I went back to Montreal this week to help Son #2 move into and furnish his student apartment. Between trips to various magasins des meubles, grocery stores and suppliers, Mrs. Wine Box and I managed to sit down to three dinners and two lunches, at four new (to us) restuarants and, of course, our beloved L’Express.

Son #1 followed his parents to McGill, and when we used to visit him in Montreal, we would more often than not look for a place to stay in our old stomping grounds around The Plateau. My reports on Montreal restaurants accordingly tended to bias towards what ever was hot and new in that general direction, whether it was Le Violon or Mon Lapin. Son #2 has forged his own path to Montreal and is studying at Concordia and lives on the left side of The Main. This trip would bias west.

Mrs. Wine Box and I found an AirBnB in the new sea of condos that runs west of Old Montreal between rue Notre Dame and the Lachine Canal. We were just west of Guy, where Griffintown becomes Little Burgundy, and there’s a strip of restaurants that runs from there to Atwater. The strip has became known and developed for dining out when the neighbourhood’s O.G. gentrifier, Joe Beef, became acclaimed in the mid-2000s.

Twenty years later, rue Notre-Dame Ouest is established, but it’s still dynamic. There are new restaurants opening, and old ones closing. Enchanted with the notion of walking to and from dinner, I made a couple reservations and one walk-in along the strip and here’s what I have to report.

Foxy | 1638 Notre-Dame O.

Foxy is the ten year old project of Ontario ex-pat restaurateur Dyan Solomon, known best for Olive et Groumando in Old Montreal. Gastronomically, Foxy is distinguished for it’s wood burning grill, which can be seen flickering inside the dining room. But I was drawn to it, unsurprisingly, for the wine.

The wine program is put together by sommelière extraordinaire Véronique Dalle. I was big fan of the Pullman Wine Bar on Parc, where I met and interviewed her many years ago. I reckoned Foxy would have a great list, and looked forward to reading it when we took our seats at the bar that runs along one side of the single storefront room.

The trouble I had with the Foxy list was, that Dalle is very good at finding less well known (at least by me) producers that make great wines. They are invariably either natural wine makers, or of that general persuasion. This means that most of the wines aren’t classified by appellation, but by a generic table wine designation like “Vin de France”.

Confronted by the double mysteries of who made the wine, and where exactly it came from, I subjected myself to the mercy of our friendly barman-sommelier. Would he suggest a light red that would work diverse collection of small plates we ordered, preferably from France1 and priced somewhere around $150? He happily agreed, and produced a fun Pinot Noir and Gamay blend, with a good story, under budget from Clos du Tue-Boeuf in the Southwest corner of the Loire that went with everything.

Stem Bar | 2475 Notre-Dame Ouest

Stem Bar, because it’s a bar kind of wine bar, does not take recommendations. It’s on the Joe Beef strip of Notre-Dame closer to the Atwater Market, so I figured if they couldn’t take us, then we’d find a neighbour of theirs that would. On the Tuesday night we strolled by it, Son #2 and a friend of his, we spotted a table on Stem’s sidewalk terrace and were seated.

Stem Bar opened in January 2020, just in time for the pandemic, but it has survived and thrived. There is lot of natural wine on the list, as there is on most independent neighbourhood restaurants in Montreal. On Stem’s list there were producers I actually knew by reputation if not experience and we managed a bottle of Barraida Rosé from Filipa Pato and a Pinot Noir d’Alsace from Marcel Weiss, which helped wash down the large amount of food required in the company of fellow diners in the early 20s. It was good fun.

Bruce Taverne Écossaise | 1964 Notre-Dame Ouest

There is an entire Wikipedia entry on how the Scots built Montreal, which is ethnographically pleasing to someone whose full name is Malcolm McKinnon Jolley. But as glorious as the Northwest Company, the Lachine Canal and the Golden Mile may be, the country of my forebearers, nor the foodways they brought to Canada,have not made much of lasting contribution to the Montreal restaurant scene. Could Bruce, which is not yet a year old, change this? I wanted to find out.

Over a bottle of Gaël Petit’s Tavel, we found out it could certainly make a favourable impression. The haggis is delicious; soft and subtle spiced with butter soaked turnips and mashed potatoes. There is an appetizer version, designed to convert skeptics, which we shared among three of us and ate all of.

The star of the meal, and among one of the better and more interesting things I have had this summer was a perfectly rip tomato salad with a garlicky tikka masala vinaigrette and raita, garnished with tarragon. Whatever trepidation we had for Bruce vanished with that dish and the locally sourced menu focused on fresh foods. I hope it sticks around.

Lunch: Satay Brothers and L’Express

We hadn’t planned to have dinner on Tuesday night at Stem, we had planned on going to Satay Brothers, which is further west on Notre-Dame, into the neighbourhood of St. Henri. Both Mrs. Wine Box and I keep getting recommendations for this Southeast Asian restaurant that doesn’t take reservations for parties under six. With four of us, we thought it would be good to try it when there were enough of us to share plates.

The trouble is that part of setting up Son #2’s apartment was a shop at, and at the supermarket beside, Atwater Market. The shop ended up happening in the middle of the day, and Satay Brothers has a shipping container stall or in the market. We ended up getting three stools at their little bar and getting an offsite taste of the place while taking a break from shopping.

Whether we stop for lunch or not, when we drive to Montreal, Atwater Market is often our last stop. Mrs. Wine Box stocks up on Quebecois seasonals, and I head to the big SAQ next to it to bring rarities back down the 401. Some of them are even natural.

Our last lunch was at L’Express. It did exactly what L’Express is supposed to do. We stretched a half bottle of Chablis over gazpacho soup (it was a hot day), and I had a Gaspesian tuna tartar. My waiter was concerned that for a man of my constitution, the tuna, which was technically an appetizer, would not be enough food. He kindly suggested a serving of frites and mayonnaise, which paired very nicely indeed. They take care of you there.

August 15th is the Feast of the Assumption and traditionally the day for blessing the vines, which would, in much of Europe be beginning to get ready for a harvest some weeks away. It would also have been the time when the season would intimate an impending change, with a spell of cooler weather. The second half of august is not the end of summer, but it can be the beginning of the end.

I am promiscuous on Instagram, and will follow anyone who looks remotely interesting, which includes a lot of wine people and their wineries. I would expect, in August, to see harvest photos from the ones I follow in Sicily, but not in Burgundy. And yet there they are, picking their grapes weeks before their mothers and fathers did. I hope they managed to get some blessings in, one way or another.

In Southern Ontario, things are moving a little more slowly. This summer has been relatively wet, and the vines look green, at least from the road, when I was in Niagara last week. I have been told that one of the effects of climate change forecasted for us here is more rain. Not great for disease pressure; the winery I was visiting had just sprayed copper for mildew. But okay for longer hang times, and avoiding heat stress and drought.

Will the wine regions of Ontario be some of the last in the Northern Hemisphere to pick their grapes in September and October? Will European vigneron come visit the New World to see how things used to go in the Old?

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WINE RECOMMENDATIONS

Grand Veneur Blanc 2024

Price: $19.95
Channel: LCBO Vintages

Producer: Alain Jaume
Country: France
Region: Côtes-du-Rhône
Appellation: Côtes-du-Rhône AOC

Grapes: Grenache Blanc (40%), Roussanne (20%), Viogner (20%), Clairette (20%)
Alcohol by Volume: 14%
Sugar Content: 2 grams per litre

The LCBO “Style” characterization of the Grand Veneur white Côtes-du-Rhône is “Full-bodied & Rich”. Is it ever: there is a big weight and viscosity to this wine. It’s matched by big ripe peach fruit and a touch of white flower aromatics, I imagine from the Viogner in the blend. And there is just enough acidity to keep the wine fresh and lively. It’s not subtle but it moves with grace and distinction that makes it a great deal at $20.

In many houses, at this time of year, corn on the cob, lathere din butter, salt, and pepper is served first as its own course. The Grand Veneur, could not be better suited to accompany this seasonal treat.

https://www.lcbo.com/en/grand-veneur-cotes-du-rhone-2024-49035

Lake Doctor Shiraz 2023

Price: $19.95
Channel: LCBO Vintages

Producer: Zonte’s Footsteps
Country: Australia
Region: South Australia
Appellation: Langhorne Creek

Grapes: Shiraz (Syrah)
Alcohol by Volume: 14.5%
Sugar Content: 3 grams per litre

The 2023 vintage would have marked the 20th anniversary of the Zonte’s Footsteps winery and project. Co-founded by ex-pat Albertan vigneron Brad Rey. Rey was back in Canada recently, promoting his wines and led me through a comprehensive tasting. There seemed to be an extra twinkle in his eye, when we got to the 2023 Lake Doctor Shiraz. Langhorne Creek is where Rey began Zonte’s Footsteps, and the region is known for the coastal wind that comes up from the Great Southern Ocean to cool things down in the heat of summer known as the “lake doctor”. The wine seems to have captured some of that freshness and is made with a very small amount of Viogner.

Look for deep dark blackberry fruit, a touch of earth Shiraz/Syrah savouriness and good food friendly lift. It wants the grill and the last summer holiday dinners. The Lake Doctor Shiraz is a Vintages Essentials, which means it is widely available across Ontario, which might be handy to know if you can manage to get away for the long weekend before it’s back to school.

https://www.lcbo.com/en/zonte-s-footstep-lake-doctor-shiraz-2017-72975

In my darker moods, the story of the digital age can seem like the continuous substitution of human contact and connection for some electronic simulation. These exchanges have made a very small group of people extremely rich, and most of us more miserable than we remember being before we were promised the world in our pockets. No wonder I have begun to see people in their 20s anachronistically smoking cigarettes on the streets; it must at least feel like something real.

Still, out of the darkness will emerge the occasional ray of light. It often arrives in the form of delicious liquid in stemware, and burns brightest in the proximity of other human beings basking in its glow. I caught a glimpse of this kind of illumination a few weeks ago at tasting launch of a new importing agency, Common Ground Wines.

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I found out about the “First Pour” event when I ran into one Common Ground’s two principals a couple of weeks prior at another tasting, iC4. I met Jordin Clark early in my career as a wine hack, but hadn’t seen him for a couple years. He had worked for Lifford, one of the big agencies in Toronto, whose owner, Steven Campbell, was generous to me and showed me the ropes when I knew very little about the wine trade.

When I asked him what he was up to, he replied he’d started a new agency, with a hospitality veteran, Kaylea McCarron, and invited me to the tasting to be held on a weekday afternoon and early evening in a friend’s shop in the Distillery District. I expected a quick visit and maybe a tasting of a handful of interesting wines. Instead, there was a table set-up with a few dozen wines and printed pamphlet listing them and Common Ground’s 16 signed-up producers from five countries.

Clark and McCarron even had a visiting producer: Frederico Franceschi (Cassacia di Franceschi) from Montalcino. Franchesci’s Brunello was in good fancy wine company. There were bottles from Champagne, Chablis, Bordeaux, Burgundy, Côte Rotie, Chianti Classico, Barolo, and Etna. There were also interesting labels from producers in the Savoie, Loire, Catalonia and even Turkey. There was also a bottle of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc from the new personal label created by renown New Zealand winemaker Ruud Maasdam.

For a debut, Common Ground put out quite a line-up. The tasting guide would have made a tantalizing wine list at any of Toronto’s wine serious restaurants. This may have been by design, since most of the packed-in crowd at the First Pour were sommeliers from Toronto’s wine serious restaurants.

And me and Steven Campbell, who I tasted with for a while, and who I think was as impressed as I was with the selection that Jordin and McCarron had managed to put together in six months of forming their partnership. Good for them for investing in the wine trade and hospitality in an uncertain time.

And good for the wine world, that there are wines and winemakers still out there to be discovered and experienced, whether they’re from the most prestigious regions, or the ones that get called emerging, or are being reinvented. Wine is still a human endeavour that must be experienced in real life. You can’t taste someone’s wine on a screen.

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WINE RECOMENDATIONS

This is the point in August when we begin to grimly realize that there is less summer ahead than behind. To keep the spirit of wine for warm weather alive, I recommend two serious, but value driven rosé wines: one from Niagara to begin the evening, and the next, from the Rhône, to serve with dinner.

Tawse Growers Blend Rosé 2025

Price: $18.95
Channel: LCBO Vintages

Producer: Tawse
Country: Canada
Region: Niagara
Appellation: VQA Niagara Peninsula

Grapes: Pinot Noir dominant, with Gamay and Syrah (% NA)
Alcohol by Volume: 13%
Sugar Content: 14 grams per litre
Certification: NA

The Tawse Growers Blend Rosé might be the least serious wine from this very serious Niagara producer. Tawse is having a good year, having on the top winery award at the National Wine Awards, as well individual awards for their estate grown wines. It’s also their 25th anniversary year (stay tuned for more on Tawse from me shortly). One of the many reasons that Moray Tawse’s winery has not just survived but thrived for a quarter century is that winemaker Jessica Otting, like her predecessor the late Paul Pender, is nimble and can switch from making $45 Pinot Noir to an everyday LCBO wine like this pink one for under $20.

This is a fun wine. I was surprised that its residual sugar registers in the double digits because it does not drink sweet. It’s rich in strawberry red fruit, and full of juicy acid to balance everything as it goes down dangerously easy. This is a wine for a drink with a friend on a weekend afternoon, or to be served as an aperitif with snacks before dinner.

https://www.lcbo.com/en/tawse-grower-s-blend-rose-45075

Marquis d’Aqueria 2025

Price: $21.95
Channel: LCBO Vintages

Producer: Château d’Aqueria
Country: France
Region: Southern Rhône
Appellation: Tavel AOC

Grapes: Grenache dominant Rhône blend with Syrah, Clairette, Mourvèdre, Cinsault, Bourboulenc (%NA)
Alcohol by Volume: 14%
Sugar Content: 2 grams per litre
Certification: NA

There is rosé, and the there is Tavel. Tavel lies directly across the Rhône River from Châteauneuf-du-Pape, and its wines are kind of a mirror of the ones from the better known town. The legend is that they were made in a lighter style for the popes to drink through the hot summers, where they ironically stayed in Chateauneuf. True or not, Tavel rosé is closer to a light red wine than the very light hued rosé wines that are fashionable now.

Marquis d’Aqueria is the entry level rosé from the house; Château d’Aqueria is flagship and retails for a few dollars more. I’m not sure of the difference; perhaps the Marquis is made from bought grapes (the winery was purchased by Guigal in 2022). In any event it’s a weighty, serious wine with a profound red fruit line that lies closer to cherry than strawberry. As they like to say in Tavel, c’est un vin gastronomique, and it’s true place is at the table with something grilled like chicken, pork or zuchini, though it will also pair finely with olives and potato chips.

https://www.lcbo.com/en/marquis-d-aqueria-tavel-2019-556274

I get all the news I need from my Substack feed. For instance, courtesy of Henry Jeffreys’ Drinking Culture, I learned that young people in London are pairing some of the finest wines known to humanity to fast food; corporate chain junk food from industrial mass marketers like McDonald’s. To be clear, What I really learned is that some one wrote about it at the Times of London, and found a few youthful trades willing to be quoted about it. I know what it’s like to find something to write about against a deadline; this may or not be much of a trend.

