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Argentine Malbecs in Ontario

I don’t blog for the Australian Wine Society any more, but I still like to lift a glass, and I subscribe to the excellent winecurrent.com newsletter that provides reviews of wines just before their release at the LCBO. On July 5th, a number of Malbecs from Argentina were released, and here’s the ones reviewed by winecurrent.com, with an excerpt from their review:

Finca El Origen Reserva Malbec 2006, Uco Valley, Mendoza $14.95 (065664): “Easy-drinking red that provides good value.”

Finca Flichman ‘Gestos’ Malbec 2007, Mendoza $15.95 (068999): “Complex and alluring…enough tannin for structure and interest plus generous acidity for impeccable balance; the 8 months of French oak has been seamlessly integrated. Give thought to a multiple purchase.”

Finca Flichman Reserva Malbec 2007, Mendoza $12.95 (746727): “rich and ready to drink…serve with all manner of backyard BBQ fare.”

Finca Sophenia Reserve Malbec 2006, Tupungato, Mendoza $16.95 (066837): “chunky mouthful of ripe fruit flavours—cherry, currant and cranberry—oodles of moderating acidity and still perceptible tannin. Temper this with a two-hour aeration/decant then serve alongside a rare to medium-rare grilled strip loin.”

Navarro Correas Gran Reserva Malbec 2005, Mendoza $18.95 (028928): “one of those Wow! wines that immediately grabs your attention with its great balance, delectable fruit-forward flavours and lengthy finish.”

Weinert Malbec 2003, Mendoza $18.95 (556795): “round n’ ready to go, but is certainly not without class or complexity.”

You can also see the LCBO’s reviews of the Argentine Malbecs here.

2008 07 10 Comments (0)

Amuse Bouche redux

After my last visit to Amuse Bouche, I commented on how Damir referred to the chef’s tasting menu as the "Fear Factor" menu, and how the time before, we had to stop at the pub on the way home for him to have more to eat, so this time I decided to go with two women who both love to cook rather than one hungry man who is quite happy with the burger and beer special.

It was my friend Pat’s birthday, and my sister Betty and I treated her to dinner at Amuse Bouche, which neither of them had visited before. We quickly decided on the 7-course chef’s tasting menu, and asked for complementary wines to accompany each course.

First, we were served an amuse bouche (not one of the 7 courses) of a smoked white chocolate and lobster bisque-like mouthful, charmingly presented in an espresso cup. Creamy and sweet, a great start on a cold winter night.

The first of four appetizers was horse carpaccio (that’s thinly-sliced raw horsemeat for those of you unfamiliar with the fine points of eating Black Beauty), topped with dots of sheep and cows milk cheese and truffle oil. Once I moved past the psychological barrier of eating horse — which I was surprised to find lurking in my psyche — it was delicious: the meat is very dark red, like game, very lean yet quite mild in flavour.

Appetizer #2 was smoked trout chopped into tiny cubes, and served with equal-sized cubes of tomato and croutons. At one end of the plate was a peeled cherry tomato; at the other was a similar-sized ball of what turned out to be deep-fried mayonnaise in crust — quite delicious, and an interesting contrast to the other flavours and textures on the plate.

Third was fois gras, which I predicted as soon as the waiter brought us the wines, a muscat with a wonderful blend of acidity and sweetness. There was a cube of pear gelee on the plate, a nice complement to the fois gras, and a third food that I can’t even recall, I was so blown away by the perfect crispy finish on the fois gras that remained pink inside. Actually, I think the third one was crispy onions of some sort, but seriously, the fois gras just dominated that course for me.

Fourth was a square of haddock and one perfect little clam; I could have eaten a bowl of those clams without blinking.

We had a pause before the main course, and a palate cleanser of a tiny ball of passion fruit ice, sweet and tart in just the right balance.

The main was lamb, a loin cut I believe, roasted rare and served on an eggplant puree. It was accompanied by a prune stuffed with chopped hazelnuts and Cabrales (a Spanish blue cheese), something that I will definitely be attempting to replicate at home as hors d’oeuvres. Also with it was a tiny perfect white turnip, about the size of a small radish. The perfect amount of meat after four appetizers (and knowing that we still had a cheese course and dessert to go), although I could have used a touch more veg on the plate.

