Just a few years ago it was hard to find Canadian wines at top restaurants, and harder still to find high-priced ones. Today, sommeliers in the major cities are serving quality wines from Ontario and B.C. and customers are buying.
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Telmo Rodriguez is a Spanish dynamo with a growing stable of wines and wineries. He's a bit of a maverick and a star in the world of Spanish wine - and he maintains a serious mane. He takes Spanish classics and makes them his own.
Paris-born, Bordeaux-trained winemaker Pascal Madevon is at the helm of Osoyoos-Larose, one of British Columbia's best wineries. With the 2004 currently on the shelves and a new "second wine" out in B.C., Madevon's going strong.
Madevon's Bordeaux blends are meant to age and, so far, are aging well.
“But I hate sweet wine…” is a common refrain among wine drinkers, but change the frame of reference, serve it properly, and dessert wine can be the perfect call. It's also a niche in which Canada is making its mark. And you can cook with it too.
Learn more about icewine.
Located St. David’s, between Niagara on the Lake and the Falls, in one of the warmest microclimates, Coyote’s Run is a newer high quality producer and they just keep getting better. All of their wines are VQA and all are done in small batches.
With some of the finest pinot noirs and chardonnays ever made in Niagara, Le Clos Jordanne is the hot winery right now. Production is still very small due to “winter kill” of many vines during the harsh winters of 2003 and 2004, and the entire production run was sold out more or less immediately upon release last year. Pretty much the same is happening this year, but expect big things next year and beyond.
Le Clos Jordanne is a winery you should know about.
Champagne is the finest sparkling wine, appreciated even by people who say they don't like wine. The region's strict quality control standards are so high that pretty much any champagne is good, but there are further gradations of quality. The range – from fine older vintage examples to full-bodied luxury to austere elegance – is intoxicating. (Click to see a larger image of the champagne boy.)
Here’s a report from the cradle of sparkling wine.
If anyone should be smiling, it’s Mike Weir: he beat Tiger Woods at the President’s Cup in Ile Bizard, Quebec this summer. Weir’s consistently good performance on the links makes his focus on golf clear – laser-like by all accounts.
That makes it all the more impressive to see his imprimatur on some of Niagara’s better wines.
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