Here are the first few paragraphs from the Sunday Times piece, entitled ‘Champagne and nuggets? Why young people pair fine wine with junk food’:

Would sir like to try the 2016 Château Pétrus with a side of chicken nuggets? Or how about, madam, the full-bodied Châteauneuf-du-Pape paired with a packet of pickled onion Monster Munch crisps?

The thought may horrify sommeliers and wine connoisseurs, who are used to pairing a slow roast lamb or rump steak with their fine wines.

But wine bars are embracing such unconventional combinations in an attempt to offer a “light-hearted gateway” to fine wine while cutting costs and stripping away snobbery. They report a “massive appetite” for the pairings among young people.

Tom Grater, the founder of Crystal Palace Wine Club in south London, said his junk food pairing sessions consistently sold out. He believes this is part of a larger trend, fuelled by social media, in which young people prioritise better-quality wine over quantity.

Really?

However widespread, I find this idea entirely disturbing. I read Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation in my late 20s, and Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma in my mid-30s, precisely at the time that I became earnestly interested in wine. The whole point of wine was, and remains, to escape the empty calorie enslavement of industrial food. Not to f@cking compliment it.

Je suis José Bové.

Carlo Petrini, with whom I had dinner twice1, started Slow Food originally to save the viticoltore of Piedmont after the methanol poisoning scandal of the early 1980s. The communal meals of traditional foods, which spawned the movement, were meant to pair with and restore the reputation of the wines of the Langhe. The idea that there’s a Gen Z gaggle in Islington (or Red Hook, or the Ossington Strip) pairing Barolo with Burger King must have the former Communist Mayor of Bra spinning in his grave.

I have tried to make this make sense. How would it work? I have tried to walk a mile in the shoes of someone who would pour a glass of Willamette Valley Pinot Noir next to a styrofoam container from Arbee’s:

Let’s say you invite me for dinner. I accept and insist on bringing the wine. Because I don’t know the menu I lean towards something versatile.

I select an Etna red from a favourite producer that I bought at the winery, wrapped in my dirty laundry to check it in my bag on the three flights it took me to get it home, and have held in my cellar for a dozen years waiting for just the right moment to open it, like your kind invitation.

Before dinner we have a Chardonnay that I also brought from a small producer in Niagara. You produce a bowl of regular, salted potato chips, which makes a delicious match to the ever so slightly but integrated oak and lemon curd character of the boutique wine. It’s fun to match high and low, like an expensive jacket worn over a plain t-shirt. C’est cool.

Before dinner, I head to the dining room to pour the wine, which I have opened and tasted earlier. It’s developed since then and fruit and floral aromas bring water to my mouth. This is going to be good, I think to myself.

Then, I see you coming from the kitchen holding a silver tray… on which is a colourful paper bag emblazoned with a familiar logo: Taco Bell. It is the end of our friendship.

My straw man fantasy, might not convince Chris Cassell, the Millenial inkeeper at Must & Lees, who told the Times, “In the wine world there can be a bit of a stigma that you have to know something but with junk food you don’t have to know anything in advance.” So, here are three short, but relatively more reasoned arguments against Brunello with Big Macs.

1. It will ruin the wine

   If someone has collaborated at great effort with Mother Nature to make a truly fine wine, then coating one’s palate with a fine film of hydrogenated palm oil is objectively not the best way to appreciate it. Life is short. Unless 1982 Mouton is your house wine2, then you should taste great wines mindfully and get as much out of them as you can. That’s not snobbery, it’s common sense.
   

2. It will ruin the crappy food

   There is a time and a place for a Big Mac Meal. I will confess to having one every five years or so, just to see if they beguile me the way they did when I was 15 years old3. But the appropriate pairing for crappy food is a crappy sugary drink. Again, better to be in the moment: how are you going to truly appreciate the secret sauce, if you’re distracted by a Clos Lambray 1995? If you’re going to do it, do it right.
   

3. It will ruin the Winosystem^TM

   There are, and should be, wines for every occasion. A litre bottle from a co-operative in Abruzzo will do fine with a Baconator. Give the paisanos in Ortona some trade; keep them alive. The Emidio Pepe’s (RIP) of the world need them, as the top predators need the strata of life below them. Or trade up to a $20 Côtes du Rhone, and remember the Chicken Wine keeps the Perrin family’s lights on at Château Beaucastel.

For Dionysus’ sake, if you have a decent bottle of wine, pair it with a decent meal.

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WINE RECOMENDATIONS

This week is a value driven Mediterranean trio: a $21 white from the mouth of the Rhône, a $20 pink from Sicily and a 20 red from Sardinia…

Mas des Bressades Tradition Blanc 2024

Price: $20.95
Channel: LCBO Vintages

Producer: Mas des Bressades
Country: France
Region: Southern Rhône Valley
Appellation: Costières de Nîmes AOC

Grapes: Roussanne (50%), Grenache Blanc (30%), Marsanne (10%), Viognier (10%)
Alcohol by Volume: 13.5%
Sugar Content: 2 grams per litre
Certification: Organic (EU)

Of all regions of the Southern Rhône, Costières de Nîmes is confusingly the southernmost and the coolest. This is because it is comprised of the mouth and delta of the mighty river, and is the closet to the moderating effects of the Mediterranean sea. But since it still very much the South of France, Costières is still pretty warm, so the winemakers there have perfected the art of blending their array of different grape varieties to keep freshness and vibrant fruit. This everyday white wine from Mas des Bressades is custom made for warm summer evenings and might taste best when its drinker can see a drop or two of condensation forming on the glass.

Winemaker Cyril Marès, whose father Roger quit the co-operative to establish the Mas des Bressades domaine in the 1960s, is among the leading figures of the appellation, and has spent three decades elevating his wines and the reputation of the Camargue. For a $20 bottle of wine, there’s a lot going on in it: stone fruit, honey tones, blanched almonds and white flowers. But it’s the balance of acid on textural weight in the mouth that makes it, and the blended white wines of the Southern Rhône generally recognizable. It’s a perfect aperitif wine. Serve with snacks: cold shrimp would be ideal.

https://www.lcbo.com/en/mas-des-bressades-cuv-ce-tradition-blanc-2020-701094

Caruso e Minini Frappo 2025

Price: $19.95
Channel: LCBO Vintages

Producer: Caruso e Minini
Country: Italy
Region: Sicily
Appellation: Terre Siciliana IGP

Grapes: Frappato
Alcohol by Volume: 12.5%
Sugar Content: 4 grams per litre
Certification: Organic (EU)

The red wine recommendation this week was supposed to have been the 2024 Planeta Frappato ($24 - LCBO# 508655), but it had more or less sold out in Toronto by last Saturday afternoon. I drove a few kilometres across the city to buy the last three bottles anywhere near me for a BBQ that evening. There seems to be a fair amount of it elsewhere in the province, so lucky you if you live in Burlington, Woodbridge or Mississauga.

Happily there’s still a chance to write about Sicily’s fresh and light bodied red grape, but this time in the form of rosé. A new form wine from the old traditional Marsala house of Caruso e Minini that makes perfect sense. It would be fun to have a dinner party that began with the Frappo rosé, which is all strawberry and cherry and moved onto the Planeta Frappato Vittoria DOC, which concentrates the red fruit and adds a bit of peppery seasoning.

The Frappo does the job a rosé is supposed to do, but maybe with just a bit “extra” as the kids say. There’s just a bit more concentration of fruit here, but it’s in good acid balance and fortunately low alcohol because it really does go down easy. It’s vinous enough to support a meal, maybe something a little spicy, but it’s really more an aperitif.

https://www.lcbo.com/en/caruso-minini-frappo-frappato-rose-43979

Jerzu Bantu Cannonau 2023

Price: $19.95
Channel: LCBO Vintages

Producer: Jerzu Antichi Poderi
Country: Italy
Region: Sardinia
Appellation: Cannonau di Sardegna DOC

Grapes: Cannonau (Grenache)
Alcohol by Volume: 14%
Sugar Content: 3 grams per litre
Certification: NA

Cannonau is the Italo-Sardinian name for Grenache, or more accurately Garnacha, since it was the Spanish who brought it to the island (and indeed, France). Whether for terroir or technique, or both, Cannonau always seems to me to be a darker more brooding version of the grape, than versions from the mainland. There is still that cherry character, but it’s dark cherry and here maybe a bit of blackberry and a very Meditirranean herbal scrubby (machia) seasoning. It’s an Italian wine, so there is also a fresh, food friendly streak of acidity to it.

The Bantu is a wine for the summer grill. Lamb comes to mind, but anything subjected to open flame or coals and the Maillard effect. To be drunk once the sun has set.

https://www.lcbo.com/en/jerzu-antichi-bantu-cannonau-di-sardegna-2023-51716

I spent part of last week on a little canoe trip in Temagami with Mrs. Wine Box. We left from and came back to what might be my favourite hotel, the Temagami Outpost on Lake Maskinonge. Hotel may be a somewhat forgiving term for the Outpost, which is a century old former logging camp, turned sportsman’s, then kids’ summer camp, now resort. It’s the kind of hotel where the rooms are log cabins, meals are taken in a dining hall, and the toilets are housed in their own separate complex.

The point of The Outpost is to get away, and their signature luxury service, apart from seeing all of the stars on a clear night, is to remove their guests from the curses of modernity. Staying at the lodge, is a kind of midway point between digital slavery and freedom (there is satellite internet in and around the main lodge, but otherwise no service). The real escape is the canoe trip, for which they will outfit their guests as completely as desired.

I spent my summers between the ages of eight and eighteen canoe tripping around Northern Ontario and Quebec. As a kid, I stayed at the Outpost as a camper and then a guide, when it was a literal outpost for the camp I went to further south in Algonquin Park. But until last year, I hadn’t been there, nor paddled my way to a campsite to spend a night in a tent for 35 years.

Mrs. Wine Box, on the other had, is a dual-national and spent her summers in the Brecon Beacons in Wales. When our kids were young, and my father-in-law, at whose house we stayed, was alive, our family naturally followed this tradition. Hiking the Beacons and Black Mountains is its own kind of rugged escape from modernity, and you can see all the stars when it’s clear at nights, so I adapted happily.

When our circumstances changed and we started to spend more summer holiday time in Canada, it was Mrs. Wine Box who suggested we head north for a canoe adventure. I was trepidatious. As an adolescent I was used to canoe tripping pretty hard. The longest trip I was on was 36 days out. I worried that I might not have the patience to accompany someone unaccustomed to roughing it in the bush. Would our canoe trip be more like a long, arduous uphill portage than a clear paddle down a long lake with the wind at out backs?

I needn’t have worried; we had great fun on a three day, two night tour around the Chinichugi Waterway network of lakes around the outpost. By last winter, we were already planning route for our second outing. And making a reservation for a fully outfitted trip for this July.

No service in the Northern Ontario wilderness renders a cell phone to little more than a camera. That is a luxury truly worth paying dearly for, but it’s only part of a canoe trip’s promise of escape from modernity. The other part is altogether in one’s head.

Nothing happens on a canoe trip unless you do it. The canoe will not paddle itself, nor carry itself over the portage. The packs will not pack themselves, nor be put in or out of the canoe, nor be put onto or off of your back several times a day. The campsite will not set it self up nor strike itself down, nor will dinner make itself nor clean itself up. You do it or it doesn’t get done.

A canoe trip is an endless set of problems that require constant solutions, most of which require physical exertion. There’s not a lot of room left in the mind during the day for existential worry or status anxiety. And at night the sleeping bag beckons hours before one would consider retiring in the city.

The constant barrage of physical, and occasional mental problem solving is good therapy, but it also makes for great hunger. The staff at the Outpost asked us if we had any menu requests for the food they provisioned us, and we replied in unison that we’d be happy with whatever they gave us because we already knew it would be delicious. And it was; hunger is the best sauce after all.

This brings us to the subject of the canoe trip wine. [You were wondering when I would get to that, weren’t you?] We don’t own much camping equipment, which is why we are so pleased to be outfitted, but we do own quite a number of sturdy water bottles. One of which we reserve for wine, which we bring with us.

But what wine pairs with a canoe trip? Any wine pairs with a canoe trip, just like any hot meal will. It will taste delicious, I can assure you. If you think the Frascati you had on the piazza tasted better in Italy than it did at home, then I promise it would taste even better sitting on a rock after a seven portage day.

As it happened, we took a bottle of the Gormaz Ribera del Duero reviewed below. To prepare it for meal service, it went through a particular elevation. First, I began decanting it into a water bottle that was too small (500ml) and had to stop half way and double decant it into one that was too big (1L).

Having ensured maximum surface area oxygen exposure with the oversized container, I doubled down and let it slosh around all day in the mid-summer heat in our packs. That was just for the first day, on the second, with only half a bottle left, it sloshed around even more with double the amount of air. I can’t think of a better way to oxidize and ruin a wine, though as it turns out this Tempranillo was made of tough stuff..

Service was a close to dinner time as possible, so that the one glass each ration wouldn’t be chugged down before the actual meal. Because one must carry everything one takes on a canoe trip, our stemware consisted of the single tin cup each of us was allotted as a universal drinking vessel (I am ahead of you Jancis Robinson). Placing was on the ground, dangerously next to the right foot, while plates were balanced on the knees.

On both nights, it may have been one of the more delicious tin cups of wine of my life.

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New Writing at The Hub

My August column is up at The Hub: “Canada’s got great wine. It shouldn’t be this hard to get our hands on it”. It’s about some of the wineries featured at i4C in Niagara last month; Leaning Post (ON), Camy (QC) and Quail’s Gate (BC). But it’s also about why Canadians ought to have better access to our fine wines:

A few days after the i4C conference, nine of the ten Canadian provincial premiers signed the Operating Agreement on Direct-to-Consumer Sales of Alcoholic Beverages. In theory, this has liberated Canadian wine consumers, unless they live in Quebec, to order wines from anywhere in the country. In practice, Canadian wine consumers have been ordering cases of wine from other provinces since they’ve been able to do so.

Read it all here.

WINE RECOMMENDATIONS

Janare Fiano 2025

Price: $19.95
Channel: LCBO Vintages

Producer: La Guardiense
Country: Italy
Region: Campania
Appellation: Sannio DOC

Grapes: Fiano
Alcohol by Volume: 13.5%
Sugar Content: 4 grams per litre

As I type, pretty much all of Italy is being put on a red alert heatwave warning. So, while it might be nice to imagine sipping a glass of the Janare Fiano in its natural habitat on the Amalfi coast, or the Lungomare in Naples, it’s probably just as well that it is perfectly refreshing in muggy Southern Ontario. Fiano is considered one the fancier white wine grapes from Campania, and although this fresh version was made entirely in stainless steel, the power of its lemon citrus fruit notes retain a kind of richness.

