Search Results for: prosecco

The Wine List on HungryTravelers

 Here are some links to posts about these wines:Argentina-MendozaBarons de RothschildCôtes de ProvenceFranciacortaFrescobaldiMontepulciano d'AbuzzoNew ZealandPantelleriaPaso RoblesPortugalProseccoSan Luis ObispoTrentino VQA OntarioWashington State
Spanning the decades of Niagara craft brewing

Spanning the decades of Niagara craft brewing

Posted on by Pat and David
The craft brewing scene on the Niagara peninsula is, appropriately enough, fluid. Small breweries pop up in every town and their styles range from simple session ales to extreme brews. We stopped in to taste one of the newest and most experimental—Exchange in Niagara-on-the-Lake—as well as one of the pioneer craft brewers, now operating as Syndicate Restaurant and Brewery in a newly gentrifying neighborhood in Niagara Falls. Exchange Brewery Shiny black walls, shiny black bottles, and a marble bar immediately signal that Exchange Brewery (7 Queen St., Niagara-on-the-Lake; 905-468-9888; exchangebrewery.com) is not exactly a suds-soaked beer bar. The brewery and tasting room in the Old Town heritage district strike a sophisticated urban tone in striking contrast to Oast's aw-shucks country brewery image. The building was...Read More
Sweetest season calls for wines to match

Sweetest season calls for wines to match

Posted on by Pat and David
North Americans used to love sweet wines. We used to love them so much that we became ashamed of our preference for residual sugar. For the last few decades, every casual wine drinker on the continent would insist, “Oh, I only drink dry wines”—as if that preference made them more sophisticated. Leaving aside the fact that residual sugar in a wine can be a highly subjective experience, anyone who always insists on bone-dry wines is really missing the boat. So it's a pleasure to see that Piemonte-based Italian wine giant Zonin (www.zoninusa.com) is bringing the full line of its Castello del Poggio wines to North America as part of its “Hello Sweet Life” campaign. Since Zonin took over the estate based in Asti in 1985,...Read More
Radicchio di Treviso: sweet winter crunch

Radicchio di Treviso: sweet winter crunch

Posted on by David
We've written about the beautiful Venetian city of Treviso as a center for Prosecco DOC and the birthplace of tiramisù, but it's also home to one of our favorite winter vegetables. Radicchio Rosso di Treviso IGP is the blanched winter chicory indigenous to the region. Treviso radicchio generally comes in elongated, slightly pointy, tightly packed heads. But as Lucio Torresan of Park Farm (actually, Azienda Agricola Tenuta al Parco) shows above, field-grown radicchio looks little like the market product. Those big red and green weeds he's holding “are so bitter that even the goats won't eat them.” When Torresan and his workers get done with the field-grown plants, though, they will be tender and sweet, with just a slight residual bitterness. Magic in the dark...Read More
Ontario wine country becomes a world player

Ontario wine country becomes a world player

Posted on by Pat and David
Meeting Magdalena Kaiser of Wine Country Ontario during our recent visit to Toronto was a real treat. She hails from Ontario wine royalty. Her father, Karl Kaiser, was a co-founder in 1975 of Inniskillin Wines, Inc. The first winery licensed in Ontario since 1929, Inniskillin was a pioneer in making world-class wines on the Niagara Peninsula east of Toronto. The area quickly became known for exceptional ice wines but has broadened out to a huge variety of table wines as well. We started visiting the Niagara Peninsula in the late 1980s. At the time, winemakers were shifting into European vinifera grapes from hardier French-American hybrids. They also launched Vintners Quality Alliance (VQA), which oversees quality standards and certifies the origins of the wines in Ontario...Read More

Drinks rival meals during Lexus Gran Fondo

Posted on by Pat and David
As wine and Champagne flowed throughout the weekend of the Lexus Gran Fondo, summer cocktails on the lawns stole the spotlight. For the opening night lawn picnic, the Chatham Bars Inn concocted a pair of perfect summer drinks. The flute (above) contains a Beach Plum Royale. Ingredients include orange simple syrup and a dose of beach plum liqueur. The hotel staff makes the liqueur when beach plums are in season, They lay down the liqueur to age and use it throughout the year. A generous pour of Veuve Clicquot Brut tops the glass. Bubbles buoy up a thin rim of orange peel, keeping it in suspension halfway up the glass. The deep goblet holds a spectacular ginger-infused version of Sangría. Lillet Rosé forms the base....Read More

And the winning Champagne is…

Posted on by Pat and David
What was our best bubbly of 2015? We've been fortunate this year to enjoy some spectacular sparkling wines, from a range of proseccos to an elegant pink Franciacorta to several cavas and crémants that we simply drank without taking notes or photographs. (Even wine and food writers are entitled to a day off.) But the champagnes of Barons de Rothschild (www.champagne-bdr.com) really took us through the seasons. We started off in warm weather with the non-vintage brut, which is the company's anchor champagne. It's blended with 60 percent chardonnay (mainly grand crus in the Côte des Blancs) and 40 percent pinot noir (principally from the villages of Verzenay, Ay, Mareuil-sur-Ay, and Bouzy). It has a Rumpelstiltskin straw-gold color, a faintly yeasty aroma, and fine and...Read More

Franciacorta: effervescent joy from Italy

Posted on by Pat and David
Contrary to common usage, there's nothing like real Champagne, the sparkling wine made in a delimited area in France. We'd suggest that there is also nothing like Franciacorta, the elegant and more affordable sparkling wine made in the Lombardy countryside an hour east of Milan. In fact, that city's fashionistas have been drinking a lot of Franciacorta for the last several days during Milan Fashion Week. The district has been growing grapes at least since the 16th century under the aegis of the region's monasteries. (The name of the region indicates a region of monasteries not subject to ducal taxes.) Serious spumante production is much more recent, dating from the years after World War II, and the big players are industrialists, not monks. That said,...Read More