Wining with Mel

Discover your wine style, one glass at a time

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Gran Feudo rosé, perfect for any BYOC (bring your own chair/cup/cooler) gathering.

Pig Roast Pairings

September 2, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Fellow wine lovers!

It has been a busy few weeks! Is it just me, or do busy work weeks lead to increased wine consumption? No? Just me? Oh well, at least it means I have a whole slew of wine insights for you.

Last weekend we headed down to southern Ontario to attend the husband’s cousin’s annual pig roast, in the thriving metropolis of Embro, ON. I wasn’t sure what to expect, and when David told me to pack my jean skirt and cowboy hat, I got nervous. I began to expect the worst.

Besides the pig on a spit, it was a potluck. I used to love potlucks. In my student days, if there was free food, I was all over it. But now that my own cooking skills have improved and I am less desperate for food that I don’t have to cook or pay for, I am less interested in dishes of varying degrees of quality.

Even more importantly, if you don’t know what you’re going to be eating, how the heck do you pick out a wine to go with your meal??

As usual, this will have as much to do with your personal tastes as your budget. The first question is, red, white or maybe rosé? Since I knew the staple of the meal was going to be pork, I decided to eliminate red from the options. So that’s good, that only leaves 46% of LCBO wines to choose from!

If you’ve ever been to the LCBO with me, you’ll know that it’s not something I take lightly. Very rarely do I spend any less than 15 minutes in this fine establishment. I’m like a kid in a candy store, and I like to see what’s new, and what’s on sale, and what will go with my meal, and what will I feel like next Wednesday, and what would go with a sunny Saturday afternoon in the backyard, and are there any occasions coming up I need to buy wine for…etc. Needless to say, I could spend hours in there. Have I also mentioned that my decision-making skills are crap? This means that I tend to walk away from LCBO excursions with no less than 2 bottles each time. Which is great because the two-bottle paper bags they give you are fantastic as compost bin liners. You’re welcome.

So when we got to the LCBO Saturday evening, my husband, who knows me and my exasperating LCBO tendencies well, gave me a 5-minute time limit. My desicion-making abilities put to the test, I had to think quickly: something that pairs well with pork, that will go with most other foods that could potentially end up on the hillbilly potluck table and something that won’t take me half an hour to pick out.

That last bit made me park myself in front of a rosé promo section at the end of an aisle. There I found a bunch of rosés all in one place and I didn’t have to roam up and down all the country-based aisles in search of one I liked. Excellent time management, I thought! Especially since rosés account for less than 5% of the table wines in the LCBO general list. And as we already know, I love drinking rosés in the summer, since they go well with food and are easy to drink on their own as well.

I didn’t want anything too sweet, so that meant I was looking for a dry or even extra dry wine. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the LCBO’s sweetness codes found on the bin tags, here they are:

Source: LCBO

Source: LCBO

This sweetness criteria seemed to eliminate many of the rosés in the display. With time running out (I still had to get through the cash), I quickly selected a Spanish rosé made of one of my favourite grapes: garnacha. This dry wine was nice and light, yet had enough fruity flavour to stand up to most foods. For $12 a bottle, it was the perfect wine for a pig roast where most of the revelers were drinking Coors Light. Plus it was an excellent exercise in quick decision-making and self-restraint. I managed to limit my LCBO visit to less than five minutes AND left with only one bottle in my possession!

Gran Feudo rosé, perfect for any BYOC (bring your own chair and cooler) gathering.

Gran Feudo rosé, perfect for any BYOC (bring your own chair/cup/cooler) gathering.

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The pig-roasting contraption. I was very sorry to have missed the spit in action. Note my father-in-law in the background, caught red-handed at the dessert table.

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The food table

The dessert table, with beer backdrop.

The dessert table, with beer backdrop.

West Coast Finds

August 13, 2015 /

When we were planning our trip to the West Coast,  I was really excited to discover new wine regions and visit some wineries. In British Columbia, the Okanagan is just a four-hour drive inland from Vancouver, and Washington wine country is directly south of that (four hours east of Seattle).