The Janare is a label to showcase the top selection of fruit from Italy’s biggest co-operative, La Guadiense, located in the Sannio Valley east of Naples. I’ll stop recommending well made co-operative wines when they stop marketing them for absolute bargains like this one for $20.

This is ultimately a fun wine, and a perfect quencher for summer weather, but it does want food. Snacks before dinner would be fine: I imagine a white bean purée on a crostini, or cold shrimp. The tech sheet from the winery suggest pairing it with spaghetti and anchovies, which sounds pretty good too.

https://www.lcbo.com/en/janare-fiano-2017-528786

Gormaz Roble 2023

Price: $17.95
Channel: LCBO Vintages

Producer: Viñedos y Bodegas Gormaz
Country: Spain
Region: Castilla y León (Soria)
Appellation: Ribera del Duero DO

Grapes: Tempranillo
Alcohol by Volume: 14.5%
Sugar Content: 3 grams per litre

I have aged out of reliable commentary about what is or isn’t cool. (It’s entirely possible that cool isn’t even cool; I don’t know.) I do remember when the red wines of Ribera del Duero were considered pretty cool, or at least had an if you know you know caché. Also made with Tempranillo, they were a kind of cognoscenti answer to Rioja.

That the 2023 Gormaz is retailing at the LCBO for $18, and not $25, suggests to me those days are long gone. On paper it has two big uncool red marks against it: it’s elevated in American oak and clocks in at a high 14.5% alcohol by volume. In practice, the oak is well integrated, only appearing as a whisper after clearly enunciated and project utterance of dark berry fruit. And the alcohol does not run hot; it’s coolly balanced by a good line of food friendly acidity. This is actually a rather elegant wine; more roast beef than steak, with a confounding symphony or dark cherry, blackberry and blueberry fruit.

If you read the lead piece above, then you know that this wine was given a thorough stress test and resists oxidization beautifully. Yes, it’s high alcohol, but if you opened it on Monday and held yourself to just one glass an evening, it would last through the week. Trick will be to hold yourself to one glass.

https://www.lcbo.com/en/gormaz-roble-ribera-del-duero-2023-50752

All the expensive wine education in the world can’t teach you how to have lunch. And if you don’t know how to have a proper lunch, then I can’t imagine you’ll ever the kind of deep body appreciation for the wine that must go with it. The Italians say a tavolo non si invecchia, and the point of lunch, especially a big lunch, is to stop the clock for a little while in the middle of the day and have fun. That’s it.

Last week I had the opportunity to test my tasting theory with a big lunch organized by Wines of Ontario at Itty Bitty Farm just south of the town of Niagara-on-the-Lake. Itty Bitty is the domain of Chef Ryan Crawford. It’s a few acres of Arcadia carved out of a forty year old Chardonnay vineyard. When Crawford has a restaurant1, it supplies the kitchen. This year it is the kitchen, and it supplied our lunch.

The western edge of Itty Bitty Farm is the tree lined bank of One Mile Creek, so named for its proximity to the mighty Niagara River to the east. There, Crawford and small team set up a long table under tent for the lunchers: a dozen or so media types, a handful of winemakers, and emissaries from Wines of Ontario. We were to dine alfresco, largely on foods cooked over the coals of peach wood, gathered from surrounding orchards.

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Jim Harrison’s 2004 New Yorker account of a midday meal in the home of a French aristocrat friend, ‘A Really Big Lunch’, was subtitled “Thirty-seven courses and thirteen wines”. Our lunch was only four courses, but comprised of nine dishes, and we managed at least fourteen wines2, so I feel like we held up well. Not that lunch (nor wine3) is a competition.

Among the winemakers and winery managers who joined us were Nadia and Ilya Senchuk, who founded Leaning Post fifteen years ago, and, despite their youthful energy, have become part of the establishment of serious Niagara vignerons. My press group had spent the morning, a half hour’s drive west, at their winery and estate vineyard in Winona. Then, we more or less crossed the road to the Grimsby Hillside vineyard, one of four other sites where they source fruit.

The other wino power couple at the table were Mary Delaney and Thomas Bachelder, representing themselves, as it were, as ‘Bachelder’4. They brought some of their own Grimsby Hillside sourced wines, which was fun, since we’d been to the vineyard and tasted some of the ones made by Leaning Post in the morning. Jeff Moote, the winemaker and founder of the emerging Divergence virtual winery, also brought Grimsby Hillside Chardonnay as well as bubbles. Terroir education was never so much fun.

Adam Blascik rounded out the wine list by bringing a few bottles from Perenelle (see below). With only three vintages in, it’s considered very new in wine years, and it was fun to compare wines we hadn’t tried until that day with older ones from the old hands.

Niagara wines are cool climate wines. They will vary based on which sites in the region grapes are grown; closer to the lake or higher up on one the Escarpent’s benches. And, of course, they will vary depending on the hands that make them. But all of them are run through with a fresh line of acidity.

Acidity brings water to the mouth, which helps make good food taste even better. When a wine is described as food friendly, this is most often what is meant. The wines at Ryan Crawford’s farm were beyond friendly, verging on gastronomically amorous. And the dishes requited the love; Crawford is a master of letting ingredients speak for themselves, which is a lot trickier than it sounds.

Two hours in, and the wines and food was exhausted. The diners may have also been a little sleepy. But happy. Very happy.

NEW NIAGARA WINERY: PERENELLE

Nothing stays still in the wine world, and one of the discoveries I encountered last week when I was in Niagara for i4C was Perenelle. Melissa Beausoleil, a chemist by trade, and Matt Kilkenny, a luxury car specialist have redeveloped a vineyard on the western end of St. Davids. Veteran Niagara winemaker Marty Werner is making wine from their fruit nearby at York Vineyards, beginning with the 2023 vintage.

My media group visited the vineyard site, which begins on top and then runs down what was the southern shore of the prehistoric glacial Lake Iroquois. Torontonians will know the norther shore as the Avenue Road or Davenport Hill. In both cases it’s a few kilometres from Lake Ontario.

We were met by Madame Beausoleil and marketing consultant Adam Blascik (Mod Wine Co.), who led us through an outdoor tasting, as there is no winery building, with a view of the vines. “New” is a relative term in the wine world, which runs on a yearly cycle, if not longer. So Perenelle may be considered a baby with just three vintages grown.

We tasted the 2024 Rosé made from Cabernet Franc ($29), which did exactly the red fruit thing rosé is supposed to do. We tasted the 2024 Chardonnay ($35), which was a lovely fancy lemony Niagara expression of the grape, as well as the 2023 Chardonnay $40), which was just little more mellow and honeyed. Then we tried the 2023 Signature Red ‘Nightingale’ ($40), a Cabernet Franc and Merlot blend, which was big with raspberry to black berry fruit and good seasoning of spice and tannin and would be very much at home on a steakhouse wine list. I suspect Perenelle is well on its way to finding its niche in the Niagara winosystem.

The wines are available online at perenellewines.com or in person at the MW Cellars Shed at 1425 Lakeshore Rd, in Niagara-on-the-Lake and at Siris Tasting Room at 39 James St. in St Catharines.

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NEW WRITING AT THE HUB

My latest column at The Hub is a riff on a Henry Jeffries Substack post on self and sometimes secret declassification. Are more wineries making more of their more affordable wines lately? Penny pinching winos hope so. Read my piece here.

WINE RECOMMENDATIONS

Santadi Villa Solais Vermentino di Sardegna 2024

Price: $21.95
Channel: LCBO Vintages

Producer: Cantina Santadi
Country: Italy
Region: Sardinia
Appellation: Vermentino di Sardegna DOC

Grapes: Vermentino
Alcohol by Volume: 12.5%
Sugar Content: 2 grams per litre

Some of the best values in Italian and French wine are from co-operatives. They have all long since hired highly educated winemakers and vineyard managers. The work of the co-operative is no longer high yeilds and jug wine, and all about high viticultural standards and added-value in the cellar.

I suspect the quality of co-operative wine will only improve in the next few years. As the affordability crisis and inflation squeeze wine consumers, small producers will continue to have trouble selling boutique wines at high cost. More of the good fruit will be diverted into co-operative wine making.

Anyway, here’s a case in point from one of the handful of larger co-operatives in Sardinia. The grape is the island’s flagship, Vermentino, and it delivers a crisp and fresh citrussy, aperitivo and seafood friendly, sipper. There’s a bit of textural depth to ths wine as well, like it spent some time on it’s lees. A little more sophiticated than a typical $20ish Italian white. And your guests will marvel at the colourful label.

https://www.lcbo.com/en/santadi-villa-solais-vermentino-2024-121129

Merayo Las Tres Filas 2020

Price: $21.95
Channel: LCBO Vintages

Producer: Merayo
Country: Spain
Region: Bierzo
Appellation: Bierzo DO

Grapes: Mencia
Alcohol by Volume: 14%
Sugar Content: 2 grams per litre

Big red to black fruit in this wine made in Northwest Spain from the Mencia grape: an iron fist in a velvet glove. It’s well balanced between fresh and food friendly summer hedgerow fruit (raspberry to blackberry) and the silkiest tannin texture. It’s hard to compute this wine clocks in at a hefty 14% alcohol by volume. It’s dangerous.

It’s also highly versatile for it. There is nothing on the grill it won’t compliment from chicken to steak, eggplant to mushrooms, even shrimp if there’s enough garlic.

https://www.lcbo.com/en/merayo-las-tres-filas-mencia-2014-462788

I am interrupting my summer holiday with a quick note and wino service announcement on Chardonnay and the world’s foremost event dedicated to it. Regular MJWB programming will recommence next week.

The often muttered joke at i4C, the International Cool Climate Chardonnay Celebration, held annually in Niagara, is that it’s held over the hottest days of the year. The 2026 edition starts on Thursday, the 16th of July and runs through next weekend. Much of the programming is outdoors, or halfway, like the Friday NIght Flights event held in hanger at the local airport.

I will be sure to pack as much linen as I can, and prepare for perspiration. Not that I am complaining; there’s something about sultry summer heat that makes a cold glass of white wine, taken in slow sips all that much better.

i4C is hybrid event, that mixes wine professionals with amateurs, in the true sense of the word. The ‘School of Cool’ is a day long series of tasting lectures and seminars. The keynote speaker this year is Véronique Riveste, who writes the wine column in La Presse, chooses the wines for Air Canada’s business class cabins and runs the populaire and influential SOIF wine bar in Gatineau. From there, the events range from winery visits, to lunches, dinners and walk around tastings.

I try and go every year because it’s the best way for me to catch-up with as many Ontario winemakers as I can in concentrated period of time. But it’s a trans-national and international event, with wines and people who make them from BC, Nova Scotia, France, Italy, and as far as South Africa. All there to celebrate the mighty Chardonnay grape. Also, I really like Chardonnay.

It is not a coincidence that this week through next the LCBO Vintages program features a lot of Chardonnay made wines under the promotional banner of “Nothing But Chardonnay”. It’s a collection that’s a solid mix of local heroes and international stars, including the 30th vintage of the iconic Planeta Chardonnay from 2024 ($57). Planeta, like many of the featured wines, are past presenters at i4C.

The Planeta Chardonnay, is a good example of why I will always try Chardonnay, where ever I am, or from wherever it comes from. Jancis Robinson has written about how the grape can both make wines most susceptible to its environment, and therefor expressive of terroir, while simultaneously able to make wines most susceptible to the techniques of the cellar, and therefor expressive of a winemaker’s vision. I like to add that because it was particularly popular thirty or forty years ago, around the time Diego Planeta was planting it in Sicily, it’s relatively easy to find Chardonnay wines made from relatively older vines. It’s almost always a good bet.

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WINE RECOMMENDATION

Podere Montale I Maremmani

Price: $20.95
Channel: LCBO Vintages

Producer: Podere Montale
Country: Italy
Region: Tuscany (Upper Maremma)
Appellation: Toscana IGT

Grapes: Chardonnay
Alcohol by Volume: 12.5%
Sugar Content: 2 grams per litre

Here’s a warm climate Chardonnay that’s a cool customer for $21. Podere Montale is a winery in Southern Tuscany sited on the slopes of Mount Amiata, an extinct Volcano about 50 kilometres south of Siena. It’s in one of Tuscany’s small DOCG appellations for Sangiove based wines (Montecucco), but if you look around any decent sized winery cellar, you’re bound to find a little bit of Chardonnay in a corner somewhere. And this Chardonnay, named for the local sheepdogs that adorn the label, has adapted itself to its Mediterranean habitat very nicely with a good hit of refreshing acidity.

I Maremmani has lovely grapefruit note that adds a touch of bitterness to anotherwise honeyed citrus character; it’s generally pretty lean. If you’re lucky enough to spend some of this summer in a bathing suit, then a glass of it might hit the spot before you switch to dry clothes for dinner. If your apero hour is more pedestrian, then a glass of the Maremmani Chardonay with a small bowl of olives while cooking dinner, would also be fine.

https://www.lcbo.com/en/la-rocca-srl-chardonnay-2024-49054

This week, Baptiste Burrier and I determined that we had met before, or at least met eyes across a table. This would have been while I extended greedily the tasting glass in my hand looking for a pour of Château Beauregard Pouilly Fuissé at a tasting a couple years ago in the Chapelle de l’Oratoire in Beaune. I was a day or so into the Les Grands Jours de Bourgogne series of tastings, and beginning to acclimatize to periodically having my mind blown. It was the last tasting of the day, and was operating more like a party, with pours of the Southern Burgundy’s most famous wine going back 50 years to 1974.

There would have also been Premier Cru Pouilly Fuissé, but only younger vintages, since the designation was only given to the 22 prime vineyard sites in Poulliy Fuissé for the 2020 vintage and on. Baptiste’s father, Frédéric-Marc Burrier, led the charge to have the appellation designate the classification, as he was the head of the syndicate of producers at the time. It was a long fight to correct what had been a 77 year oversight.

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This contemporary account of why Pouilly Fuissé initially missed out on Premier Cru classfication, from SevenFifty Daily, shows how history is always part of terroir:

According [Frédéric-Marc Burrier], Pouilly-Fuissé’s lack of premier crus stems from German occupation in World War II. In the 1940s, Germans could requisition ordinary wines, but they were forced to pay for classified ones, spurring Burgundy’s appellations in occupied France to submit a list of climats that could be classified as premier cru (therefore requiring payment for these wines). Because Mâconnais was further south in non-occupied France, they did not submit any climats to be considered for premier cru status. In fact, this is the first addition of premier cru vineyards in Burgundy since 1943.