The cheese course was a savory panna cotta, and although I don’t know what cheese was used in it, it was delicious: served in a small funnel shaped glass, I turned my spoon around and used the small handle to dig the last bits of it out of the bottom (which I felt was infinitely classier than using my finger).

Lastly was dessert, the only course where the three of us were served different selections: a rum and raisin creme brulee, a chocolate marizipan mousse with espresso ice cream, and a passion fruit and meringue tart. All three were delicious.

I remember none of the wines by name except the Cave Springs "Dolomite" Riesling that we were served with the second appetizer, but I do recall that they were a good match for each course. I just checked their wine list online, and none of the wines look familiar, including the Cave Spring which I know that we had, so it might not be completely up to date. They have a nice selection from a number of countries, with a good representation from Canada including some from Thirty Bench, a great little winery in the Niagara region that sends me cases of wine on subscription.

My overall recommendation: this remains a great "special occasion" restaurant, and I highly recommend the chef’s tasting menu with the matching wines. The service is very good but not at all intrusive, although we had trouble hearing one of the waiters when he described the dish that he brought to our table and had to ask him to repeat it. We spent over 3 hours at dinner, and never felt either rushed or like we were waiting around, although I’m glad that we were about to start our main course when a party of 10 — which fills half the restaurant — showed up, since I’m sure that their orders swamped the kitchen after that. By then, however, we were on to the cheese and dessert, both of which require minimal preparation.

2008 03 02 Comments (0)

Vintages release for February 2nd

I’m a bit late for this, but the wine only gets better with aging, right? Especially considering the focus of the release, which in honour of the 30th anniversary of Robert Parker’s 100-point wine scoring system, included a great selection of wines with a score of 90+.

I receive the winecurrent.com reviews of the Vintages releases and highly recommend subscribing, even in the face of my slight rant yesterday about preferring blog posts over email newsletters; their type of review of the current Vintage release does lend itself nicely to an email format. I haven’t tried any of these 90+ wines yet, but there’s a few that I want to check out in the under-$20 range (which is my "buy a bunch and keep around for casual drinking" price point):

  • Stella Bella Semillon/Sauvignon Blanc 2006, Margaret River, Australia. $18.85, LCBO #48546.
  • Pillar Box Red 2005, Padthaway, South Australia. $17.40, LCBO #685941
  • Lieu-Dit ‘Les Poyeux’ Saumur Champigny 2005, AOC Saumur Champigny. $16.85, LCBO #52639
  • Armand Riesling Kabinett 2005, QmP Pfalz. $16.85, LCBO #60905
  • Cyan 12 Meses 2003, DO Toro. $16.75, LCBO #66936

There are many others in the $20-30 range, and several well above that. Definitely worth checking out both the wines, and winecurrent.com’s newsletter, that always arrives a day or two in advance of the Vintages release.

2008 03 01 Comments (0)

Ontario Wine Review newsletter

I used to blog about wine and wine events over on the AWS blog, but when I resigned from the AWS board in order to spend more quality time going to conferences ;) I decided to cut back to two blogs as well. However, I get a lot of wine and food news and enjoy blogging about it, so will resurrect that part of it here.

Today, the most recent copy of Michael Pinkus’ Ontario Wine Review newsletter arrived. You can read it online here or download a PDF version here. I have to say, I’m really turned off by the permission email newsletter model by now. Blogging is so easy, and there is really nothing to be gained by having my email address on your mailing list; I’d much rather receive this and other newsletters purely through my RSS reader, not through emails piling up in my "to read" folder. He seems to have five (!!) specialized blogs and a podcast, but when I click on any of the syndicate options on the main newsletter site, I only see the message "Error creating feed file, please check write permissions". Grrrr.

In any case, this week’s newsletter has a review of Cave Spring Cellars, which I’ve never visited although I’ve driven through Jordan many times on the way to the rest of the Niagara wineries. Pinkus liked their "Dolomite" Riesling and their "La Penna" Cab Franc/Cab Sauv blend, the latter of which is only available at the winery since they only made 200 cases. Sound worth checking out.