Northwest wine regions. The Okanagan is the orange region in the top left and the Washington Columbia Valley is the large yellow area directly below it. (copyright Cole Danehower)

Northwest wine regions. The Okanagan is the orange region in the top right and the Washington Columbia Valley is the large yellow area directly below it.
(copyright Cole Danehower)

Unfortunately, sailors that we are, once we got to the Coast, we didn’t want to get too far from the water. We just couldn’t get enough of that ocean view, so we wanted to maximize our seaside time. This meant that we decided not to go inland for wine tours. As a result, I made it my mission to try as many local wines as possible during my trip. Here were my favourites:

1. Columbia Crest Grand Estates Cabernet Sauvignon

Yummy Washington cab sauv, with a view of the Pacific Ocean in Point Roberts, WA.

Beautiful deep ruby colour. On the nose, delicious black cherry, cocoa, coffee, licorice, tobacco and smoke. On the palate, this full-bodied wine has a fantastic round and smooth mouthfeel. And it is so tasty, with a similar flavour profile to the nose, including super rich chocolatey notes. Surprisingly low tannins for a cab sauv. The acidity is very high, which leaves your mouth watering for more. This makes for a very dangerous wine. The smokey fruitiness pairs perfectly with burgers off the grill. And good news! It is available at the LCBO for $17.95 a bottle.

UPDATE: Clearly I am ahead of the curve! This wine is featured on page 10 of the upcoming Vintages magazine!

Vintages Columbia Crest

2. Joie Noble Blend

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A Noble Blend from Joie Farms in the Okanagan, British Columbia

I came across this wine several times while we were in British Columbia. It is very popular, and as soon as I held it under my nose, I understood why. It smells heavenly, like flowers and lychee fruit. It is based on an Alsatian blend and made of gewürztraminer, riesling and pinot blanc grapes, among others. The result is a versatile off-dry, yet refreshing sipper, perfect for patios, parties, dinner, you name it. The lychee is a key characteristic of the gewürz grape, and comes through subtly on the palate. I also got grapefruit, white flower, and exotic fruit. Then there is a hint of sweetness that is really appealing, making this wine a good match for Asian foods. This Okanagan wine is sadly only available in BC for now, at a price point of $21 at the BC Liquor Store. I will definitely be keeping an eye out for this one in the hopes of catching it in an upcoming Vintages release.

If you’re interested in learning more about the wines of the Northwest, check out the cover story in this week’s edition of Vintages magazine.

What are you favourite West Coast wines? Share your picks in the Comments!

Tricky pairings #1 – Curry

July 28, 2015 /

Wine pairing is an incredibly complex topic. There is no way to cover it in just one post, and I will delve more into it in future posts, but let me give you a brief overview.

Mel’s take on wine pairing

The general goal is to find a wine that complements your food. You don’t want your wine to overpower the flavours of your dish, but you also want it to be able to stand up to the food. There are the well-known pairings: steak with a big, bold red like cabernet sauvignon, where the tannins in the wine help cut through the fat of the meat; or fish with a light, crisp white like sauvignon blanc. But these are just the basics. In my experience, these generic pairings don’t always cut it. What if your steak is being served with a flavourful chimichurri sauce, or what if the fish comes with a mango coulis? Then your tyical pairings would go right out the window. The trick is to identify the most powerful flavour component on the plate, and try to find a complementary wine for that, not necessarily the protein it is being served with.

A tricky pairing

This brings us to today’s topic: the tricky pairing of curry.  There are different types of curry and I must say that I am unclear on the differences. I just know that I prefer a Thai curry to an Indian curry.  Then, there are red, green, and yellow curries, all of which have a distinctive taste and tend to be served with different vegetables for some reason. If anyone can enlighten me, please feel free to do so in the comments. My focus today, however, is on the wine to go with these types of flavourful dishes.

Let’s break it down

In any curry dish, what is the most powerful flavour component? The curry itself, and its accompanying spiciness. Spiciness, along with tanginess and sweetness, is one of the most challenging flavours to pair with wine. Just imagine you’re eating a spicy chili. Is there a wine that comes to mind that you would want to drink? Probably not. Maybe a light beer, like a Corona or a Tiger beer, something refreshing. Or something with some sweetness, like an iced tea. What if we could find a wine that was similar? Perhaps one with the refreshing aspect of the beer and the sweetness of the iced tea?