Not that the Burriers are stuck in the past. Baptiste is describes the Mâconnais as Burgundy’s “rising star”, and credits all level of producers from the local co-operatives to Premier Cru family’s for increasing interest and demand for Southern Burgundian wine. In fact, the first wine we tasted wasn’t Pouilly Fuissé, but a Mâcon Villages: the 2023 Joseph Burrier Domaine de la Rochette Mâcon-Milly-Lamartine Montagne de Cra. Cra refers to the heavy presence of limestone on this 400 metre high slope. It was a classic fancy Burgundian Chardonnay: deep yellow and weighted in the mouth, but bright with lemon citrus notes and honeyed. It was really good, and while it lingered on my palate, Baptiste had no problem convincing me that Mâcon-Milly-Lamartine should be the next Mâconnais Premier Cru appellation.

The next wine was the 2023 Joseph Burrier Château Beauregard Pouilly Fuissé, a blend from the Château’s sites around the small appellation. It was wonderfully fresh with a grapefruit citrus note that finished with a pleasing note of bitterness. Between the Montagne de Cra and the Pouilly Fuissé I could have happily left the tasting with a renewed confidence of the terroir and technique of the Mâconnais, but I was about to be evangelized because Baptiste Burrier brought out the big guns: three of the Beauregard Premier Crus.

The 2022 Joseph Burrier Château Beauregard Les Vignes Blanches Poully Fuissé 1^er Cru, from a slope over the town of Fuissé struck me as a kind of Platonic ideal of Chardonnay. Unctuous and rich, but fresh with lemon curd and toasty notes, with a slight salinity on the finish. It was really lovely and what one imagines a big $100 a bottle white Burgundy would be. By contrast the 2022 Joseph Burrier Château Beauregard Ver Cras Poully Fuissé 1^er Cru, from the vineyard around the cellar, followed the flavour profile of the first, but was a little leaner, and maybe a bit more mineral. If the Vignes Blanches wanted lobster, maybe it was more Sole Meunière. And, as if to prove that each of the Burrier climats really had its own personality the 2022 Joseph Burrier Château Beauregard La Maréchaude Vignes Blanches Poully Fuissé 1^er Cru, from a south facing but 400 metre high slope, went into tropical fruits, with surprising notes of kiwi and passionfruit, not usually associated with the Chardonnay grape.

There’s no sub-appellation or classification for Mâconnais Pinot Noir, so the red the Burriers make at Domaine de la Rochette is simply Montagne de Cra Bourgogne Rouge. The 2024 we tasted showed as a classic cool climate Pinot, with bright red fruit (strawberries and raspberries), and a savoury or salty character. It showed harmonious balance and would have been easy to settle down at the table to drink a glass or two effortlessly.

The last wine was not from Mâcon, but was a Cru Fleurie wine from neighbouring Beaujolais, where the Burrier family has had a presence for generations. The vignerons of Fleurie are pushing the French wine authorities for a Premier Cru system, and Baptiste is confident that Poncié would be among the first lieu dits to acheive the classification, should it come. Indeed, the 2023 Joseph Burrier Château Beauregard Fleurie Poncié was a remarkably complex, dark fruited expression of Gamay, with fruit running from dark cherry to blueberry, and a hint of violet floral notes. Still grippy with tannins, I noted it would be fun to come back to it in a few years. Another rising star.

The Burrier family wines are represented in Ontario by Cru Wine Merchants, who arranged my meeting and tasting with Baptiste Burrier. Information on acquiring them is at their website, cruwinemerchants.com.

AWARD WINNING VINITALY VIDEO

As I feared, I did not pass my exam this week to become a Vinitaly International Academy Ambassador, although 35 of the 55 of us who took the test did; see the full list here. Among the successful candidates to earn a pin were my fellow study group members Danielle Chandler and James Chatto.

Our fourth study group member was Renée Sferrazza, who was essentially the director of the video below and got the three of us organized to make it. The five minute video is actually a mandatory part of the exam, and must be submitted before the written tests. As VIA chief Stevie Kim explained, part of the VIA Ambassador requirement is to be able to communicate successfully about Italian wine.

Our video, From Alto Adige to Sicily: Wine, Food, and Regional Identity, won the award at Vinitaly Toronto 2026 for the best video submission and so, I thought, ought to be shared.

ZOOMER GIFT PIECE

I wrote a piece by mistake. I was asked for a few quotes for a Father’s Day piece by Zoomer Magazine and instead I just wrote a short piece because that’s how I procrastinate from writing the thing I am supposed to. Anyway, they accepted and ran it. It was posted just after the last MJ Wine Box went out, so I am linking to it too late for the day, but I think it hold’s up for a gift for any wine enthusiasts at any time, and I’d like as many people to read it as possible. Check it out here.

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WINE RECOMMENDATIONS

Famille Perrin Côtes du Rhône Réserve (Blanc) 2025

Price: $15.95
Channel: LCBO Vintages

Producer: Famille Perrin
Country: France
Region: Provence, Rhône Valley
Appellation: Côtes du Rhône

Grapes: Grenache Blanc, Marsanne, Roussanne, Viognier (percentages not disclosed)
Alcohol by Volume: 13%
Sugar Content: 2 grams per litre

The Perrin Family is both one of Châteauneuf-du-Pape’s most renown producers at Château de Beaucastel, and a highly successful seller of supermarket wine from the South of France with their La Vieille Ferme line, endearingly known as The Chicken Wine by it’s fans. The “Famille” line is a notch or two above the poultry one, but is still quite a bargain and one of the better sippers around for under $20 in the current Vintages release.

This classic bland of white Rhône grapes is a bit leaner than most in the category, with crisp lime citrus and stone fruit notes, but rounds out with a honeysuckle finish and a touch of white flower aromatics (presumably form the Viogner). This is a wine engineered for hot weather, and aims to refresh. I’d serve it before dinner with olives and dips.

https://www.lcbo.com/en/famille-perrin-r-cserve-c-tes-du-rh-ne-blanc-2020-499509

Vincent de la Remondière Morgon 2023

Price: $22.95
Channel: LCBO Vintages

Producer: Vincent de la Remondière
Country: France
Region: Beaujolais
Appellation: Morgon

Grapes: Gamay
Alcohol by Volume: 13%
Sugar Content: 3 grams per litre

$23 may now be considered democratic pricing for Cru Beaujolais. Perhaps it’s because the maker of this one is a Burgundy based negociant, that they’re keeping under $25, just to retain the hierarchy of the regions on the right bank of the Saône. In any event, this is a serious but not too serious, summer red wine full of juicy red fruit flavours like strawberries and raspberries, and then a slightly bitter cranberry finish. I served it to a Gamay skeptic, who I think I converted.

The Remondière Morgon is a classic barbecue wine in the sense that it’s versatile to pair with, or stand up to, whatever ends up on the grill.

https://www.lcbo.com/en/morgon-vincent-remondiere-2023-48638

I find it hard to write about the wine people I really like. Not because I am afraid I am going to libel them (though it could happen), but because when I hang out with them I am more likely to ask them questions about them and their lives rather than whether the wine we’re drinking went through full malolactic fermentation and how the growing season of 2023 compared to 2022. I manage to enjoy good company and good wine (the best pairing), but leave without any notes.

So it was this week with Patricia Tóth, head winemaker at Sicily’s Planeta, who was in Toronto briefly at the end of a promotional tour that took her from Southern California to the Bay of Fundy, and many point in between. She was in Toronto partly to host a winemaker’s dinner with her local importing agent, Noble Estates. I managed to finagle an invitation to the dinner from my friends at Noble, but I couldn’t go. Was there any way I could see her before she flew back to Italy the next day?

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There was. I work and live next to one of the city’s bigger, flagship LCBO1. Patricia and Carolyn from Noble we’re going to check in there, since there’s a Planeta wine in this week’s Vintages Release (see below). I would meet them for a late lunch at one of my neighbourhood restaurants, which just happened to have the 2024 Planeta Etna Bianco on their list by the glass.

I can report from our lunch that the Etna Bianco, made from 100% Carricante at the Feudo di Mezzo2 winery on the volcano’s slopes, was delicious. Fresh but weighty: a pure line of stone fruit and maybe almonds on the finish. It ran well through a meal of shared plates that began oysters and featured more raw seafood.

As per usual, beyond inquiring how people were at Planeta, we mostly talked about what was going on in our lives, including adventures from her travels, and her relief and happiness over the government change in her native Hungary following this year’s historic elections. If we talked about wine, it was in a general way and in its proper context: what food we liked to cook with what. I never even took my notebook out of my bag.

That’s okay, because I know the story of Planeta, which is in many ways the story of modern fine wine making in Sicily, will continue and there will be many more opportunities to tell it. Planeta is not just a sustainable winery because it’s organic, it was built into its creation in 1995 and expansion across Sicily. Planeta is in fact, seven wineries, each according to the wines it makes. Patricia Tòth and her CEO, agronomist, winemaker Alessio Planeta, spend a lot of their time driving around.

Alessio Planeta, who has assumed leadership of the family business since the death of his pioneering uncle, Diego in 2020, once explained to me why Planeta has so many wineries. Every family member is also a shareholder. As the family grows with each generstion, so to has the business. The way to expand the business without compromising the quality of the wines was to recreate wineries like the original at the family estate in Ulmo across the island. I think of it as a model for intelligent growth, not just for wine.

What’s worked for the family has worked for wine consumers. The Planeta name serves as a recognizeable brand for over thirty different wine labels, made at the seven sites. It’s a bit like they are their own negociant, making everything from Grand Cru’s to Villages to well made table wines.

All of them to be enjoyed in good company.

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NEW WRITING AT THE HUB

In this month’s Hub column I get into as much as I can on the 2026 Calgary edition of the Terroir Symposium in 1,200 words… I still missed lots, but it was quite a time. Click here to read it now.

WINE RECOMMENDATIONS

Michele Chiarlo Le Marne Gavi 2024

Price: $19.95
Channel: LCBO Vintages

Producer: Michele Chiarlo
Country: Italy
Region: Piedmont
Appellation: Gavi

Grapes: Cortese
Alcohol by Volume: 12.5%
Sugar Content: 2 grams per litre

This is the love that the world needs now: a $20 summer sipper, fancy enough to pour to guests, affordable enough to open another bottle. Cantina Michele Chiarlo is a well established maker of cru Barolo, and fancy wines in the Langhe. They also make fancier Gavi, the light crisp whites made for the seafood restaurants just over the hills in Genoa. Some of that is also fancy,

The fruit leans toward apple or Japanese pear, though the acitidy also hints toward lemon and lime citrus, rounded out with a few months on the lees to give it some weight in the mouth. It’s a summer evening refresher, and work well with a salmon tartare, if there’s a cook brave enough to make it at home. More likely, the hint of salinity on its finish will pair nicely with salty snacks before dinner.

https://www.lcbo.com/en/michele-chiarlo-le-marne-gavi-2024-228528

Planeta Plumbago 2022

Price: $24.95
Channel: LCBO Vintages

Producer: Planeta
Country: Italy
Region: Sicily
Appellation: Sicilia Menfi DOC

Grapes: Nero d’Avola
Alcohol by Volume: 13.5%
Sugar Content: 3 grams per litre

Everything is déjà vu all over again. I have a vague memory of writing about Planeta’s Plumbago wine within the last few years, and a distinct memory of thinking it tasted a bit like plums, dismissing the note as evidence of my suggestibility, then reading the back label to find out that it’s supposed to taste like plums, even though the word “plumbago” is in fact the name of a wild flower that grows in the vineyards it comes from near the Southwest shore of Sicily. So it does taste like plums, as well as blackberries and blueberries: it’s a deep purple-blue kind of a wine, that despite the purity and depth of the fruit keeps a kind of elegance. Maybe it’s a bit like a really well muscled ballet dancer, a mix of elegance and strength.

The Plumbago wants to go with something from the grill, it might have a slightly smoky character itself. All things being equal, I would go for lamb, in any form from garlicky sausages to chops off the rack.

https://www.lcbo.com/en/planeta-plumbago-nero-d-avola-2018-19491

If you have a $100 to spend on a bottle of wine, you could do a lot worse than the 2022 Oreno from Sette Ponti, one hundred and thirty bottles of which are circulating through the LCBO Vintages program this month (click here for the listing). I know because Stefano Maggini told me so. And, though it’s hearsay, because I haven’t actually tasted the 2022 that’s on the shelves, I believe him.

I believe him because he brought with him to dinner last week the Oreno 2023, which was just fine, thanks. He also brought, or got his agency Noble Estates to procure, a bottle of the 2015, as well as a magnum of the 2010. And, just my colleague, Read Between The Wines' Pierre Ferland, and I got a broad view of the range of the premium Sette Ponti wines, before any of this was tasted, we tried the 2023, 2016 and 2006 Crognolo, the last also in magnum. It was, in wine writer’s terms, a hard night out of the office.

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Sette Ponti means seven bridges, they’re not the seven bridges the Eagles sing about, they’re the ones across the Arno River on the way from Florence to Arezzo. One of them is thought to be over the shoulder of da Vinci’s La Giaconda. The estate was originally a hunting lodge for the Duke and Duchess of Aosta, who planted the original Sangiovese vineyards in 1935. It was bought in the 1950’s by the architect and fashion magnate Alberto Moretti, whose family continues to own and operate it.

Oreno was developed later, in 1999, as the Arno Valley’s answer to a Super Tuscan, with “International varieties” grafted onto older vines. The blend is consistently 40% Merlot, 30% Cabernet Sauvignon, 20% Cabernet Franc, and 10% Petit Verdot. The line flavour through the 2023 and older vintages was intense black fruit, but with a fresh lift and a smoky herbal Mediterranean forest character.

Crognolo, on the other hand, is a 90% Sangiovese, 10% Merlot “IGT” blend. There is still some of the 2022 around in the LCBO Vintages program for $35 a bottle (click here for the listing). The blending recipe could have been a for a Chianti DOCG, which still allows “foreign grapes” like Merlot in the blend, though it’s increasingly out of fashion. I’m not sure why it’s labelled “IGT”, it might have to with ageing, or barrels or something. The point is that to me the Crogonolo wines struck me as old school Tuscan, with intense black cherry and herbal notes, against a fresh food friendly line of acidity.

Maybe you have the Crognolo with your pappa alla pomodoro or panzanella, and graduate to the Oreno for bisteca? Tutti va bene, in any event.

ICYMI: TORONTO WINE CLUB

I am still recruiting wine club members for a summer mixed case. See details below…

MJ Wine Box started as a COVID wine club, where my friends and neighbours pooled our money to buy cases of wine that you can’t buy at the LCBO and split them up into mixed cases. It was all about mitigating risk; if we ended up with a couple bottles we didn’t love, it was OK because there were other bottles in the box of wine to try. If we found something we liked, we could always order another case from the importing agent or Ontario winery.

I am going to do it again, and I am looking for about two dozen fellow wine enthusiasts to join me in a buyers club. They have to be MJ Wine Box subscribers and live in Toronto (so I can drop off the case of wine). My target is to find six different bottles of wine (two per case to make twelve) with an average price, including taxes and any delivery fees, of $35 a bottle. That’s $420 a case. NEW: half a case (one bottle each of six wines), can also be bought for $210.

If this is of any interest, contact me directly. I’ll send you the full terms and conditions next week, and you can decide to join or not.

