You can access the 66 wines that I reviewed for August 30 as a text wine list with my complete tasting notes, scores, food matches and the stock for each bottle in their closest LCBO stores. You can also see my wine reviews for August 16. You can add my wine picks to their custom shopping list with one click and access that list on their smartphone. This is one of the benefits of becoming a Paid Member. Inventory stock numbers are usually posted online a day or two before the release based on the LCBO doing so. […]
Message on a Bottle: Art on Wine Labels
Most people wouldn’t dream of stacking their art collection in a damp, dark basement. But wine lovers aren’t like most people—and their art isn’t like most art: it’s Post-It-Note-sized and glued to bottles. Wineries today are not only perfecting the art of making wine, but also the art on the wine: they’re creating works of miniature art on bottle labels, sometimes painted by famous artists. This Novello label above (and at the series at the very top) was created by Toronto designer Daryl Woods of Public Image Design. The marriage of wine and art is as old […]
Can You Judge a Wine by its Label? It’s an Art
Continued from Part 1 of Wine Label Art In an ocean of wine, the label is the siren song that says, “Take me home with you.” For many of us, buying wine is an exercise in shallowness: we think pretty pictures must mean good wine. We find fluffy creatures endearing. We believe the winery actually used those glistening grapes. We long to share that pastoral landscape or partake of château life. Like most marketing, wine labels are intensely aspirational. (That’s probably why we have yet to see one featuring someone passed out on the floor.) But it wasn’t […]
Design on Wine: How Much Does a Wine Label Influence You?
Continued from Part 2 of Wine Label Art That’s not a bad deal when you consider that the latest vintage retails for about $600 a bottle, and increases with maturity. Many other wineries around the world have engaged artists to design their labels, including several from Canada, most notably Hillebrand Winery Estates and Colaneri Estate Winery in Niagara, and Calona Vineyards in the Okanagan Valley. Stylistically these images range from the traditional (château on a hilltop) to impressionist (sun-dappled pickers in a field) to modern (bold contrasting colors, strong lines). Other elements, such as embossed or gold-coated printed […]
Are Wine Labels by Famous Painters a Work of Art?
Continued from Part 3 of Wine Label Art And while it may not be ironic that you can buy the print of the label more easily than you can the wine itself, it certainly is a paraducks. Perhaps Kenwood Vineyards, of Sonoma, California, wished it had gone with an inoffensive iguana for the 1975 label. Over the years, Kenwood (dubbed the “Mouton of America”) has commissioned more than thirty artists to produce label images, including Pablo Picasso, Henry Miller, Sam Francis, Alexander Calder, Joan Miró, Wayne Thiebaud and Jim Dine. But the very first label it proposed for its Artist […]
Wine Reviews App on CTV The Social: Pocket Sommelier + Barcode Scanner
On today’s popular daytime talk show, CTV The Social’s technology columnist, Kate McKenna, profiles 5 smartphone apps that help you solve some of life’s time-consuming challenges, from finding a great parking spot in the city to deciding what to cook for dinner. Watch The Social mobile app video (7 minute mark). Kate included our Wine Reviews and Ratings app, which she describes as “an award-winning app that allows each of us to pretend we have a sommelier in our pocket. It offers up food pairings, top wines available at nearby locations and a ‘buy again’ list to track […]
Wine Review of the Week: Sterling Chardonnay by Deborah Podurgiel
Our Wine Review of the Week celebrates summer with this classic Californian Chardonnay reviewed by Deborah Podurgiel. Deborah has completed the Wine & Spirits Education Trust (WSET) Level 3, and is now a candidate studying for the WSET Diploma. She’s an active wine blogger in Vancouver, as well as a journalist who writes about food, wine and home decor for various magazines and newspapers. Summer Barbie parties are great, but how does one manage to have stellar wines without busting the budget? Well, you can rely on word of mouth from friends, or your very helpful and knowledgeable local wine store […]
Some Like It Hot: Do You Like High Alcohol in Wine?
My head pounds. My lips burn. My teeth sting. How could I have been so naïve? When the invitation arrived for “a tasting of one hundred blockbuster reds from the new vintage,” I was pleased, even a bit excited. Now I feel as though I’ve spent two hours with a drill-crazed dentist who thinks anaesthetic is for wimps. At this tasting, five local importers are showcasing their wines to a handful of writers. The room is thick with the sweet smell of alcohol. On a long table in front of me are 65 bottles of powerhouse Australian shiraz. The next […]
The Rising Tide: Alcohol in Wine Creeps Up the Glass
Continued from Part 1 of High Alcohol Wine … Otherwise, drinkers have to wait years for all of the wine’s disjointed elements to knit together. They also claim that it’s unfair to judge New World wines by Old World standards. Wines from hot climates, they point out, are being true to their locale by being riper and more alcoholic. Grapes in these regions, such as zinfandel, shiraz and grenache, only start to express themselves at 14 or 15 percent alcohol. Similarly, chardonnay from these areas at 12 percent alcohol would taste green and stemmy, and is best at 14 and […]
Hot, Hot, Hot! What Does Alcohol Do for Wine?
Continued from Part 2 of High Alcohol Wine … So for every fifty samples I taste, I probably consume the equivalent of a glass of wine—and that adds up. As the day wears on, my spitting technique becomes less refined, more like dribbling. Between that and my increasing enthusiasm for swirling my samples, the purple-stained napkins are piling up around me. My voice rises, my carefree laugh floats across the room, until someone inevitably asks, “Enjoying yourself, Natalie?” Where was I? Oh yes, back in the vineyard, talking about grapes. “Ripeness is all,” as Shakespeare once said and a growing […]