 Suggestions

The other night we went to a friend’s house, where two different types of curry were being served. One was a tofu red curry, and the other was a vegetarian yellow curry with peas and potatoes. I sent my husband to the LCBO with instructions to get an off-dry or medium riesling from Alsace (FR) or Germany. He arrived at dinner with a bottle of Rethink Riesling, from the Mosel in Germany ($12.80 at the LCBO).

Re-think riesling

On the nose, it is unquestionably a riesling, with the typical citrus and vinyl aroma (not at all a bad thing in this wine). On the palate, the same citrus, plus a bit of peach and green apple quite refreshing with just a hint of sweetness. It didn’t do bad things for the food, and managed to stand up to the spiciness. That said, according to the bottle and the LCBO, it is a dry wine, with the website indicating 15 grams of sugar per litre. However, it also describes it as “off-dry & fruity”. Go figure. Next time, I would probably choose a sweeter wine. Sweeter wines tend to envelop the mouth a bit more, which would balance out and cool off the curry’s spice. With that in mind, a German or French gewürztraminer would also have been a good choice.

A Thai feast, paired with a German riesling.

A Thai feast, paired with a German riesling.

So that’s what I drank with curry the other night. What do you think? What are your preferred pairings for spicy curries? Shall we do a taste test soon?

Introduction To Wining With Mel: Origin Story

July 18, 2015 / / 0 Comments

I haven’t always been a wine snob. In my undergrad days at McGill, I never went to the liquor store. I was pretty lazy, and generally only went as far as the dépanneur down the street, where cheap bottles of wine could be bought until 11 p.m. I remember thinking, even back then, that the wine was pretty terrible. But it was either that or jello shots, and the latter required advance planning, which is not my forté.

I suppose I truly began taking notice of wines and their intriguing differences when I lived in Buenos Aires, in Argentina. I was in the land of Malbec and I LOVED it. In fact, when I came home, that was all I drank. There was something about the plummy, rich taste (and accompanying staining quality leading to the unfortunate consequence of what I affectionately call “peasant teeth”) that made me feel like I was back in the land of steak and tango. The astonishingly low prices at the LCBO were also a bonus (Fuzion was my go-to at the time).

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Wine cellar at Norton winery in Mendoza, Argentina

Eventually, I grew tired of Malbec (it was pretty much all I drank for a year). A trip to France opened my horizons a bit and convinced me that I needed to try new things and maybe start spending a bit more than $7.95 a bottle. For years, I kept trying to find deals (i.e. wines that I liked for around $10). But I found that this price point still limited my trial-and-error tasting method. There just weren’t that many wines I liked for under $10, so each year I increased my price limit a bit more. These days, I still try not to spend more than $20 a bottle.

It may come as a bit of a surprise, but my personal wine turning point was actually losing my job in 2011. Winter was coming (yes, that is a Game of Thrones reference, just go with it) and I had nothing else lined up. What else was a girl to do but sign up for a wine course at the local college! It just happened to be part of one of the best wine education programs in Canada.  One course led to another, and it was all downhill from there, a snowball effect of wine snobbery leading to the recent acquisition of my Sommelier Fundamentals certificate earlier this year. That’s right, people. I am now fundamentally a wine snob.

This piece of paper has proven to be pretty powerful (please pardon the alliteration). Not in any major way—it’s not like my inbox is filling with Winery Translator job opportunities (my dream job, by the way)—but people in my circles who know about my diploma now ask me all sorts of wine-related questions. Questions like:

– What wine do you pair with spicy food?

– What is a good wine to bring as a gift that makes it seem like you spent a lot of money, but you didn’t?

– Does Ontario make any good wines?

– What’s so great about French wines anyway?

None of these questions have a simple answer. And I am by no means claiming to be an expert. But I do hope to answer these types of questions here, in a way that anyone can understand, even if wine isn’t your thing. For me, the point of this blog is simply to share my love of wine, and introduce you to the fabulous range of delicious wines available at reasonable prices. All too often, we get into wine habits, such as my aforementioned Malbec obsession of 2007. I hope this blog will inspire you to break those habits and try new things, whether you are a seasoned oenophile or your idea of a fine wine is Baby Duck.

Here’s to raising a glass together soon!

Mel

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