2008 02 29 Comments (0)

FatFree Vegan Kitchen

I’m not vegan, although I do have a lot of vegan-like days since getting turned on to macrobiotics a few years ago: meat is not a daily staple, I rarely eat eggs, and cheese has become more of a treat than a regular occurrence. (That being said, I did eat both lamb and chicken at dinner last night) There’s a great vegan restaurant in my ‘hood, Fressen, as well as a good vegetarian place, Fresh, and I’ve taken carnivorous friends to both places without complaint: good food is about good ingredients and preparation, not whether it contains meat.

I stumbled on a great recipe website this week for those of the vegan persuasion, FatFree Vegan Kitchen, and there’s a lot of recipes there that would work perfectly well for any audience: Greek-style soy yogurt, a.k.a. yogurt cheese (which I used to make from cows-milk yogurt), whole wheat pasta with roasted veggies and olives, portabellas stuffed with red pepper hummus, and gazpacho with roasted tomatoes and peppers were just a few that caught my eye.

I have a lot of business travel in the next few weeks, which means that it’s very difficult to eat well, but I’ll be trying some of these out when I return.

2007 09 16 Comments (0)

Eat, drink and do your part for breast cancer

Willow, a breast cancer support group, is hosting their annual Eat to the Beat event on September 25th:

Willow’s Eat to the Beat is the only event of its kind in North America that features delicacies and delectables prepared by over 60 of the finest women chefs including famed television host, Chef Anna Olson.

Now in its 12th year, the event brings together high profile women chefs from across Canada for an “all-out feast of the senses”. Guests can stroll through an eclectic array of food stations while sipping on a selection of fine wines, spirits and beers from around the world.

2007 09 12 women Comments (0)

Sale at Vintages

Since I’ll soon be stepping down from my board role at the Australian Wine Society of Toronto (a wine-tasting club) and therefore contributions to the website and blog there, I’ll be moving my wine blogging over here.

Starting this past Saturday, July 28th, Vintages is having a sale on 450 different products, some of them with pretty decent discounts. For those of you not in Ontario, Vintages is the fine wine and premium spirits section of the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, the government wine and liquor monopoly. You can find the list of items on sale here, but not everything is available at every store so you’ll have to use the product search to see what’s in stock and where.

Keep in mind that “fine wines” doesn’t necessarily mean “expensive wines”; there’s a lot of under-$20 here.

2007 07 30 Comments (0)

Dim sum on the way out

My last day in San Francisco before I moved down to the airport Hyatt for my next conference, and since I was staying right on the edge of Chinatown, I decided to treat myself to a little dim sum. City View, located on Commercial right around the corner from the Hilton, was highly recommended on a couple of internet sites over the more upscale Yank Sing. As a single diner, I was able to snag a table at City View right away and was served a pot of jasmine tea immediately although had to wait for a few minutes for the first of the carts to come my way. The room is large, bright and airy, with a long mural along one wall; filled with predominantly Asian families but a few white faces mixed in. Waiters pushed steam carts filled with dim sum, as well as some hand-carried platters for less temperature-sensitive items. Hard to believe, but I ate 5 plates of dim sum: pan-fried dumplings, shrimp in rice noodle rolls, mushroom and shoots in steamed dumplings, BBQ pork with steamed buns on the side (sort of like BBQ pork buns but with the pork, buns and sauce all served separately), and snow pea greens and shrimp in steamed dumplings that looked like a perfect representation of a certain part of the male anatomy. Ahem. All were delicious, although the pan-fried dumplings were a bit greasy, and I won’t be eating dinner tonight.

Afterwards, I walked down to the ferry terminal — making a perfect attendance record there for the past four days — for a chai latte by the water’s edge. The blue skies also had a perfect attendance record: although there was some fog when I awoke this morning, it cleared before I stepped outside and has been great ever since.

With a bit of a trip and some work to do before I met up with friends at the conference hotel tonight, I grabbed my bags and headed for BART to experience tremendously bad transit karma: the train for SFO pulled out just as I came down the steps, making for a 20-minute wait, then I just missed the Hyatt shuttle at the airport for another 20-minute wait. It did give me a chance to finish Ysabel, the fascinating Guy Gavriel Kay book that I was reading; I’ll have to search around for something else to read on the flight home.

