Tod
Stewart talks to Sven Bruchfeld, the young winemaker at the helm of
Chile’s dynamic Viña Santa Carolina. Here is his conversation.
Can
winemaking be considered an extreme sport? Both sets of activities
entail a certain degree of risk taking, calculation and, at times,
intuition. And while screwing up on the timing of your harvest may
not have quite the same impact as screwing up on a harness, both can
certainly be career ending. As it turns out, Sven Bruchfeld
approaches winemaking and risky recreation with equal passion. Born
in Chile, schooled at UC Davis and employed at one time or another in
at least four different countries, Bruchfeld is now back on home
turf. Tidings chatted
with him about rumours, reality and his role in shaping the future
direction of Santa Carolina.
The miraculous thing about bread
is that it really is incredibly easy to make. Given the number
of perilous cooking challenges that are presented to us, a loaf of
bread is simpler to make than just about anything in the kitchen —
really.
Not
only is bread easy to make but each step along the doughy way that
leads to crispy crusts and slices of the world’s most delicious
taste is a plateau of pure delight. Once you have made bread — not
in a fancy machine, but with the muscle and warmth of your own hands
— it will be difficult to ever again buy it from a store. First,
because whatever you pay, you are being ridiculously overcharged and,
second, because you know that your version is infinitely better, a
magical gift of hands, heart and soul.
Australia,
a vibrant and innovative wine country, is constantly resetting the
bar. This is as true for whites and dessert wines as it is for its
celebrated reds. Besides Chardonnay, white plantings today embrace
everything from Riesling and Gewürztraminer to Viognier,
Marsanne and Muscat and many others besides.
Ask
most people, though, what first comes to mind when they think of
Australian wines a and the answer inevitably involves two varietals:
Shiraz, of course, and the ever-present Chardonnay. This white grape
has been widely planted throughout Australia (not to mention the rest
of the world), and is especially dominant in the vast irrigated
vineyards of the southeast.
A
family legend has it that I invented Aglio
Olio. This was back in the early 1960s when most kids were
eating bologna sandwiches with processed cheese on white bread.
Tidingsmag.com now has over 50 recipes in 30 different categories. Visit the Tidings Eats section and you'll be able to search your favorite ingredients and cooking styles. Eat up!
There are few more
daring ways to grasp the proverbial bureaucratic dragon by the tail
than to make spirits in British Columbia. But diehard lover of
eau-de-vie and grappa Frank Deiter has succeeded where others have
failed — and where few, in fact, have even dared to go before.
The retired
forester, who learned his spirit skills from a German master
distiller, was always a keen amateur. A relative newcomer to the
rough-and-tumble world of commercial distilling, he established
Okanagan Spirits in Vernon, BC, just a couple of years ago.
Tea
is an amazing beverage. A water-based infusion of leaves (and
sometimes flowers, dried fruit, spices and other flavouring agents),
it’s one of those rare items that’s both delicious and healthful.
Stained pottery remains suggest that people have been drinking tea
since the Stone Age, before such things could be written about.
Chinese emperor Shen Nung did write about it in Pen ts’ao,
one of the world’s first medical texts (2,737 BC). Buddhist monks
brought it to Japan in 805 AD. The first tea shipment to Canada
arrived in 1716. Clearly, this drink was loved all over the world —
while hot chocolate, cola and coffee were still just a gleam in some
Inca’s eye.
Various
cultures have regarded tea highly enough to construct elaborate
rituals around drinking it. Japan’s Cha No Yu ceremony, which dates
back to the 1600s, involves thirty seven steps — ranging
from how the cups are washed and the tea prepared to the food which
accompanies the drink and how it is presented. Like many Japanese
cultural traditions, Cha No Yu is a refinement of a 500-year-older
Chinese text, the Ch’a Ching, dedicated to the proper
preparation of tea.
When
we have big family dinners, we never seem to pick wines that please
the whole clan. Can you recommend some choices with universal appeal?
A wise
man once said, “You can pick your friends, but you can’t pick
your relatives.” And I know from experience that nothing fans the
flames of smouldering opinions like a big family food-fest. Whether
it’s your sister’s know-it-all husband (the expert on everything)
or the mother-in-law who never met a pause in conversation she
couldn’t fill, you should realize right now that nitpicking will
always be more important to some people than finding satisfaction
with what’s put in front of them to drink.