Just to be clear: this is a buyers club, and I am not going sell wine.

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WINE RECOMMENDATIONS

Yes, there are still well made, pleasing to the palate wines out there for under $20, like this Tuscan Vermentino, or Right Bank Bordeaux red.

San Felice Vermentino 2024

Price: $18.95
Channel: LCBO Vintages

Producer: San Felice
Country: Italy
Region: Chianti Classico
Appellation: Toscana IGT

Grapes: Vermentino
Alcohol by Volume: 12.5%
Sugar Content: 2 grams per litre

Vermentino is most closely associated with the white wines of Sardinia, so what’s it doing on the other side of the Tyrrenhian Sea in Chiantiland? Who cares? This is a deal of a white wine from one of Chianti Classico’s preeminent producers. Though maybe not surprising: the everyday is a Vintages Essential and is also democratically priced at $21.95.

Vermentino (Sometimes called Favorita in Piedmont, or Pigato in Liguria) is one of Italy’s great, crisp and fresh “V” white grapes, along with Verdicchio (mostly in the Marche) and Vernaccia (concentrated around the Tuscan tower town of San Gimignano). I love Vermentino for being quite fresh with acidity, but also quite alive with fruit and a bit of weight on the tongue. The San Felice has an interesting note of grapefruit citrus, and lime and a bit of peach. It’s an aperitif wine, and bit of a thirst quencher, but could be very happy next to grilled fish dressed in olive oil, or a vegetable pasta with a good measure of pecorino cheese.

https://www.lcbo.com/en/san-felice-perolla-vermentino-2024-222802

Château Hyot 2022

Price: $17.95
Channel: LCBO Vintages

Producer: Domaines Alain Aubert
Country: France
Region: Bordeaux
Appellation: Castillon Côtes de Bordeaux AOC

Grapes: Merlot (70%), Cabernet Franc (20%), Cabernet Sauvignon (10%)
Alcohol by Volume: 13%
Sugar Content: 3 grams per litre

The appellation of Castillon Côtes de Bordeaux used to just be called Côtes de Castillon, but if I was in charge I would change the name to St. Emillion Orientale, or maybe just East Emillion to keep it simple. Actually, that would be a back to the future move, as the Vins de Bordeaux website tells us that the region was colloquially called Près Saint-Émillion. It turns out the the Castillon vinyards are not just near and to the east of their more famous and pricier neighbour region, they sit on the same limestone plateau north of the Dordogne River.

That’s exactly 100 words to say that if you like $30 Saint-Émillion, you will probably like this $18 Castillon from Château Hyot.

As in S-É, Merlot dominates the Château Hyot blend, in a fresh blackberry way. This wine is 100% inox (stainless steel) fermented and elevated, so the tannins are all skin, and though they are pronounced they add a pleasant Bordeaux typical structure. It wants food, like a steak grilled rare and finely sliced (a summer roast beef)… or maby a Father’s Day burger.

https://www.lcbo.com/en/ch-teau-hyot-2018-63537

In my next life I think I’ll write about furniture. I’m partial to a good piece, and apparently the travel is pretty good. For instance the Salone del Mobile in Milan. That’s where Canada’s foremost office furniture maker, David Feldberg, founder of Teknion, solidified his love affair with wine, which ultimately led to the founding of one Canada’s foremost wineries in 2000, Stratus in Niagara-on-the-Lake.

I learnt this from David Felberg himself over a glass of 2025 Stratus Cabernet Franc Rosé recently at a press event for the soon to be opened Clayfield Hotel, in which he is a principal investor. The rosé paired well with a lunch prepared by Clayfield’s soon to be chef Joel LaBute, a son of Niagara who paid his dues at Scaramouche, Langdon Hall, and Araxi in Whistler, before joining the Ascari Group, which will handle kitchens and destination restaurant, Terrain. The hotel will be managed by Hyatt, who have designated it their second boutique Canadian wine country ‘Unbound’ property, after Spirit Ridge on Osoyoos Lake in B.C.

The Clayfield is part of a larger housing and walkable retail development being built across the Stone Road from the Stratus Winery, and is slated to open later this summer… stay tuned.

What’s being opened earlier this summer, or even earlier than this summer is Stratus’ series of Amphora wines. Last week, I sat down with winemakers J.L. Groux and Dean Stoyka to taste through the release. Joining a handful of wine journalist was Heather Laundry, whose eponymous vineyard in Niagara is considered among the region’s best, and who grew the 2024 Pinot Noir for the series. The tasting happened before a launch party held, appropriately enough, at the Gardiner Museum for ceramics.

Nothing happens quickly at Stratus; or nothing important to do with making wine, which is very much on purpose. Groux and Stoyka are known for their long hang times, leaving grapes on the vine long past when their neighbours have harvested. It took well over a decade for the first, and then three subsequent amphoras to be integrated into Stratus’ program. In that spirit we began with a glass of the 2017 Stratus Blanc de Blanc Méthode Traditionelle sparkling wine: 100% Chardonnay. Even with seven or eight years on the lees was crisp, refreshing and fruit forward: a wine built to last.

We tasted the 2023 Stratus White Label Chardonnay ‘Amphora’ first. It showed fresh citrus to tropical fruit and honeyed finish despite being bone dry. It had a terrific line of cool climate acidity, that Stoyka believes the clay amphora it spent 267 days sitting in encouraged.

Next the 2024 Stratus Pinot Noir Amphora ‘Laundry Vineyard’, which got 296 days in amphora. More black fruit than red, and calming mellow mid-palate tone… was I tasting the clay, or am I just highly suggestible. I’d like to come back to this wine in a few years, and continue to taste successive vintages from what Laundry told us was a unique small dome of a hill on her property.

I forgot that Stratus is one of the few growers of and wine makers of Sangiovese in Niagara until I was reminded when we tried the 2024 Stratus White Label Sangiovese ‘Amphora’. This is a really fun wine; it’s not going to be confused with Chianti Classico. It shows Niagara cool climate, with bright red fruit; cherries for sure but not confected. My notes have the word Niagara underlined, I think I meant it tasted of place.

We finished up with the 2023 Stratus White Label Cabernet Franc ‘Amphora’, which spent 600 days entombed in clay but rose up in the glass very much alive. Pure ripe black currant fruit; ripeness against fresh acidity. A wine that wants a steak. There is probably a wine writing rule about describing what something isn’t, but I’ll break it to say that this Cabernet Franc showed no hint of green or bell pepper pyrazene. This is why one goes to a Stratus wine: they wait for their fruit to ripen and three years later is all in the glass.

It was Stoyka a decade ago, who convinced his mentor and head winemaker at the time, Groux, to try an amphora after seeing some on a trip to Europe. And it’s Stoyka, now Head Winemaker who remains convinced that earthenware is the back to the future of wine making. The evidence does seem to be in the bottles.

TORONTO WINE CLUB

MJ Wine Box started as a COVID wine club, where my friends and neighbours pooled our money to buy cases of wine that you can’t buy at the LCBO and split them up into mixed cases. It was all about mitigating risk; if we ended up with a couple bottles we didn’t love, it was OK because there were other bottles in the box of wine to try. If we found something we liked, we could always order another case from the importing agent or Ontario winery.

I am going to do it again, and I am looking for about two dozen fellow wine enthusiasts to join me in a buyers club. They have to be MJ Wine Box subscribers and live in Toronto (so I can drop off the case of wine). My target is to find six different bottles of wine (two per case to make twelve) with an average price, including taxes and any delivery fees, of $35 a bottle. That’s $420 a case.

If this is of any interest, contact me directly. I’ll send you the full terms and conditions next week, and you can decide to join or not.

Just to be clear: this is a buyers club, and I am not going sell wine.

Subscribe now

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WINE RECOMMENDATIONS

Janare Senete Flanghina del Sannio 2024

Price: $24.95
Channel: LCBO Vintages

Producer: La Guardinese
Country: Italy
Region: Campania
Appellation: Falanghina del Sannio DOC

Grapes: Falanghina
Alcohol by Volume: 13.5%
Sugar Content: 4 grams per litre

Here’s a big white wine from outside of Naples that wants a pasta with spring vegetables (the local asparagus before we truly get sick of it), good olive oil and a lot of pecorino grated on top. La Guardinese is a big co-op that hired a fancy oenologist a decade or more ago, and now their Falanghina is $10 more a bottle than it was when first came to the LCBO, but it’s still really good, probably better than ever.

Look for a cross of stone and citrus fruit, like peach with a spritz of lemon. It’s fresh and crisp like a proper Italian white, but it also has some weight to it. If you’re not making it to Amalfi this summer, you can at least drink like you were.

https://www.lcbo.com/en/janare-senete-falanghina-del-sannio-2017-556787

Marzaiola Lacrima di Morro d’Alba 2024

Price: $17.95
Channel: LCBO Vintages

Producer: Tenute Pieralisi
Country: Italy
Region: The Marche
Appellation: Lacrima di Morro d’Alba DOC

Grapes: Lacrima di Morro
Alcohol by Volume: 13%
Sugar Content: 7 grams per litre

I remember the first glass of Lacrima di Morro d’Alba I ever tasted. It must have been about 20 years ago because it was at the Jamie Kennedy Wine Bar and it was served to me by Jamie Drummond, who either congratulated me on my wise selection or suggested it himself. (This is academic, because he would have put it on the list anyway; my love for Lacrima is all his fault either way.)

I remember being proud of myself for deducing that Lacrima was the Italian word for tears, since it’s close to one of my favourite English words, lachrymose. And I remember being instantly taken by it floral character. That one was more about roses, this one, the Marzaiola, is more about violets.

There’s not a lot of Lacrima in the world, and it’s rare that it appears on the shelves of the LCBO. It’s hidden at my local retailer, among the wines of Southern Italy, which I don’t think really applies to the Marche, but I guess it had to go somewhere. Violets and a clear line of intense blackberry fruit dominate this very fine tannin wine. I am surprised that it has 7 grams per litre of residual sugar, because it drinks dry, and fresh with food friendly acidity. It will do the job of any red wine at dinner, but it’s true calling is to linger in the glass after the meal.

https://www.lcbo.com/en/marzaiola-lacrima-di-morro-d-alba-2024-50813

Last weekend I was in Calgary at the 20th anniversary edition of the Terroir Symposium. I was invited in part because I was part of the original series of Toronto Terroir conferences, invited to join as a volunteer committee member by its founder, Arlene Stein. The focus of the symposium was then, as it is now, the hospitality industry, which in the first decade of this century was professionalizing into something like respectability.

It was fun and informative four days of hanging out with mostly restaurant people from all around Canada and the world. When I wasn’t gobbling up Amanda Cohen’s Bunny Burger1, or Daniele Uditi’s Cacia e Pepe Pizza, I had a chance to ask the participating chefs and restaurateurs how things were going. I do this regularly since the shock of the pandemic closures.

I ask off the record, and really for my own interest, as opposed to gathering information for something I intend to write about (even though that’s what I am doing presently). I like restaurants a lot, I want them to be around, and I worry about the headwinds they face from everything from the K economy to the hermetic tendencies of the smart phone digital age.

Most restaurateurs I ask answer exactly as I do when someone asks me how I am doing: with a reflexive “fine” or “good”, whatever is really going on. To be fair, since I am almost always asking people known for their successful restaurants, I am selecting from a group more likely to be doing okay, and expect relatively positive answers. Every once and a while, though, I’ll get an a more nuanced answer, like I did from an established old hand from a big Canadian city.

The restaurateur told me that reservations at their place had held steady over the winter and spring, but amount of the cheques per table was down. People were still coming out to dine, but they were spending less. The chef thought the reason why was twofold, or was the result of two complimentary phenomena.

The affordability crisis was squeezing the restaurants clients, and they were ordering less expensive items and less of them. They was also a discernible trend of patrons either skipping alcohol altogether, or sticking to one drink or one glass of wine for all of the meal. The latter trend might be simply a continuation of the former, or the result of real lifestyle changes, GLP-1 drugs, or a combination of everything.

The chef hoped that warmer patio weather might encourage people to spend more this summer. It’s hard to say no to a second glass of rosé with good company on a warm evening. And who knows? Maybe the economy will improve, along with restaurant consumer confidence. Maybe.

This report is anecdotal, but it jibes with latest Restaurants Canada Q1 Quarterly Report, which describes a perfect storm of declining revenue and higher costs in the industry. This is in a business known for its traditionally low margins. That the one part of the bill, drinks and wine, that could make up on margin, is especially in decline, is very worrying.

I don’t just like restaurants, I like what they do for wine. Most wine that’s priced at $30 or more is bought by restaurants. This $30 to $100 price point is a kind of sweet spot for small producers who, lacking the the efficiencies of scale, can invest a little more sweat and capital into their wines. Less restaurants means less of these wines and more supermarket-style wines. Or just less wines.

Remember, business don’t buy wine like consumers. To them, a case of wine is an investment that should turn a profit. The standard Toronto mark-up on a bottle of wine is 150%; two and a half times what they paid for it. Or it was before the affordability crisis.

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In the last couple of years, I have caught establishments charging $100 before tax and tip for bottles that cost them less than $25; a 300% mark-up. I wrote about it, about a year ago, explaining that I was initially upset by the big mark-up, but even then I came around… sort of:

The thing is, for two lunches, I thought the Saumur Chenin was worth paying $100 for. And I might well feel the same, should the opportunity arise. But the other thing is, would I be more likely to return to the restaurant if they marked the Chenin up conventionally and listed it for $60, or even $75? I think I would.

And this is the problem: the rent is too damn high for everyone. Restaurants and winemakers have to make money somehow to stay in business. But the only way they can keep from sinking, in what looks increasingly like a stagflation world, is by raising prices, which drives away their customers. It’s a worrying time.

Maybe the ships will start sailing again through the Straights of Hormuz, and inflation will come down. Maybe we will want to celebrate the return of less crappy times by dining out and have a good meal with a good bottle of wine (or two) with it. Or maybe, if we can’t get a reservation, we’ll stay at home pull out a good special occasion wine from the cellar. In either case we’ll enjoy the fruits of a healthy winosystem, where each component part symbiotically depends on the other.

I hope so.

I will write more and in detail about the 2026 Terroir Symposium this month at The Hub.

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WINE RECOMMENDATIONS

Cluster Flock 2025

Price: $17.95
Channel: LCBO Vintages

Producer: Citizen Wine
Country: Spain
Region: Castilla y León
Appellation: Rueda DO

Grapes: Verdejo, Sauvignon Blanc, Viognier, Chardonnay, Viura (percentages not declared)
Alcohol by Volume: 12.5%
Sugar Content: 2 grams per litre

Citizen Wine is a modern British negociant that makes or commissions wines from across Europe, as well as New Zealand and Argentina. “Cluster Flock” is a label they use for white blends, in this case from Reuda in Northwestern Spain, which is having a bit of a moment. It was the wine’s provenance that caught my attention, rather than the silly label. It turned out to be worth a try.