That’s likely it for my San Francisco adventures, although I don’t get home for a few more days: the conference blogging will be over on my business blog.

2007 07 22 travel Comments (0)

Perbacco

My friend who had recommended Jeanty at Jack’s also recommended Perbacco, just a few blocks away from the hotel, and I walked over for a late dinner after my long day on the bridge.

It’s a lovely narrow place, with exposed brick on the wall behind the long bar, and booths opposite the bar along the other wall. Further back there are tables, but I was seated at a generous 4-person booth so could watch the action up front. It’s also possible eat at the bar, although most people seemed to just be having drinks and a light snack so it may be a limited menu there, or possibly just the late hour. The most unusual feature is a meat locker behind the bar: glass-fronted like a wine or beer fridge, but with salamis and other cured sausages and meats inside. A woman behind the bar was meticulously slicing the meats, presumably on order for the salumi plates.

Although I had cracked open the Rioja back at the hotel for a pre-dinner drink, I ordered a 1/4 l of the 2005 Barbera d’Alba from Piemonte, served in a slender, angular carafe. My appetizer was a salad of roasted red and gold beets — the red ones were a bit tough, but the gold ones were perfectly tender — with baby arugula and a sprinkling of Castelmagno cheese with a vinaigrette dressing. The Calabrese-style roll served on the side was delicious and fresh.

For a main course, I had the risotto, prepared with duck conserve (lighter and less salty than a confit), carmelized onions, sweet corn and baby spinach. The texture was not quite right, as if it had been made with the wrong type of rice, or rushed; considering that it arrived about 20 minutes after I initially ordered, I think that they cheat in the preparation somehow, as most restaurants must do with a time-consuming dish like risotto. The sweet corn was unexpectedly good, delicate kernels bursting with flavour. Overall, the risotta was a good mix of flavours, but could have been improved by a grinding of black pepper, and possibly a bit of a pungent cheese shaved over the top.

I refused dessert, but my waiter brought me a plate with four tiny sweets: two chocolate-hazelnut, like Nutella with a thicker consistency more like fudge, and two Italian nougat with pistachio. The chocolate bits were perfect with the last of the Barbera, and the nougat finished the dinner off nicely.

I was, of course, saving myself for the Recchiuti chocolates that I bought at the market the previous day, and enjoyed those back in my room with another glass of the Rioja. I was expecting firm chocolate throughout, but they were more like filled chocolates with centres of a truffle-like consistency. They were all good, although the cardomom was especially delicious.

2007 07 22 travel Comments (0)

Finishing my foodie day

Still Friday night here in San Francisco, and I just came back from a small dinner at Jeanty at Jack’s, just a few blocks from my hotel and recommended by the friend who I had met earlier for drinks. I didn’t feel like a full meal, so I skipped the steak frites (actually, entrecôte), the cassoulet and even the sole meunière in favour of the terrine de lapin and the tomato soup, accompanied by a glass of Caillou Côtes du Rhône.

The terrine was fatty but in a good, buttery way. It was served with a small mound of a slaw-like salad of apple and celery root matchsticks with a slightly mustard-y dressing that tasted of something not quite right — flour used for thickening? The plate was dressed with a swirl of mustard, darker and less tangy than a Dijon so as to not overpower the mild terrine, and small, tart cornichons made a nice contrast with the rabbit. It was served with fresh baguette slices.

I grew up on Campbell’s tomato soup, and although it has a nice homey feel to it, I’d never consider ordering tomato soup in a restaurant, except that the friend who recommended the restaurant said that “the tomato bisque in a pastry puff is worth the trip alone”. Jeanty’s tomato soup is from a completely different planet than Campbell’s. A bisque, really; cream-laden and both comforting and exquisite in the mouth, both in texture and taste. And the pièce de résistance: it’s served in a miniature soup tureen with a cap of puff pastry sealed all around and baked in place. I gently pushed through the domed cap, dipping the pieces of pastry in the creamy bisque. OMG.

The chocolates and Rioja will have to wait for tomorrow.

2007 07 21 travel Comments (0)