Norma Lee MacLeod and I chat with listeners who call in with their wine suggestions and questions. We explore why wine prices have come down and what price do you have to pay to get a good wine. Just how low can you go? Are all boxed wine and bottles with screwcaps plonk? How long can you keep an open bottle of wine before it spoils? At what temperature should we serve wine? What do you miss if a wine is served too cold? Posted with permission of CBC
Serving Wine
Serving Temperature: Wine, Beer, Cocktails
His friends may call him a snob, and waitresses may give him odd looks, but David Turley isn’t about to drink a beer with chunks of ice floating in it. But that’s what can happen at restaurants that insist on serving his favorite beverage in icy mugs. And so Turley has no qualms about insisting upon another, unfrosted, glass. “I’m pretty passionate about it,” says Turley, a 50-year-old information technology worker from Fredericksburg, Va. “The first thing I look at in a restaurant is the beer menu. I consider it a food.” Even casual drinkers of wine know that white […]
Canada’s Best Sommelier Competition: Bruce Wallner Video
In this video chat, Bruce Wallner, recently named Ontario’s Best Sommelier, talks about participating in the Best Canadian Sommelier Competition this month in Halifax. He’s already a certified Master Sommelier and has worked in restaurants around the world, including Australia, Spain and the UK. We also talked about what made him want to become a sommelier originally (some interesting comparisons with the world’s oldest profession), the role of a sommelier and what he enjoys most about the job. Tell us about the competition: who enters and what do you have to do to compete? This event is […]
New Wine from Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have just launched their first wine, a lovely, pink petal, bone-dry rose from Provence called Miraval Rosé. The wine is being released in the LCBO Saturday. The couple owns the winery and estate Château Miraval, even though you’ll find no reference to them on the label. This wine doesn’t need to ride on the back of their celebrity: it stands alone as a terrific, refreshing rose with aromas of small field strawberries, orange zest and light spices. Should I add though that there’s a hint of drama on the nose, with a surprise twist finish? […]
Chateau Cardbordeaux: Is All Boxed Wine Bad?
What you want: A holiday get-together with friends over a cheering glass of wine. What you don’t want: A budget deeper in the red than an old vine zin. The answer may be in the box. Once the runt of the wine world, boxed wines have come a long way, says Natalie MacLean, author of the Internet wine newsletter Nat Decants. “Get over your hang-ups about boxed wine being plonk. It’s a great way to go with a large party,” she says. Today’s boxed wines are mostly sold in 3-liter containers, the equivalent of four bottles. And while the quality’s […]
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 […]
Wine Tasting Club Checklist
Continued from How to Host a Wine Tasting Here’s a checklist for how to host a wine tasting or start a regular wine tasting club. 1. One Month Before the Tasting Decide who you want to invite Your tasting club could be for your existing friends, or a means to get to know new friends via work or other venues, or a mix. Invite six to twelve guests. These days, trying to find an unscheduled evening with six to twelve busy people is a challenge so you may need to give your group even more lead time than a month. […]
Pairing Wine and Seafood, Shellfish and Steak with Sommelier Allison Vidug
Allison Vidug, sommelier at the Shore Club in Toronto, shares her tips on pairing wine with fresh seafood and shellfish, as well as great cuts of juicy steak. Tell us about the wine list at The Shore Club. Since I took over the wine program, my focus has been on creating a classic list with wines that suit the menu. The Shore Club’s menu is all about simplicity and quality of ingredients used in steak and seafood dishes. The wine list will include classics from the Old World, New World and, great Canadian wines — which I am most excited […]
Size Does Matter > Big Bottles of Wine
These are big-game bottles. Drink one and you become a character in a Hemingway story. We hunted for the bottle under the hot sun. We brought it down. The bottle was big. Drinking it felt good. We drank until the bottle was empty, and then we fell asleep. Known in the trade as large formats, big wine bottles are larger animals than the standard 750 ml. They range in size from the magnum, which equals two standard bottles (1.5 litres), to the nebuchadnezzar (neb-kd-NE-zr), which equals 20 standard bottles and weighs in at a table-warping 15 litres. According to a […]
Bring Your Own Bottle BYOB Wine to Restaurants Tips
Bringing your own bottle of wine to restaurants is now legal in many provinces and states, but what are the rules of engagement? I shared some tips on CBC radio this week on the etiquette of doing so, including the types of wines to bring, corkage fees and tipping. Does the thought of bringing your own wine to a restaurant make you feel cheap and arrogant? Get over it by practicing good BYOB etiquette. 1. Even when the practice is legal, check if the restaurant allows or encourages it. When you make the reservation, ask if you can […]
