Wine All The Time

The next Vintages Release, December 6, will be the last of the year, as traditionally the LCBO only has one release in December, no doubt a by-product of how busy they will become as we lead up to Christmas and New Year’s.

This past fall, I was able to spend time in Sonoma, California and, yes, I tasted wine. There are lots of memories, but a few stand out.

I have just turned to a new page – though a very old one – in the realm of distilled spirits, one on which is written the name of a drink that has been crafted and enjoyed for hundreds of years in the Balkans, Lozovo Rakija .

Every harvest, wineries all over the world put out calls for people to assist in the heavy load of work that comes with bringing in the grapes and processing them into wine.

As much as I enjoy tasting different wines, I also love talking with people in the wine business. Last week, in Santa Monica California, I attended a get-together where Tony Princiotta was pouring his wines.

Recently, Colio Estate Wines, which has a kiosk in Pino’s Supermarket on Trunk Road, introduced their new “ Bricklayer’s ” line of wines.

Last column, I wrote about the red wines available in the “Vintages Essential” collection at the Bay Street store in the Station Mall, and so this week it is time to check out the whites; of course, the Great Northern Road store will have

I have to admit, there’s a little bit of madness involved in the pursuit of wine, and it is certainly an indication of our affluence as a society that we can indulge ourselves in the hunt for better and better wines, often at higher and higher

Last column we took a look at the famous grapes from France, grapes that are now known and grown everywhere; aside from Germany’s Riesling, it is France’s grapes that dominate the world of wine.

One might presume that when we are writing about wine that ‘grapes’ would be a given, but a conversation last week with a person new to wine prompted me to reconsider, and to take a little time to write about the grapes that make the wine