Lesley Quinn, Sommelier, Sim’s Corner Steakhouse and Oyster Bar in Charlottetown, PEI Was wine a part of your family’s meals when you were young? I grew up in a small farming community on Prince Edward Island, with two older brothers. Wine wasn’t a part of our meals at home. However, my mother worked in the tourism industry, and she was host to journalists from around the world. She’d take me with her to meals with them, and it was during one of those dinners, that I had my first sip of wine. Apparently, I described it as tasting like sour grape juice. What […]
Wine Articles
Veuve Clicquot Champagne: Riddle Me This!
Above: Designer Karim Rashid created a Love Seat for Veuve Clicquot’s Yellow By Design exhibition, a modern take of an 18th century love seat blended with the rose colour seats to complement the Veuve Clicquot wine. Part 1: Champagne Widows Madame Clicquot wasn’t just a saleswoman, she also developed the technique called remuage or riddling, to remove sediment from the wine – a method that was quickly adopted throughout the Champagne region. Veuve Clicquot Riddling Table The second fermentation in the bottle that gives champagne its carbon dioxide also creates sediment, which gives the wine an unsightly cloudy appearance. To […]
Top 5 Gift Wines + Tips on Best Holiday Wines
On CBC radio drive-home shows yesterday we chatted about great gift wines … here are my tips on choosing them plus my top 5. More gift wine tips in this CBC interview, as well as great sparkling wines. Join us again on December 23 to chat about holiday wines and on December 30 for sparkling wines for the New Year. Posted with permission of CBC.
How to Write a Wine Review: Tasting Notes that Tell a Story
Each week, I issue a challenge to those who post reviews on our site. If you’d like to get the latest challenge when it goes out, please e-mail me at natdecants @ nataliemaclean.com. Use All Five Senses Use all five senses to describe a wine. We tend to lean on just two as wine writers: smell and taste. But what about colour, texture (mouth-feel, weight) and even sound as you pour the wine, or other ambient sound in your environment, such as what’s playing on your stereo to make this wine even more memorable? Evoking all five senses will make […]
Toronto Sommelier at Four Seasons Pours a Glass for Chef Thomas Keller
Drew Walker, wine director at Café Boulud & D Bar in Toronto’s Four Seasons Hotel. Where did you grow up? I grew up in Niagara, in Port Dalhousie, with my parents Bruce and Nancy, and my older sister Kate. Tell us about a time when your life was different? When I was 19 years old, I lived in the Caribbean and worked long hours as a bartender in a great little bistro in the Cayman Islands. It was my first experience in the food and beverage industry, and it shaped me quite a lot. I learned so much from the […]
How Sweet is My Wine? What do Sugar Codes Mean for Wine?
How sweet is your wine? Have you ever wondered what those sugar codes mean on the liquor store shelf? There are several different sweetness charts and coding systems on the market, but they’re not that far apart from each other in describing the residual sugar level in wine. I believe that it’s critical to list the sweetness level of a wine with every review that I write to give more information about each wine to my readers, some of whom look for a bone-dry wine while others have a sweet tooth. Posting the sugar codes are also vital for health […]
Brandy Cocktail Recipes with a Twist
Cocktails: Eye Opener Ingredients: 2 oz Cortel 5 oz energy drink 1 lime slice Preparation: Fill the glass with ice cubes. Pour Cortel and add energy drink into the glass. Stir well. Place the lime slice in a glass and enjoy. Cocktails: Life’s Bittersweet Ingredients: 2 oz Cortel 2 oz tonic water Grapefruit garnish Preparation: Fill the glass with ice cubes. Pour Cortel and add tonic water and stir well. Place the grapefruit peel in a highball glass and drape one end of it over the rim of the glass. Cocktails: Blackberry Bliss Ingredients: 1 oz Cortel […]
Cognac Cocktail Recipes for Festive Entertaining
Cocktail Exotic Dream Ingredients: 4 cl Cognac GAUTIER 2 cl Banana Liqueur 3 cl fresh orange juice 1 cl fresh lemon juice Preparation: Add all ingredients in a shaker with some ice. Strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish: Twist of lemon Glass: Cocktail glass Cocktail Golden Fizz Ingredients: 3 cl Cognac GAUTIER 4,5 cl fresh pink grapefruit juice 7,5 cl Champagne Preparation: Pour directly the cognac and the fresh grapefruit juice into a flute. Add champagne. Garnish: Sugar around the glass with grenadine or grapefruit syrup. Glass: Flute Cocktail recipe developed by Cognac Goutier.
Chateau Palmer Tasting: Bordeaux Wine Seduces and Satisfies
Château Palmer By Melissa Pulvermacher Château Palmer is a much-respected winery in the Margeaux appellation d’origine contrôlée in Bordeaux, France. You may recognize Palmer better as one of the classified Third Growths of Bordeaux. Palmer has been known as one of the most popular of this classification and some even argue that its consistent delivery of quality held up against First Growth, Château Margeaux. I was given the opportunity to taste several of the Palmer wines at an organized tasting at The National Club in Toronto, Ontario. After tasting the 2004, 1999, 1995 and 1983 vintages up against one another, […]
City Hall New Home for a Baby Grand
Baby Grand Piano at Ottawa City Hall Hitting all the Right Notes Joanne Schnurr, CTV Ottawa Published Friday, November 9, 2018 5:07PM EST A fixture at Ottawa city hall is a resounding success, hitting all the right notes. The baby grand pianohas become the “go to” for kids at lunch time or pedestrians passing through. Where politics sometimes divides people, this public piano is bringing them together. It’s a rare sight to see the piano bench empty here but it doesn’t take long before someone takes a seat and the rich sounds of music fill the air at Ottawa […]
