful moments in life, with no two moments ever being quite the same. This weekend, I found out in my travels to the Niagara Region, the same can be said for its wonderful abundance of world-class wineries. This is my story about visiting two wineries in the Niagara region at opposite ends of the spectrum, one small and one large, to see just how different they really were with respect to service style, approachability, ambiance and overall experience. In Part One of Tale of Two Wineries, I wrote about my experience visiting Ravine, considered to most as […]
Best LCBO Wine Reviews: Vintages Ratings October 29
You can access the 143 wines that I reviewed for October 29 as a text wine list with my complete tasting notes, scores, food matches. You can also see my wine reviews for October 15. 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. 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 […]
Facebook Live Video Posts October 23, 2016
In this Facebook Live Video chat, we discuss the rising levels of alcohol in wines. You can click on the arrow above to play the video. If you’d like to read the comments, or make a comment yourself, visit: https://www.facebook.com/natdecants/videos/10154411500734845/ You’ll find the most recent live video wine tasting at the top of the timeline here: www.facebook.com/natdecants We taste every Sunday evening at 6 pm eastern so add us to your calendar and grab a glass of wine. Click on Follow, Like and Signup on the page above to get notified when we go live. […]
Facebook Live Video Posts
In this Facebook Live Video chat, we discuss terrific wines for Thanksgiving. You can click on the arrow above to play the video. If you’d like to read the comments, or make a comment yourself, visit: https://www.facebook.com/natdecants/videos/10154411500734845/ You’ll find the most recent live video wine tasting at the top of the timeline here: www.facebook.com/natdecants We taste every Sunday evening at 6 pm eastern so add us to your calendar and grab a glass of wine. Click on Follow, Like and Signup on the page above to get notified when we go live. Dom […]