Citizen Wine does not declare the percentages of the five grape varieties used to make Cluster Flock. One assumes that they are listed on the label (as I have repeated above) from most to least. I can’t tell from tasting, except I was struck by the prominence of tropical fruit, like guava, and lime citrus, rather than aromatics one might expect from Sauvignon Blanc and Viogner. In the end this is thirst quencher of a crisp dry, very fresh summer white. Easy to sip on a warm summer evening in the company of friends and snacks.

https://www.lcbo.com/en/cluster-flock-white-2025-50358

Gorghi Tondi Dumè 2025

Price: $22.95
Channel: LCBO Vintages

Producer: Gorghi Tondi
Country: Italy
Region: Sicily
Appellation: Sicilia DOC

Grapes: Frappato
Alcohol by Volume: 12.5%
Sugar Content: 4 grams per litre

The current Vintages Release at the LCBO includes a number of lighter style “Chilled Reds” (get it?), and the Tondi Frappato is one of them. You could chill this wine and drink it like a rosé, but you would miss some of its more subtle red fruit charms, if you left it in the fridge to long. Look for raspberries and touch of white pepper seasoning on the finish.

Gorghi Tondi organic winery is named for a series of spring fed lakes, which comprise a World Wildlife Fund protected area near Marsala in Western Sicily. It’s been run by the women of the Sala family for four generations, including its current leaders, sisters Annamaria and Clara (according to this 2021 Gambero Rosso profile). The Dumè Frappato is a bit of an anomaly, in that this grape from Eastern Sicily is not usually planted on the west side of the island.

The intrepid Sala sisters must have recognized that Frappato would be key to the 21st century success of Sicilian wines. Even before global warming, Sicilian summers were hot. Frappato somehow miraculously retains both acidity and low alcohol while showing big fruit, despite being grown in a warm climate.

The Dumè is perfect barbecue red for chicken, ribs, eggplant, zucchini, or whatever ends up on the grill.

https://www.lcbo.com/en/frappato-dume-sicilia-2025-50571

Here is a brief dining guide to a few Montréal restaurants I have enjoyed recently. It’s personal and reflects the tastes of a middle-aged man who likes a good bistro, preferably in the company of his wife, or colleagues. It is directed at the tourist, or business traveler. It makes no claims about any place being the best at anything, or having the best of any thing. (Except, of course, L’Express, which just is and has many.)

Other than loving the city and its restaurants, I have a few qualifications. For one, I have lived in Montreal, and though I was a poor student, I knew some people who worked in restaurants and a few others who were interested in them. In the first four years of the 1990s, we would sometimes blow our budget on dinner, and have to make up for it with ramen and tuna for days after. I’m not an expert on the history or present of Montreal restaurants, but at 21 years old, I at least knew who Norman Laprise was and my way around the city.

Another qualification, which sounds like a brag, but bears relevance, is that my current weird life as a wine writer takes me to France regularly. Sometimes I pass through Paris long enough for a jet lagged lunch before catching a train, or an end of the trip dinner before catching a plane the next day. When I don’t, then I am in wine country where there are always good restaurants and things to eat.

The French trips are relevant because of the cross-pollination of restaurant culture between Quebec and La République. But also because when I travel from Toronto to Montreal, the kind of restaurants I am particularly interested in show Gallic influence and its interplay with Quebec’s own distinct restaurant sensibility. This is all a complicated way of me saying I know what I’m writing about.

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Finally, now that I have kids who have reached university age, the two of three that have opted to go to school in Montreal. So far, this has meant an average of two touristy visits a year for the last five, on top of whatever work stuff might bring me there as well. If kid number three follows the family way (his mother also went to school in Montreal), then I’ll have skin in the game for another five years. I am invested.

This is a wine Substack, so the restaurants below are all ones that serve wine, well made at a reasonable price. They are suggested for lunch, dinner, or either, but not breakfast, obviously.

LUNCH

Bar Bara (Saint-Henri)

If you go to lunch at Bar Bara, you have to be prepared to sit at the high-top communal table that runs the length of the bar in this long and narrow Italianish restaurant, wine bar, caffé, whatever it is. Lean into it and pretend you’re a bohemian resident of not quite gentrified Saint-Henri, which is more or less down the hill from Westmount, but quite different. The classic move is the Mortadella sandwich and one of the salads, which could be happily split by a couple. Getting there is fun, if you walk along Notre-Dame West from a point of departure in one of the other two cool Southwest neighbourhoods. For instance the Arsenal art gallery in Griffintown, or Atwater Market in Little Burgundy.

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The future of wine is in Roussillon. Or, at least one good future of wine is. This is a future of climate change adaptation. Adaptation to drought by the adoption of regenerative viticulture. It’s also a future about wines that are as well made as affordable. I was reminded of French Catalan’s promise this week when the young, thirtysomething representatives of two Roussillonnais producers were in town: Jeremy Gaudineau from Domaine Lafage and Moritz Bak, winemaker and founder of Res Fortes.

In some ways the two houses couldn’t be more different. Lafage is Roussillon’s biggest producer, while Res Fortes is boutique. But they share a common attitude of resillience, coming from an underdog part of the wine world, and are growing their business steadily in the face of a contracting market. They are making great wines from overlooked assets; the old, heat resistant vines of Roussillon. And they’re attracting customers by offering competitive value in a world wracked by an affordability crisis.

Earlier in the week, I sat down for a pub dinner and a tasting with Lafage’s Jeremy Gaudineau, his Ontario importer, industry veteran Peter Sainsbury of Glencairn Wine Merchants, and couple of other wine jounalists and trades. Gaudineau is from the Loire Valley, but has worked mostly with producers from the South. He explained that although the Lafage family have been vignerons for multiple generation, the modern company has been formed by his bosses, Jean-Marc and Eliane. The couple met while studying wine and took control in 2001.

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Domaine Lafage initially grew its business on exports, including Canada; its biggest retail channels are the provincial monopolies in Quebec and Ontario. In the last decade, it’s grown its domestic (French) market to represent 50% of its sales. This is a big deal for a label from Roussillon, whose reputation in the popular French imagination was either for fortified sweet wines or “wine lake” bulk plonk1. I think the point Gaudineau was making was that the wines had to be good to get traction abroad or at home.

Beyond the typical secrets of terroir and technique, as Gaudineau explained it, Lafage got good at wine the new old fashioned way: regenerative viticulture. Apart from being good for the Earth, being good to the earth turns out to be good business in drought prone Roussillon. So does investing old vines, which offer lower yields but turn out to be tough old things that can survive the hottest and driest seasons.

We tasted through six wines in, or about to be in, the LCBO Vintages program. In stock now, 2025 Saint Roch Corbarol Côtes du Roussillon Blanc (see below), the 2025 Miraflors Côtes Catalan Rosé and 2023 Old Vines Tessellae GSM blend (both are continually stocked Vintages Essentials and cost $20), as well as the 2023 Cayrol Old Vines Carignan (again see below). We also tasted the 2024 Novellum, a Chardonnay that rests on Viogner lees (to be released July 18 for $20), and the 2023 Narassa Old Vines Grenache (to be released August 1 for $24).

I go into detail on why I recommend the Corbarol white and Cayrol Carignan at the end of this post. The golden threads that unite all six wine is a purity and intensity of fruit, seasoned by some interesting secondary character, and a glass of wine that is altogether balanced at 13 to 14+ degrees of alcohol by volume, weighty, yet fresh. In other words consistently good value for about $20.

If the wine world was serious about recruiting new wine enthusiasts in their 20s, it would make more wines like this.

Moritz Bak settled in Roussillon to establish Res Fortes after working in wineries across the world. Bak describes himself as a half Dutch, half German man who was born in Switzerland, grew up in England, and now lives in France with his Canadian wife. The wines he brought with him to Toronto, where he hosted a tasting with his importer Stephen Ranger of Ranger Wines in a private club, are by some degrees fancier than the ones from Lafage. They are available directly from Ranger wines by the case, and the audience at the casual, stand-up tasting comprised of restaurant trade buyers, or well to do collectors.

The elements of the wines are remarkably similar: organic and drought resistant regenerative farming, with a focus in old vines2. Like Lafage, Bak is also re-investing in Roussillon, having recently bought a section of an old Syrah vineyard. And like Lafage, at its rebirth, Bak has concentrated on exporting his wines, principally to the US, UK, and Canada. But, like Lafage, Res Forte is starting to work on the domestic market, though Bak concedes his accounts Perpignan and Toulouse make-up only 2% of his sales… but it’s growing.

I tasted five wines with Bak, including the 2022 Traveler Syrah (just 4 cases of six available, at $65 a bottle): an intense inky, blackberry, violet and leather Southern expression of the grape. We also tasted the 2017 Brave made with Grenache from more than 100 year old vines, that was still tight and young despite nine years of age, but showing tantalizing hints of rich Mediterranean fruit. It’s not currently available, but retails for £90 in the UK.

We also tasted Res Fortes’ 2023 Côtes du Roussillon white, a blend of Grenache Gris and Blanc, as well as Macabeu, which will retail for about $28, when it arrives in a few weeks. It performed the great trick of Southern French whites, showing weighty yellow and citrus fruit notes, while maintaining freshness.

The 2024 Côtes du Roussillon Rosé, is also dominated by Grenache (Noir and Gris) with a dash of Syrah, and priced at $29 a bottle. Grenache blend rosé should be its own category, they are invariably more interesting than ones made with other grapes. Full of soft red fruit, but also well structured, so they can be taken from the patio seamlessly to the table. The Res Fortes is a serious pink wine.

Finally, the 2022 Côtes du Roussillon ‘GMS’ red blend ($29) is a crowd pleaser and friedn to any grilled summer meal. Grenache cherry meets darker fruits from Mourvèrdre and violets from Syrah, there’s a herbal, garrigue element, too. A complete package from the very South of France.

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WINE RECOMMENDATIONS

Saint Roch Corboral 2025

Price: $14.95
Channel: LCBO Vintages

Producer: Domaine Lafage
Country: France
Region: Roussillon
Appellation: Côtes du Roussillon AOC

Grapes: Grenache Blanc 80%, Roussanne 20%
Alcohol by Volume: 13%
Sugar Content: 4 grams per litre

Bees wax is my new favourite flavour descriptor of the white wines of the South of France, and this one has it (or honeysuckle will also do). That’s a big lemon citrus note, and it’s powering weight on the mid palate, that washes into mouth watering freshness. It’s moresish and made for aperitifs in the backyard. It’s also a really good deal, and starting to sell out fast…

https://www.lcbo.com/en/saint-roch-vieilles-vignes-c-tes-du-roussillon-grenache-blanc-roussanne-2019-175232

Domaine Lafage Veilles Vines Carignan 2023

Price: $19.95
Channel: LCBO Vintages

Producer: Domaine Lafage
Country: France
Region: Roussillon
Appellation: Côtes Catalanes

Grapes: Carignan
Alcohol by Volume: 14%
Sugar Content: 3 grams per litre

This wine is also a very good deal and selling out quickly, but it’s good enough, and well priced enough, to be worth hunting for. 100% Carignan is wine hack. It’s almost always “old vines” because it was ripped out all over France and Spain for several decades, and replaced with other things, presumably so aspiring Southern vignerons could make their versions of Châteauneuf-du-Pape or Côte-Rôtie. And when it comes from old vines, there’s almost always an intensity of tar black fruit that can’t really come form any other source.

This is as good 60 years old vines Carignan as one can be expected to find for $20. Blackberry meets serious garrigue that’s more licorice than herbal, but with enough acidity to keep it food friendly fresh, despite the heat wave vintage. Weekend dinner wine.

https://www.lcbo.com/en/lafage-cayrol-vieilles-vignes-carignan-2019-494039

In the last couple of weeks, quite a lot of the last remaining stock of European jet fuel seems to have been spent flying the viticoltori Northern and Central Italy over to Toronto. I hope their reception has been better than the weather, which has been cold and grey. This Torontonian was certainly pleased to see them and bottles of 2020, 21 and 22 releases; they seemed like a reminder that the sun might shine again.

After last week’s Chianti Classico and Sassicaia tastings, this week brought a kind of party of a walk-around evening tasting of Veneto DOC Pinot Grigio, a proper lunch with the Vino Nobile di Montalcino DOCG, and the biggest organized Barolo and Barbaresco tasting outside of Italy. It’s been a good week.

The Barolo & Barbaresco World Opening trade show featured 166 producers from the Langhe. Each were allowed only two wines at their table, often an example of each DOCG but whatever they decided to show. Sometimes it was two different vineyards or two vintages; it varied.

What made it a superior show was time, space and matter. The trade show went from eleven in the morning to five in the afternoon, so there was lots of time go over 332 wines. Crucially, it took place in two very large exhibition halls at the 100 year old Liberty Grand, which meant there was lots of room to spread out. There were no crowds around the tables, jockeying for a clear shot into the crachoir. The vibe was relaxed.

The substance of the show was not just the selection of some of the finest wines known to humanity. It was the people. Most tables were womanned, manned or both with people from the winery. People you could talk to in between swirls and spits.

The Langhe is somewhat incredibly one of the Italian wine regions I know better than others. One of the first organized and serious overseas tasting series I attended in the 2010s was the Nebbiolo Prima series in Alba. It was a kind of trial by ordeal, with blind tastings of over 100 wines every morning, then trips out to meet winemakers at their wineries in the afternoons, culminating in some kind of long dinner with more winemakers in the evening, which invariably stretched into the night.

I was a greenhorn, and it nearly broke me. But I became very well acquainted with the Nebbiolo grape very quickly. Because I was very much at the bottom of the totem pole of international wine writers attending, my afternoon visits tended not to be with the famous producers. Or, if they were, I didn’t quite realize it at the time. I was just happy to be there, and I think I was exposed to good cross section of the Langhe winemakers.

Many of the visits were with young winemakers just starting their label, like Alessandro Rivetto. A dozen years later, he’s well established, and it fun to have seen the wine come and be recognized. In fact, there weren’t many producers at the Toronto show I knew, but I had been to several of their wineries, or their neighbours, and after subsequent visits could at least follow them when they pointed at a map.

You can’t taste wine on a screen. And wine almost always tastes better in the company of others. I’ll more to report on this recent flurry of tastings. I just wanted to remark that it was nice to remember the human touch in the world of wine.

People make wine, and wine makes people. That’s always the story: the message in the bottle.

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NEW WRITING AT THE HUB

My latest wine column at The Hub, ‘How To Survive a Crash Course in Italian Wine’, is about my enrolment in the Vinitaly International Academy wine course. I was already behind in my studies when I wrote it last week. Master Sommelier John Szabo is the Toronto instructor and invigilator. Since I consider him a friend, I am doubly sure I am in a lot trouble. The column is about my first week hitting the books…

The Chianti Classico tasting began with a masterclass taught by none other than my new pedagogical nemesis, John Szabo MS. Luckily, there was no test afterwards, but I did notice that John refused to tell me if any point from his lecture would be included in the VIA exam. The class was, as they say, granular, focusing on the 11 discrete geographical areas in the appellation, and I was only singled out to answer a question (which I got wrong) once.

