The
names of Coyote’s Run, Frogpond, Flat Rock, Ridegepoint, Palatine
and Hidden Bench don’t (yet) trip lightly off wine lovers’
tongues like Inniskillin, Peller Estate and Château des
Charmes.
They
are some of the small farm and estate wineries that exist in the
shadows of the traditional behemoth producers with bulging budgets.
They are what the French refer to as garagistes, due to their
tiny production of vins de garage and their minute, yet
impressive, wineries.
Lenko
Vineyards is probably Niagara’s best known garagiste. This
family-run operation in Beamsville produces absolutely amazing reds
that seem to be sold out more often than they are available. The Old
Vines Merlot is a seductive style, which offers lots of toasty,
vanilla-scented oak that’s about as tasty as you can get.
Apart
from sipping while solving life’s problems, tea has many uses. Any
American historian will tell you dumping tea into a harbour is a
great way to start a revolution. Fortune-tellers swear the swirl of
leaves in the bottom of a cup hold the secrets of your destiny. Ask a
chef and you may be surprised to learn that the fragrant quality of
tea adds wonderful flavour to food, whether you are marinating,
tenderizing, braising, infusing or baking.
Fresh tea is bitter and
astringent, designed by nature to keep creatures from eating it. But
nature didn’t bank on humans using mild heat, pressure and time to
let the enzymes in tea transform the raw material into something
delicious. And the fact that its phenol compounds are lauded for
their antioxidant health benefits hasn’t slowed the consumption of
this revolutionary drink in North America.
February
isn't the only month for sentimental celebration.
Every day can be Valentine's Day. You are even forgiven for splashing red hearts and pink blush all
over the place. During the festival of perfect love, marriage or just
a pas de deux, the
same principle applies to drinks. They are allowed to be pink and
pretty and to dance divinely on your tongue with compatibility,
creative interpretations and with ingredients and flavours that make
for a beautiful relationship.
Put on
the cocktail music and, instead of flowers, why not enjoy the aroma
and romance of cocktails of love?
Is it me or does
every has-been celebrity seem to have a line of wines named after
them nowadays?
Why so surprised?
Celebrities are as good as superheroes — able to leap onto any
marketing opportunity in a single bound. Surely if they can blend
their own cologne, design clothes and create salad dressing, then
thinking they can slap their name on a wine bottle should come
without any burden of guilt, right?
That said, it might
surprise you to hear that, what with all the new famed-named labels
on liquor-store shelves, celeb-endorsed vino isn’t a current trend.
Major and minor stars from music, sports and Hollywood have been
involved in the industry (at different levels of intensity) for
decades.
Most of us think that tea probably grows in those perforated bags. Not so. Loose leaf tea is making a huge come back in recent years as tea shops open around almost every corner. Here is a primer done by Le Gourmet TV.com, to help brew the perfect cup.
Might we recommend rolling hills with your Chardonnay?
Discover the Okanagan and explore the heart of award-winning British Columbian winemaking.
Carmelis Goat Cheese Artisan is a family-run boutique dairy that produces over 20 different varieties of delicious goat cheeses using 100% goat’s milk. Connoisseurs swear by the Goatgonzola, a lovely blue cheese that is earthy and sweet, as well as nutty. Carmelis also makes 24 flavours of goat’s milk gelato.
250-870-3117
170 Timberline Road, Kelowna, BC
“The
Korova Milkbar was a milk-plus mesto… what they sold there was milk
plus something else. They had no licence for selling liquor, but
there was no law yet against prodding some of the new veshches which
they used to put into the old moloko, so you could peet it with
vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom or one or two other veshches which
would give you a nice quiet horrorshow fifteen minutes admiring Bog
and All His Holy Angels and Saints in your left shoe with lights
bursting all over your mozg.”
—Anthony
Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
Or
maybe a moloko with
knives in it to warm your guttywuts and sharpen you up? Perhaps, sir,
you’d be more satisfied with a chalice of Romulan Ale to put
additional spring into your galactic galliard, eh? Beam me up,
Scotty.
The
reality is that you don’t necessarily need to resort to fantasy to
experience some rather out-there tipples. The following is a short
list of some of those coming to, available at or never to be seen
(mercifully) at your local hooch purveyor.
“I only have four days.” This is what was going through my mind as I touched down in Pescara on the east coast of central Italy. Though only two hours’ drive from Rome, Pescara and the rest of Abruzzo lies pleasantly ignored by the hordes of tourists busying themselves in Tuscany and Umbria. While visiting family and friends in the UK and France this spring, I had managed to set aside four days to hop over to this still undiscovered area in search of new flavours and recipe ideas.
