10 Best Valpolicella Wines to Buy Now + 5 Surprising Facts about Valpolicella

Valpolicella, like Chianti, is a style of wine from a specific region of Italy bearing the name Valpolicella. Valpolicella is not an actual grape variety. You’ll find my most recent Valpolicella  reviews and ratings here. 5 Surprising Facts about Valpolicella: The grapes that are typically used to make Valpolicella include Corvina, Rondinella, and Molinara. The area known as Valpolicella is a part of the greater wine region known as the Veneto and is inside the province of Verona, in the North East of Italy. Valpolicella labels can give you clues as to what wine you can expect from the wine […]

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Curried Shrimp and Pineapple Skewers Recipe Paired with Reif Riesling

Post by Reif Winery Summer is here and we can help you beat the heat with our 2013 Reif Riesling now available pre-chilled at your local L.C.B.O. It’s a perfect summer sipper with fresh aromas of peach, pear, apple and lemon citrus. It is one of our winemaker Klaus Reif’s favourite wines and his go-to wine for his summer entertaining as it pairs well with light appetizers, salads, pastas, seafood, poultry and pork. It was also a great vintage for white wines in Ontario as it was generally a cooler vintage with fruit at harvest maintaining their natural acidity levels […]

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Wine Pairings for NS Lobster, BC Salmon, Alberta Beef

From CTV’s site: Our resident wine expert, Natalie MacLean, stopped by The Social to share Canadian wines that pair perfectly with the hosts’ favourite patriotic goodies. We had lots of fun pairing the hosts’ favourite Canadian dishes with Canadian wines. Melissa loves Nova Scotia lobster, Traci is a fan of BC salmon, Lani loves beef and Cynthia has a fondness for butter tarts. Ladies, there’s a wine for that … in fact, many. Join us on The Social again July 24 when we chat about great wines for dinner parties. Cheers! P.S. Take The Great Canadian Wine Quiz to find out […]

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Canadian Wine Pairings for BBQ Steak, Chicken, Seafood

On Monday’s CBC radio drive-home shows, we talked about great Canadian wines to pair with your summer barbecues. You can listen to one of those clips above. Discover 10 Surprising Facts about Canadian Wines here. The wines we discussed here included: Jabulani Vineyard & Winery Frontenac Gris 2013 Richmond, Eastern Ontario, Canada Sibling Rivalry Pink 2010 Niagara Escarpment, Canada Mission Hill Five Vineyards Cabernet Merlot 2011 Okanagan Valley, BC VQA, Canada Benjamin Bridge Nova 7 Gaspereau Valley, Nova Scotia, Canada Posted with permission of CBC.   Canadian Wine Pairings for BBQ Steak, Chicken, Seafood   Giacomo: Well according to national stereotypes, […]

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Wine Critic Writes with Humor and Contagious Passion

By Jessica Yadegaran For someone who grew up in a whiskey-drinking Scottish family, Natalie MacLean has come a long way in wine. Today, the Le Cordon Bleu World Food Media Award winner is Canada’s answer to Jancis Robinson. She is a critic who writes about wine with humor and contagious passion. She counts Kermit Lynch, Rex Pickett and Gary Vaynerchuk among her fans. Her best-selling books, “Red, White, and Drunk All Over” (Bloomsbury, 2007) and “Unquenchable” (Perigee, 2011), share tips on hunting the world’s best bargain wines. But these days, MacLean’s website, which she launched in 2000, is a go-to […]

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Surprising Canadian Wine Pairings for BBQ: Radio Chat Tips

This chat with CBC radio in Ontario was one of 26 interviews with the morning and drive-home shows on Friday about terrific (and surprising) pairings for Canadian wines with barbecued food. We also kicked off The Great Canadian Wine Match: BBQ Edition. Got a wine to nominate? Or maybe you’d like to see which wines others have nominated and vote for them. Check out the race so far here with lots of great ideas for July 1 barbecue wines. Read more about the wine competition here as well as prizes for those who nominate wines, including a $3,000 Weber Summit […]

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The Great Canadian Wine Match: The BBQ Edition

In May 2013, we launched the first People’s Choice Wine Awards with The Great Candian Wine Match. Thousands of wine lovers from coast to coast (and around the planet) voted for their favourite Canadian wines online and via social media. This friendly (and increasingly social ;) competition brought wine drinkers and winemakers together to celebrate the best of what we produce in this country, and garnered considerable media recognition for both nominees and winners. We’re building on that success this year with The Great Canadian Wine Match: The BBQ Edition, pairing Canadian wines with your favourite grilled or barbecued foods, […]

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Win a $3000 Weber Summit Gas Grill + Prizes in The Great Canadian Wine Match

Nominate your favourite Canadian wine in The Great Canadian Wine Match: BBQ Edition, and you could win the Grand Prize, The Weber® Summit® S-670™ gas grill, Weber’s top-of-the-line grill worth more than $3,000! You could also wine one of 25 Weber Cookbooks or one of 5 sets of grilling utensils. Nominate your favourite Canadian wines today! Grand Prize: Weber® Summit® S-670™ Gas Grill The Weber® Summit® S-670™ gas grill takes normal grilling up several notches with Weber’s innovative Sear Station™ technology. The Sear Station™ is a dedicated area in the middle of the grill which reaches temperatures of 800 to […]

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BBQ Wines, Grill Tips and Cookbook, Thai Steak Recipe: Chef Rob Rainford

  In the video below, Food Network celebrity chef Rob Rainford shares his grilling tips, his favourite BBQ wines and his new cookbook Born to Grill. There’s also a delicious recipe for his barbecued Thai flank steak and Asian noodles below. Rob has always loved cooking, but his consistent theme has always been his love for the grill.     Rob Rainford is a Canadian chef with a world renowned reputation. Born in Saint Andrew Parish, Jamaica on November 30, 1966, Rob moved to Canada with his family when he was three. Rob enrolled in culinary school at George Brown […]

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