Read it all here.

WINE RECOMMENDATIONS

Armas de Guerra Godello 2024

Price: $19.95
Channel: LCBO Vintages

Producer: Vinos Guerra
Country: Spain
Region: Bierzo (Castilla y León)
Appellation: Bierzo DO

Grapes: Godello
Alcohol by Volume: 13%
Sugar Content: 2 grams per litre

The Iberian grape Godello is one of the low yielding white wine varieties, like Viogner in the South of France, which nearly became extinct before being rescued in the 1980s, particularly in it’s purportedly native land of Galicia, in the northwest corner of Spain. This version comes from neighbouring Bierzo, and is made simply in stainless steel to let Godello do its mineral, floral and fruit forward thing.

I see Godello as one of the subtly aromatic varieties for people (like me) who don’t always reach for that category of white wines. The Armas de Guerra in particular has a slightly oily character and a mid-palate weight, so the florals end up being just one component, and a compliment to the lemon citrus fruit, rather than the main show.

I want the Armas de Guerra Godello as an aperitif wine, preferably outside in fine weather. White anchovies and raw radishes with butter would suit it. So would grilled chicken skewers. But any snack would do.

https://www.lcbo.com/en/armas-de-guerra-godello-2024-47864

Château Pesquié Édition 1912M 2023

Price: $16.95
Channel: LCBO Vintages

Producer: Château Pesquié
Country: France
Region: Southern Rhône Valley
Appellation: Ventoux AOC

Grapes: Grenache (70%), Syrah (20%), Cinsault (10%)
Alcohol by Volume: 14.5%
Sugar Content: 3 grams per litre

Vive le Rhône! This $17 entry level red from Pesquié is as affordable as it is well made. The blend is right on the mark: big raspberry and blackberry fruit from the Grenache, a touch of meatiness and pepper from the Syrah, and a good acid lift from the Cinsault. There is a light seasoning of acetone volatile acidity just to remind us where it’s from as well a note of garrigue if the message still hadn’t come through.

This is a global warming wine. In the South of France, August of 2023 was a “red alert” record hot year. The Southern Rhône deals with the heat by adjusting their blends. When the wines are correct, they are big, but in balance and keep a freshness.

This is also a barbecue wine. It’s big enough to stand up to whatever spice or seasoning is served. It’s easy and should be shared in generous portions. Perfect for toasting the anticipated arrival of summer.

https://www.lcbo.com/en/pesqui-c-adition-1912m-ventoux-2019-636159

The listicle must be the last refuge of the craven lifestyle journalist, who having spent most of the week attending events realizes he has a deadline and must make some sense of the pages of scribbles he’s made on his knee at so many tastings. So, here are five red wines I have tasted in the last couple of weeks that continue to linger in my imagination.

1. 2012 Ken Forrester The Gypsy

   

   My late father-in-law was an advocate for rights of the much discriminated against Roma people of Eastern Europe. He banned the G word from his house on the grounds that it is a hateful slur. His family has tried to keep this convention. I am breaking it warily because, in this case, the wine is so good it needs to be written about, and I believe it was named in good faith and sympathy with society’s outcasts.
   
   The name comes from an isolated Stellenbosch vineyard of Grenache, which leads this GSM blend. It was illicitly planted in the late 1950s from cuttings, and the neighbouring farmers were absurdly afraid that the vines might contract phylloxera and wouldn’t grow vines around it. To Ken Forrester the isolated vineyard seemed like a Gypsy camp, ostracized and removed from society.
   
   In any event it’s the Syrah in the 2012 that dominated my senses with a lovely septentronial cured meat note over red and black berry fruit, and somehow quite light on its feet and elegant. I tasted it over dinner, and Ken opened a 2008 as well, which was lovely as well, and maybe more Grenache focused and meridonial. For whatever reason, the 2012’s siren song was just a little bit more enticing to my ears.

2. 2022 Sassicaia

   

   If I was extravagantly wealthy and had given up the pedestrian chore of buying my own wine, I might instruct the staff to keep a standing order with the Tenuta San Guido, so that every room in all of my various abodes might have a bottle of Sassicaia on hand. When my guests had noticed that I was once more serving the original Bolgheri gangster Cabernet blend, I would humbly submit to them that I was a simple man and had never been disappointed by a glass of red from this horse farm by the sea.
   
   Since I am not yet fabulously wealthy, I have to remember how fortunate I am to be periodically invited to taste Sassicaia, especially when it is poured in the company of Priscilla Incisa della Rocchetta, who was in Toronto this week with her famiy’s wines. (Watch this space for an interview I conducted with Signora Incisa della Rocchetta.) Since it was more than a year since her last visit, she poured both the 2022 (sold out) and 2023 (to be released in the fall). I am sure that if only the 2023 had been poured, it would be on the list, but the 2022, from a notoriously hot year, was just that much more approachable at the moment. It really was like a first growth claret seasoned with just a touch Mediterranean herbal scrub. So good.

3. 2024 Sorelle Bronca Valdobbiadene Rive di Farrò Extra Brut Particella 232

   Henry Jeffries has written some unkind things about cheap Prosecco, so in order to restore balance in The Winoverse, I will write some kind things about fancy Prosecco. This single vineyard bottling from my favourite women-run DOCG bubble makers has absolutely zero sugar, despite a modest 11% of alcohol by volume. It’s about yellow fruit and white florals, and a fine, almost silky mousse of a perlage. I would take a glass of this over any of the usual Duty Free Champagne suspects any day.

4. 2016 Bertani Amarone
   Apparently I didn’t just need to be reminded how much I like Prosecco, when it’s good. I also needed to be reminded how much I like Amarone, when it’s good. I didn’t mean to stop at the Bertani table at the Tre Bicchieri show, but I went over to chat with their importer who more or less pushed me over to their export manager who poured me a taste that stopped me in my tracks.
   
   The Bertani Amarone was perfectly in balance and surprisingly fresh with acidity. I was expecting a big black fruit monster, but instead encountered a red fruit sprite of a wine. At ten years, it was very much alive, but structurally settled and calming, with dried fruit and black secondary flavours emerging on the finish. It knocked the snob right out of me.

5. Le Fonti 2023

   

   There were lots of very fancy Riserva and Gran Selezione wines at this year’s big Chianti Classico tasting. Thirty wineries took part, and most sent their winemaker or export manager to chat up the wines, which all were happy to do. There was no “best wine” at the tasting. There were lots of excellent and interesting wines at the tasting, including quite a back vintages into the 2010s and 2000s, along with what has just been released.
   
   I got to the Le Fonti table as things were wrapping up, and my palate was tired. I remember tasting the 2023 Annata and being woken up. Juicy cherries, fresh acidity, some tannin holding it all together. Even the “regular” Le Fonti is still pretty fancy, at $32 a bottle. But it’s democratically fancy, nuanced but accessible. It stuck with me.

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WINE RECOMMENDATIONS

Réserve du Chiron Muscadet Sèvre et Maine 2024

Price: $16.95
Channel: LCBO Vintages

Producer: Maison Couillaud
Country: France
Region: Loire Valley
Appellation: Muscadet Sèvre et Maine AOC

Grapes: Melon de Bourgogne
Alcohol by Volume: 12%
Sugar Content: 3 grams per litre

Poor old Muscadet has three strikes against it. First, it sounds a lot like “Muscat”, which it could not be more different from stylistically. Second, it’s made form a weird sounding grape, that sounds like a breakfast fruit from Burgundy. Three, if it’s known at all, it’s invariably linked to oysters, since its made so close to the mollusc beds of Brittany. Muscadet is very good with oysters, but it’s also very good with lots of other things, especially in the contemporary style that’s heavy on resting the wines on its lees (sur lie), which is Muscadet’s secret weapon that transforms these high acid wines into a more mellow and mid-palate pleasing gastronomic wines.

I might rebrand Muscadet as Chablis d’Atlantique, if the authorities would let me. But then, we might have to pay Burgundian prices for this very much underrated jewel of a white wine. Look for classic crisp white wine notes of lemon citrus and apricot. This is a wine to have on hand in case a friend stops by in the late afternoon. If you don’t have any oysters, a piece of hard cheese and a few crackers will be fine.

https://www.lcbo.com/en/la-cave-du-coudray-r-cserve-du-chiron-muscadet-s-rvre-et-maine-2024-413757

Lagar de Robla Mencia 2023

Price: $18.00
Channel: LCBO Vintages

Producer: Vinos de Arganza
Country: Spain
Region: Bierzo
Appellation: Castilla y Leon CdO

Grapes: Mencia
Alcohol by Volume: 14.5%
Sugar Content: 2 grams per litre

My Spanish no es bueno, but I think this wine is a kind of de-classified Bierzo, which is why it’s $18 and not $25. The producer is from Bierzo, and they’re making wine with the region’s signature grape, Mencia, in a style that seems to me to be in line with the appellation (in wine speak, it shows typicity). So, I’m not sure why it’s marketed as essentially table wine. It was in barrel for just 10 months, which is pretty short by Iberian standards, so maybe that’s it.

Not that we should care. Heather McDonald once described Mencia wines to me as “delicate but powerful”, and this is it. Super bright red fruit just barely kept from exploding by firm tannins, obscure the high alcohol count. It’s a bit dangerous that way, but it’s likely perfect for a boisterous dinner party. Delicious stuff.

https://www.lcbo.com/en/lagar-de-robla-coleccion-4-hermanos-mencia-50391

Is the definitive book about Niagara wine a cookbook? Maybe. Madgalena Kaiser’s new book Niagara Wine + Food (to be released May 26) is a contender with enough up to date serious information on the region to satisfy a wine student and enough fun information, including a forward from eminent wino Andrew Jefford, to trigger a surge in wine country tourism and bottle sales. There are also 88 winemaker recipes, tested in the kitchen and again at the table to make sure they pair perfectly with a featured wine.

In any event, I am sure there’s no one better qualified to capture the spirit of Niagara in a book than Magdalena Kaiser. Watch my video conversation with my friend below to find out why.

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UN RETOUR Á MONTRÉAL

Paid subscribers: watch for my just updated Montreal Dining Guide next week at MJ Wine Box. I was back on the island last week for an extend tour of lunch and dinners and have much to report. Regular MJWB readers know that I can’t go to Montreal without a meal a L’Express (unless, like for several months last year, it’s closed). So yes, there’s more post-renovation L’Express reportage, but also some coverage of newish, and hard to get a table at, spots like Mon Lapin and Justin and Katie’s favourite, Le Violon.

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WINE RECOMMENDATIONS

Jasci & Marchesani Pecorino Biologica 2024

Price: $16.96
Channel: LCBO Vintages

Producer: Jasci & Marchesani
Country: Italy
Region: Abruzzo
Appellation: Terre di Chieti IGT

Grapes: Pecorino
Alcohol by Volume: 12.5%
Sugar Content: 4 grams per litre

Wine pricing is not quite a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, but there is not always much of a straight line between the quality of what’s in the bottle versus the number on the tag. I have a suspicion that this 2024 organic Pecorino from Jasci & Marchesani might sell a bit more quickly it was $19.95 instead of $16.95; it would be no less of a bargain. But why look a gift horse in the mouth? This is a great deal for a well made white wine.

This Pecorino has big fruit: peaches and pears, that grab the palate’s attention before it turns to fresh acidity. It wants something salty like prosciutto, or some cured meat or hard cheese and a few olives. It’s an aperitif wine, ready to be served outdoors if the evening will allow.

https://www.lcbo.com/en/jasci-marchesani-terre-di-chieti-pecorino-49217

Gillardi Maestra Dogliani 2022

Price: $21.95
Channel: LCBO Vintages

Producer: Gillardi
Country: Italy
Region: Piedmont
Appellation: Dogliani DOCG

Grapes: Dolcetto
Alcohol by Volume: 13.5%
Sugar Content: 2 grams per litre

Walter Speller’s entry for Dogliani in the Fifth Edition of The Oxford Companion to Wine (2023) is exactly one sentence long: “Dogliani, DOCG immediately south of Barolo in Italy’s Piemonte region devoted to Dolcetto, but under threat of being largely replaced with the much more profitable Nebbiolo for the production of Langhe Nebbiolo.” No shade on Speller, nor his editors, but that strikes me as rather short shrift for a little region that delivers big pleasure.

Actually, this Dogliani shows a bit like a Nebbiolo form the hills due north; even after four years it’s pretty grippy with tannins, despite supposedly soft nature of the Dolcetto. The tannins are from the grapes: it was vinified in steel and cement. 2022 was the hottest summer on record in Europe, so maybe these Dolcetto grapes developed particularly thick skins. Maybe this Gillardi Dogliani is so well priced because it’s a atypical and a bit more powerful than consumers might expect.

In any event, there is much to enjoy in the 2022 Maestra. Look for solid black cherry fruit, complimented by a tobacco or maybe tar note, livened up with a good dose of Northern Italian acidity. It’s a big barbecue or pizza wine, kind of serious but a lot of fun.

https://www.lcbo.com/en/gillardi-maestra-dogliani-50394

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This marketing push is for the basic level, Côtes du Rhône red, white and rosé wines, and also emerging ‘Villages’ appellation wines. The most famous village in the Rhône Valley is Châteauneuf-du-Pape. The nearby villages of Vacqueyras and Gigondas are also well known, at least among oenophiles, as is the Rhône rosé capital, Tavel.

Those villages are not ‘Villages’ villages because they are Cru’s, or appellations on their own terms. The Villages villages are less known more numerous. 21 of them have the right to append their name to a bottle of Côtes du Rhône Villages, including Plan de Dieu, Sablet, Séguret and Visan, to name four of the bigger ones.

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Just to add another layer of fun, in my experience most Rhône producers, even relatively small, boutique ones, will make all kinds of combinations and permutations of different Cru, Villages, or straight-up Côtes du Rhône wines. Why is nothing in wine ever simple?

Anyway, to their credit the vignerons of the Rhône Méridoniale do not expect us to remember all the village names, or whether one or another is in the department of Drôme or Vaucluse. I think that’s smart, and not just because I am lazy and don’t wish to memorize the names of 21 villages and their corresponding soil types. It’s smart because stylistically the Côtes du Rhône and CdR Villages wines have more in common than not. If you like Visan, then I’m pretty sure you’re going to like Séguret, so maybe some things in wine are simple, after all.

For the reds, look for red fruit notes from Grenache, and black fruit from Syrah and whatever else is in the blend. For the whites, looks for a mellow yellow roundness that lifts into refreshing acid on the finish. The Southern Rhône wines can be high in alcohol, often more than 14%. But the corollary is that they almost always bone dry, with two or less grams of residual sugar per litre. I’ll take a degree or two of alcohol over a spoonful of sugar, as long as the wine is in balance and not running hot.

