18
Feb
2008
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Category: On the Road with the Grape Guy
This year marks the 20th Anniversary of Cuvee. For those not familiar with Cuvee I can sum it up in one quick little sentence: it's the Oscars of the Ontario wine industry. That’s right, Cuvee is all about peer approval and recognition. A bunch of winemakers head into a room, a lot of wine is poured and they choose the best in a variety of categories - sure I've just oversimplified it, but when you boil it down that's what happens. Of course, there's more to Cuvee than just the awards; there's the Gala – where each entering winery gets to bring their wines (usually their best or newest) to showcase to those lucky enough to be in attendance. There's also a great little passport program called Cuvee-en-Route, participating wineries fling open cellar doors and bring out long forgotten or past winning wines - this is the weekend that your past favorites may just be on sale for the last time. So really Cuvee is all about the wine. Details of these programs (Gala and En-Route) can be found at www.cuvee.ca.
At the media tasting we got to sample the top scoring wines from 58 wineries ... not all of these wines are winners, but they were the top rated wines by the judging panel for each individual winery. (Read more)
For more interesting adventures thru the world of wine check out the On the Road With the Grape Guy blog.
13
Feb
2008
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Category: On the Road with the Grape Guy
I won't go as far as saying it was a veritable who's who of the Ontario wine world, but there sure we're a lot of recognizable faces about. John Szabo was hard at "work" tasting the multitude of wines, as was Michael Vaughn, Graham Duncan (of Now Magazine) and David Lawrason, who was so busy I never saw any sign of him, though people said he was there. Beppi Crosariol (from the Globe and Mail) questioned winery principals with tape recorder in hand. At one point, my buddy and fellow wine-writer Dean Tudor leaned in to me and asked, "Have you tried the cheese?" To which I replied, "Have you tried the chicken?" (Maple smoked chicken from Beretta Organic Farms in Kingsville - outstanding). The boys from Tawse were there (winemakers Brian and Paul), so was Norman Hardie (Norman Hardie winery in Prince Edward County), Jens Gemmrich (of Ontario's only organic winery FrogPond Farm) and Elena Galey-Pride of Southbrook, who had been sitting in lectures since ten that morning (it was four in the afternoon when we bumped into each other), we had a dizzying conversation about vineyards and wineries and how each gets classified as either organic or bio-dynamic (Southbrook will become Ontario's third certified organic vineyard later this year - August 2008, if I got my dates straight). Robert Paul, Sommelier of Eastdell, pointed me in the direction of his favouite wine, and I returned the favour an hour later to Warren Porter of IronGate/Sommelier Service. It’s amazing any of us got any tasting done with all the hellos and handshaking we had to do.
But enough about the “who” … it’s the “what” that has brought us all together... (Read more)
For more interesting adventures thru the world of wine check out the On the Road With the Grape Guy blog.
