Latest Video

This year has been a busy year for me as I have visited and filmed over 10 wineries this year. I have just put up my latest about Southbrook Vineyards at Niagara on the Lake. For years they were located at Bathurst and Major Mackenzie north of Toronto. I remember getting a tour of their old barn wine production facilities and recall how friendly the tour guide was.
Urban sprawl was beginning to surround the property and you could tell that they would not be able to stay where they were indefinitely.
In 2008 they moved to a newly built facility. When we were there we had pizza and a glass of wine on the patio. It is very close to the vineyard and a tractor was driving by spraying a powder like substance on the vines. It was windy and I covered my food fearful that some of that powder might end up on it. Later the food amd beverage manager came around and explained that the winery is growing their vineyards with biodynamic (organic) methods and that the powder they were spraying was (I don't recall what it was) something very natural and non toxic to humans.
I was relieved even though nothing did blow onto my food.
The video, as most of my recent ones are, very detailed and very closely following what I saw as I traveled on the property. You really do see the whole property from all the angles I saw.
You can go to the Wine Dining Vlog to watch it or get it on the Wine Dining Channel using the on demand feature (it is about fourth video from the bottom). The links are on the right hand side of this blog.

Wine and Food Pairing

Sweet foods and Umami make a wine taste stronger and sour foods can make a wine taste milder. I have been mentioning this core rule for years. Tim Hanni developed this when he was at Beringer wines.
So it is only logical that they would use this as the basis to match wine and food.
You can get it from the "source" if you like, with more details that build on this principle. Click the title of this post and go to the wine and food pairing link on Beringer's site

Obesity has been cured if your a Mouse

An article at a website called Scientific American states that a diet pill using the ingredient resveratral found in red wine tricked the body of mice into conserving energy and burn fat in spite of the fact they were fed a high fat diet. The mice given the substance also showed much more stamina and endurance.
Well that is just great but just like wine reduces the incidence of heart disease and cancer, it s just something nice to hear. Don't stop exercising, watching your diet and being a non smoker. You read enough of this kind of stuff and you almost get the feeling that this is the 21st century version of snake oil. I'm not saying it is, just that you get that feeling.
Click the title of this post if you want to read the article.

An Icewine Alternative

It was a beautiful November 1 day and we decided to take a short country drive out to Archibald Estate Winery in Bowmanville.
We went out specifically to pickup some Spiced Winter Apple Reserve (23 sweetness 18.95) for Christmas day dessert. This wine was served to the Sultan of Brunei.
We have had this wine at Christmas time for a few years now and every year it is consistently good. It has the same intense sweetness and viscosity as a grape ice wine with a dominating taste of apple, nutmeg, brown sugar, cinnamon and caramel. It has a big bite and long finish from the balancing acidity in it.
The price makes it a very strong alternative to grape ice wine (30 to 90 dollars plus)