So, what about the fun part? I think the fun part is that the best CdR’s remain one of the wine world few affordable luxuries. Robert Parker famously described Southern Rhône reds as “hedonistic”, and there is a richness of fruit, and herbal seasoning of “garrigue” to the wines that make them easy to go down and switch effortlessly from vin de table to digestif if one is tempted to linger at the table.

BIDS NOW OPEN AT GFH CHARITY AUCTION

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NEW WRITING AT THE HUB

My April wine column at The Hub is all about my adventures buying wine in Alberta. How private is the province’s system? How is the competition, and how does it work of consumers in terms of selection and pricing? Find out here.

https://thehub.ca/2026/04/10/on-buying-booze-in-alberta/

MALBEC DAY

The Wines of Argentina decided to remind me, and I imagine some other wine writers, that today, April 17, is Malbec World Day. This may be because Argentina produces 75% of the world’s Malbec and the wines made from it. I was given a selection of popular brands, widely available in Ontario to taste and re-acquaint myself with.

Out of the lot, one stood out: the 2024 Doña Paula Estate Malbec. From grapes grown at 1350 metres above see level this Malbec defies stereotypes and is remarkably fresh and shows red fruit notes over black and violet ones. It reminded me of the food friendly and lighter styled Malbecs that I drank over a week in Buenos Aires. The tannins are fine, from fruit and there’s no hint of oak. And, at $15.35 a bottle, it’s at Buenos Aires pricing because the LCBO has it on sale with $3 off until April 26th.

WINE RECOMMENDATIONS

Tarapas CDR Blanc 2024

Price: $25.95 (plus shipping, taxes, etc.)
Channel: The Living Vine

Producer: Les Vignerons d’Estezargues
Country: France
Region: Southern Rhône
Appellation: Côtes-du-Rhône AOC

Grapes: Grenache Blanc (46%), Roussanne (37%), Viogner (9%), Clairette (8%), Bourboulenc (6%)
Alcohol by Volume: 13.5%
Sugar Content: N/A, my guess is 2 or less grams per litre

I have been to the Southern Rhône twice in the last 10 years, in 2016 and 2025, and on both visits most of the winemakers I met, most of the time, were most proud of their white wines. And both times, I tasted as many as I could from Châteauneuf to the Luberon. This one, from an all organic co-operative of growers, is a great example of mellow yellow Provençal white weightiness. It’s delicious.

The 2024 Taparas Blanc is a blend of five Rhône Méridonial grapes, which means there’s a lot going on: a kind of honeyed green apple with a spritz of lime in the glass. But what’s fun is the way it just kind of sits and lingers on the palate. This is a lazy lunch wine, or an early evening aperitif; it’s versatile and will pair with anything that goes with white, from an omelette to potato chips.

The Tarapas is for sale by the case of 12 from The Living Vine Agency. If buying 12 bottles of the same thing without tasting it sounds risky, find a few friends and split the order. Or, look for it on the patios of Toronto this summer, or maybe in a private bottle shop in one of the cooler parts of town.

https://www.thelivingvine.ca/products/taparas-cdr-blanc

Baron de Montfaucon Côtes-du-Rhône 2022

Price: $20.95
Channel: LCBO Vintages

Producer: Baron de Montfaucon
Country: France
Region: Southern Rhône
Appellation: Côtes du Rhône

Grapes: Grenache (60%), Syrah (20%), Carignan 20%
Alcohol by Volume: 14%
Sugar Content: 2 grams per litre

The Baron de Montfaucon must be the entry level label for the Château de Montfaucon, which makes Rhône Cru wines like Châteauneuf-du-Pape and Lirac, where their castle sits on the river. This is $21 Côte du Rhône, so the grapes could come from anywhere in the appellation (which is fine, see above). What makes the 2022 Baron de Montfaucon interesting and particularly delicious is the 20% of Carignan that evens out the typical Grenache and Syrah blend.

Carignan is a wino hack. As it became unpopular in the Mediterranean wine world in the last quarter of the 20th century, and many if not most of its rows were grubbed up. They were to be replanted with grapes like Syrah, presumably to replace the local peasant wine with a local version of Hermitage. Anyway, this means that the Carignan that’s left is probably at least 30 or 40 years old, and delivering beautifully concentrated black fruit. I’m pretty sure that’s what’s going with the Montfaucon, where a deep vein of blackberry and cassis runs under cherry and raspberry and seasoning of menthol garrigue. It wants grilled meat or vegetables.

https://www.lcbo.com/en/chateau-de-montfaucon-cotes-du-rhone-51799

I am not merely a pain in the ass, I have one. A few weeks ago, I took relatively routine strain to my left side glutes I suffered at the gym and idiotically supersized it by trying to ski through the pain on a March Break trip to the Rockies. Over the last couple of weeks I have learned that if one inflicts deep soft tissue damage to one’s piriformis (i.e. top ass) muscle, the inflammation will aggravate the sciatic nerve. This is an excellent way to seamlessly convert a boring, dull butt pain into the sharp, shooting kind down the back of one’s leg.

It’s okay, though. It only hurts when I sit, stand, walk or lie down. And, I have learned that a good way to counter the sudden spasms of sciatica is to involuntarily shout an expletive followed by the whimper of a wounded animal. This is surely only further endearing me to my family with whom I share a house. So does periodically asking them to bend down and pick things up for me.

Through hot water bottle fillings and muscle relaxant brain fog, I have found consolation in wine. Not just for the analgesic effect, but for the reminder of a bigger world out there, since immobility has shrunk mine. It’s the Message in a Bottle that I keep writing about, and I have been happy to receive it.

I often wonder if the terrific emphasis on the soils that wine vines are grown in isn’t ultimately because they tangible and can be differentiated. I get it, but I think it’s utterly more fascinating that something like 85% of a glass of wine in front of me is made from rain water that fell a continent away, or even just 100 kilometres down the Queen Elizabeth Way. Whatever the focus, it’s a pleasure to enjoy a product that is from it’s place and imagine going or getting back there, even when you’re flat on your ass. Happy journeys in a glass.

CHARITY BEGINS AT MJWB

Dear Valued Readers,

Here is a new and exciting venture at MJ Wine Box: an opportunity to considerably contribute to a deserving charity by buying me a bottle of Mouton Rothschilde 1982. And if another MJ Winebox reader beats you to it, then I’m just as happy to be gifted the ‘82 La Tour. I’m an open minded and reasonable man.

As a matter of fact, I will happily accept any and all gifts bought for me from this year’s Grapes For Humanity Charity Fine Wine Auction run by the venerable house, Waddington’s. (I’ll let you in on a little MJWB insider’s secret: if the Bordeaux goes before you can get me any, the Burgundy section in my cellar could always use some augmentation.)

Don’t hesitate, as I am sure you will want to gift me only the finest wines and wine experiences on offer: get browsing now. And get bidding, starting April 16th to 22nd.

Good luck!

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WINE RECOMMENDATIONS

Duquesa de Vallodoid Verdejo 2024

Price: $15.95
Channel: LCBO Vintages

Producer: Aura (Sogrape)
Country: Spain
Region: Rueda
Appellation: DO Rueda

Grapes: Verdejo
Alcohol by Volume: 13.5%
Sugar Content: 2 grams per litre

The American business professor, author, investor and podcast star, Scott Galloway says that one of the most successful business strategies is to offer customers 80% of a premium good’s value at 50% of its regular cost. I think that’s what Verdejo from Rueda, in Northwestern Spain, does well in comparison with fancier versions of the Central Italian “V” wines: Vermentino, Verdecchio and Vernancia. This is supermarket pricing for restaurant quality wine.

The tasting note for the Duquesa de Vallodoid Verdjo that’s on the LCBO website is is wonderfully all over the place: “flavours of green apple, lime, lemon, garden herbs and tropical fruit, with a fine mineral finish”. Whoever wrote it forgot to add “stone fruit”, but they weren’t wrong. It really is a kind of a bone dry yellow fruit punch, with lots of food friendly acidity and a slightly salty character. It’s sophisticated stainless steel elevated white wine; an aperitif to get the mouth juices flowing, served with snacks.

https://www.lcbo.com/en/duquesa-de-valladolid-verdejo-2017-391649

Laurent Perrachon & Fils Fleurie Vielles Vignes 2023

Price: $20.95
Channel: LCBO Vintages

Producer: Vins Perrachon
Country: France
Region: Beujolais
Appellation: Fleurie AOC

Grapes: Gamay
Alcohol by Volume: 13%
Sugar Content: 3 grams per litre

With the obvious exception of Pinot, I think its pretentious for anglophone wine writers to append the colour of well known red wine grape varieties like Grenache or Gamay. Yes, there is a sizeable amount of Grenache Blanc, and even Gris, grown and made into wine, but not nearly as much as the Noir. One word will do.

Gamay Blanc is certifiably obscure. If I write about “a Gamay” it is entirely reasonable that my reader will correctly understand I mean the black one. And yet… the 2023 Perrachon Fleurie really ought to be described as a Gamay Noir. There’s cherry fruit, but it’s black as night, spiced with touch of volatile acidity, and still Beaujolais-fresh with acidity. The back label says the vines from the two parcels its made with are 75 years old, and planted in granitic soils. The lore on granite soil is it gives wines “vibrancy”; this bears out on this wine’s energy. It’s a lot for $21.

This is a red meat, or grilled mushroom, wine.

https://www.lcbo.com/en/laurent-perrachon-vieilles-vignes-fleurie-2022-41331

A spirited contingent of Northern Rhône vignerons landed in Toronto this week, laden with their wines from Crozes-Hermitage, and full of the optimism of a region that’s on its way up. They took over The Dorset restaurant, at The Well, and more than filled it last Monday with sommeliers, wine trade and the occasional journalist for a walk around tasting of Marsanne-Roussanne blended whites and 100% Syrah reds. If you managed to get a ticket, there was also a reds only Master Class held by part-time Rhôdanienne Sara d’Amato.

The event was over subscribed because wines from the Septentronial Rhône Valley are always in fashion. Any given winemaker, who works with Syrah, from anywhere else in the world (except maybe the South of the Rhône) will inevitably tell you that they make their wine in the style of the Northern Rhône. These Syrahs are thought to be be more refined, if not elegant, and gastronomic than Syrah or (God forbid) Shiraz from elsewhere.

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Condrieu has also always been in style since the 1990s, when Jay McInerney began writing about it and the Viogner grape, that had been rescued from extinction in the Northern Rhône. As white wines continue to grow their market share over reds, interest correspondingly has grown in the other whites of the Rhône. Tasters at the Croze-Hermitage event were as eager to try bottles from three tables of Marsanne dominated white wines.

The blessing and the curse of the Crozes-Hermitage appellation is its name. The village of Crozes is nestled behind (to the north of) the famous Hermitage hill, whose vineyards hold their own appellation. The reputation of Hermitage wines has been solid since wines have had reputation.

To name the appellation after Crozes-Hermitage, and not Mercurol, for instance, which lies in the middle of the biggest part of it, is to remind the consumer that C-H is both proximate to and not at all part of the Hermitage hill. Or, worse, confuse the consumer who thinks they’re buying one thing, and not the other. This ambiguity is, however, less important now than it might have been before global warming.

The Hermitage hill rises over a bend in the Rhône, so that its vineyards face south and west. The Northern Rhône wine country is much closer to Lyon and the Alps than Marseille and the Mediterranean. Hillsides facing south and west would have stayed warmer for longer during growing season days, a great advantage in a cool climate before climate change. Now, getting Syrah to ripen anywhere around the Rhône is not a problem, including downhill on the river flats of Croze-Hermitage.

There are 75 independent wineries making Crozes-Hermitage, as well as the big Rhône negociants, like Caves de Tain, Chapoutier, Guigal, and so on. The proliferation of domaine labelled wines is a relatively new thing, and the winemakers who came to Canada seemed genuinely happy and proud to show their wines.

Laurent Combier, of Domaine Combier, is the president of the C-H syndicate, and told me he was pleased with the trip, and eager to get the appellation’s wines on more lists in Toronto. Sandra Combat, of Domaine des Combat, is one of the leaders of the appellation’s young winemakers group, La Nouvelle Garde de Crozes-Hermitage, was equally enthusiastic, and buoyed after a trip, the day before, to see Niagara Falls and local wineries, Stratus and Bachelder.

I suspect they’re right. While Toronto wine lists do not (from what I’ve seen) carry quite as many bottles of Crozes-Hermitage as those down the 401 in Montréal, I see more of them, especially in the $100 range (marked up from retail of about $40). This is undoubtedly partly because the luxury wines of the Northern Rhône like Hermitage, Côte-Rôti, Cornas, and for whites Condrieu, are regularly twice the price and up. Crozes-Hermitage offers a taste of the region at a more democratic price point.

If Hermitage, Côte-Rôti and Cornas grew their reputations on their ability to achieve ripe Syrah, then they no longer hold that advantage over Crozes-Hermitage. If I was writing PR copy for C-H, then I might add that cooler sites in the appellation, close to the Rhône and Isère river confluence, might add a deisrable element of freshness to the wines. This was certainly the case when I tasted Marc Romak’s 2024 Domaine Melody Friandise.

Romak and his wife Marlène, make the Friandise in stainless steel and cement, for a fresh and juicy Syrah, seasoned with white pepper. More serious reds at the tasting showed a light touch on oak, even of the fruit showed darker, inkier and the wines gave a note of Rhône gaminess.

If Crozes-Hermitage reds show a particular food friendly freshness, then the whites, made with a lot of Marsanne and a little Roussanne, go for a mellow yellow roundness, which is a nice contrast to sharper, crisper styles of white wine. Typically, stone fruit is complemented by core fruit, like apples and pears, and lifted by the presence of that ever-ambiguous descriptor, white flowers. It all works.

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GRAPES FOR HUMANITY WINE AUCTION

Jill Troyer has written a comprehensive piece for the Hamilton Spectator and Toronto Star about this year’s edition of the Grapes for Humanity Canada Charity Wine Auction. She covers all the bases here, and the official website, where you can browse and buy the wine and wine experiences, is here. Happy bidding!

WINE RECOMMENDATION

Tiefenbrunner Pinot Grigio 2024

Price: $21.95
Channel: LCBO Vintages

Producer: Tiefenbrunner
Country: Italy
Region: Alto-Adige (Südtirol)
Appellation: Alto-Adige DOC

Grapes: Pinot Grigio
Alcohol by Volume: 12.5%
Sugar Content: 4 grams per litre

The Tiefenbrunners have had their castle and estate high on the Right Bank of the Adige River for 800 years. One might say they are rooted in the land and serious about the wines they make. For instance, their basic Pinot Grigio, which they’ve only been making since 1968, is made entirely in concrete, with a good four months on its lees. The result is a fresh but rounded wine, like a squeeze of lemon on a wedge of pear. There’s some depth to it this wine, which makes me think it carries well from aperitif to the table, to meet a roast chicken or ham.

https://www.lcbo.com/en/tiefenbrunner-pinot-grigio-474742