Wining with Mel

Discover your wine style, one glass at a time

Page 15 of 24

Taste Community Grown: A Weekend in the Bay of Quinte

October 2, 2016 / / 0 Comments
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All set for a food and wine event

As some of you may already know, I was recently in Prince Edward County (PEC). I’m often surprised by how many people don’t even know about this gem of a region. About 3 hours from Ottawa and Montreal, and 2.5 hours from Toronto, Prince Edward County is an absolutely idyllic corner of Ontario.

I am a city girl through and through. But this is country life I can get behind! There is something really special about PEC. It has this sense of place and community that is so prevalent. People are proud to live in the County. And it is palpable. As soon as you cross the bridge to the peninsula, there is instantly a different vibe. It’s a bit like that scene in the Wizard of Oz where Dorothy opens the door to her house after the gale and everything goes from black and white to technicolour.

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We always seem to be in a huge flap to get there, but once we do, life immediately slows down. Maybe it’s the beautiful scenery. Maybe it’s the delicious food and wine coming out of the region. Everything seems to taste better there. There are certainly plenty of reasons why people are fleeing their big cities en masse and heading to the County on weekends. Continue reading

A trip to the ER – or why I don’t drink beer

September 21, 2016 / / 0 Comments

A few weeks ago, I was at my local LCBO looking for a few bottles to bring to a friend’s house for dinner. She was going to be serving Middle Eastern fare, so I grabbed a bottle of dry riesling from Alsace, which I thought would go nicely with potentially spicy foods. To switch things up, I decided to grab a couple of IPAs, in case anyone wasn’t feeling the wine (scandalous!) and preferred beer.

I went for a bottle of the Fat Tug (which I reviewed here), one of the few beers from my Beer course earlier this year that I actually enjoyed. I grabbed it, and as I put it in the basket, I felt a sharp pain in my thumb.I didn’t think anything of it until about 20 seconds later, when I realized I was bleeding. I went back to inspect the bottle and noticed a small shard of glass, which looked like it had been fused to the bottle during the recycling process, on the neck. I set it aside and advised the cashier, who was nice enough to get me a band-aid, probably so I would stop bleeding all over the store.

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A delightful blend: an afternoon with Kim Crawford wines

September 19, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Hello friends!

 

It was another exciting wine day here in Ottawa with a fantastic Kim Crawford tasting event, which turned participants into winemakers! Kim Crawford wines have been around for 20 years and the brand has practically become a household name. Especially in my household. Just look at some of my previous posts and you will get a sense of how I often I drink it. Kim Crawford comes up in no less than six WWM posts to date, including this post on chardonnay or this one mentioning the KC Pansy! rosé.

I still remember the first time I tried Kim Crawford sauvignon blanc…

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Am I dating myself with this flashback gif?
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Nostalgia de España

September 8, 2016 / / 0 Comments

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Awesome graphic from creativeyatra.com

I seem to be on a bit of a Spanish kick lately. I’m not sure what it is. Perhaps it is my nostalgic associations with the country. Back in the day, I did an oh-so-cliché third year abroad in Salamanca, a small Spanish town halfway between Madrid and the Spanish border with Portugal. I lived in an apartment inhabited by 6 other international students, who after 5 months of cohabitation became my friends for life. Miguel de Cervantes, the author of the infamous Don Quixote, is rumoured to have studied at the Universidad de Salamanca (it was so long ago, no one knows for sure), where I took Spanish literature courses in classrooms three times older than Canada itself. In a country where businesses close for a siesta for anywhere from 1 to 3 hours in the afternoon, where tapas are a way of life, and where most families don’t even start thinking about dinner before 9 p.m., I spent way too much time stressing out about classes and coursework. If only someone had told me that the marks on year-abroad courses were pass/fail! Continue reading

Wine Pricing: The Complexities In The Cost Of The Bottle

August 15, 2016 / / 0 Comments

A friend recently asked me why Canadian wines are so expensive. Shouldn’t they be cheaper since we’re not paying for shipping from halfway across the world? This question got me thinking about wine pricing.  How do wineries come up with pricing for their wines? Why do some wines sell for $50 and others for only $8? Is the $50 wine necessarily better than the $8 one? These are the kinds of questions I plan to get to the bottom of by the end of this post.

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