Archive for the ‘Niagara Wines’ Category

Niagara Wine Tour Planning

Friday, June 25th, 2010

When I talked about Niagara wine tours this year, I tell everyone my plan is to only visit new wineries. Trying to pick only new wineries, has turned the simple task of picking wineries for my next Niagara wine tour into a serious project. How do you pick your wineries to visit?

The root of the ‘new niagara winery tour problem’ is two fold:

  1. I don’t want to skip my favorite wineries
  2. There are so many new wineries I can’t chooose

So my old favorites which I am going to skip are: Kacaba Vineyard, Lailey Vineyard, Maleta Winery, Pilliteri Winery, and Konzelman Winery.

This breaks my heart because Lailey’s Pinot, Kacaba’s reds and the 2009 Riesling, Maleta’s riesling, are amazing and not to be missed.

Here are the new wineries and I would love some feedback on other people’s experiences.

My learning, the longer you live close to a wine region…the harder it is to plan a trip. So after 5 years in Toronto, I AM going to do the ‘all new Niagara wine trip’. I would love your feedback.

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Posted in Niagara Riesling, Niagara Wine Tour, Niagara Wines, Ontario Riesling, Wine Tour | 5 Comments »

Wine & Charity: a match made with cheese

Monday, August 10th, 2009

This past June 24th I was part of organizing a charity wine auction so, of course, I choose to pick to have only Ontario wines. There were six Ontario wineries each pouring two wines. The most popular wines being a Sauviogon Blanc from Dan Akyord Wines and Prince Edward County’s Black Prince’s Chardonnay.

This charity wine event supports the Fred Victor Centre and held its second annual tasting event at the C-Lounge. The venue was fantastic because it was a beautiful day and people could really take advantage of their larget outside space. Having a warm sunny day ‘might’ have affected the most popular wines…because I was surprised that two white wines were the most popular.

Here is a list of the wineries and wines that were poured:

(1) Black Prince

(2) Lailey Vineyard

(3) Strewn Winery

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Justyn (of WineryToHome.com) and Nathan Arnold (amatuer wine maker who works at Yahoo!)

(4) Dan Akyrod

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(5) Wayne Gretzky Winery

(same table as Creekside)

(6) Creekside Estate Winery

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The huge table of cheese was provided by the Leslieville Cheese Shop and they had a TON of cheese.

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This now yearly charity event raises money for the Fred Victor Centre’s Art program. This program used art to help people recover from many different problems (addiction, personal thearpy, etc) and is a great ‘out of the box’ way for an organization whose end goal is to help…regardless of the method.

Next year, we will be inviting back four of the six wineries and adding two more new Ontario wineries. Do you have any suggestions? Lets us know who we should have pouring for our event next year.

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Posted in Niagara Wines, Ontario Wines, Prince Edward County Wine, Wine Charity Events | No Comments »

Ontario chardonnay wins top prize over French wines!

Sunday, May 10th, 2009

Le Clos Jordanne’s2005 Claystone Terrace top prize at a tasting at the Montreal restaurant La Colombe. The Ontario wine was a ‘pirate wine’ in a tasting where the judges expected to only taste California and French wines.

Most of the judges thought the 2005 Claystone Terrace chardonnay was a french wine.

Read more at details at the Toronto Star …

Having been a big fan of Ontario wine since moving to Toronto in 2003, I am not surprised that an Ontario wine won on a world stage. We have great wines and the wine makers are getting better and better each year. Try an Ontario wine this weekend…

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/630991

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Posted in Niagara Wines, Wine Awards | 2 Comments »