In our glass: past and present wine picks
Another Vancouver Playhouse International Wine Festival done! But what an action packed week, with an amazing array of events, most of which went off without a hitch. Kudos to the tireless Playhouse team, to the legion of unsung volunteers who make this thing work, and especially to Wines of Chile, for truly raising the [...]
Cutting edge: Haywire and Bartier Scholefield vial samples, Tim Pawsey photo (Edible Canada is now closed. Yesterday we took time out from our pre-holidays deadline whirl, and Zagat Survey wrap-up (hence the lack of posts here), to catch lunch with the Okanagan Crushpad gang and consulting winemaker Alberto Antonini. His best quote [...]
It’s entirely possible that the impressive Sidecut / Painted Rock 4 x 5 course winemaker dinner (that’ll be four courses each of five plates or accompaniments) that we enjoyed at just concluded Cornucopia entailed the most food we’ve seen at one sitting! Much like the winery with whom they partnered, it's apparent [...]
The Flying Pig's skirt steak—the real deal, Tim Pawsey photo It just goes to show; you can never know what to expect on a Vancouver Monday night. One recent, still dry October soirée, you could have fired a proverbial cannon down most of Yaletown’s narrow streets, so who knew that we’d only just [...]
Great tastes of Tawny Port and Stilton at Vancouver's premier cheese purveyor, Les Amis du Fromage
Two long established wine families have reached across the border to produce a new Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon. The Stewart family, which owns Quails Gate Winery in Westbank, BC, and the Zepponi family of Sonoma, California, have a history of similar if distant beginnings, in that their forebears settled and started farming at around the [...]
Updated. April 13th, 2012. Here's a pretty solid endorsement of properly handled FAS salmon: Vancouver chefs salute FAS salmon Maybe it's a tipping point. A few things occured to me concerning the winner we picked at last week’s Chef Meets Grape Small Plates Challenge, organised by the BC Wine Institute. First of all, congrats [...]
Nothing tastes like your own, super ripe tomatoes on baguettes rubbed with home-grown garlic, Tim Pawsey photo The Hired Belly recently harvested his garlic—a sure sign that summer is slowly but surely on the wane. However, all is not yet lost. Besides, we’ve long been long convinced summer actually extends well beyond the [...]
VICTORIA – The winners have been chosen for the 2011 Lieutenant Governor’s Awards for Excellence in British Columbia Wines. This year 309 wines were submitted from 83 wineries across the province. The winners are: • Howling Bluff Estate Winery 2009 Pinot Noir • Laughing Stock Vineyards 2010 Pinot Gris • Mt. Lehman Winery 2009 Viognier Reserve [...]
We had an excellent tasting recently with the folks from Languedoc and Roussillon. It’s a region that gets surprisingly little attention, especially considering the character of the wines and the value they deliver at most price points. Over the years, however, I think the entry level wines in particular have suffered from being [...]