Hungry Travelers - Page 46 of 83 - Bringing the tastes of travel back home

Fruits, now and forever, in Niagara

Posted on July 28, 2017June 6, 2020 by Pat and David

Grapes may rule the Niagara Peninsula today. But peach farmers were the first to recognize the potential of the rich soils of the limestone escarpment. When they planted peach orchards in 1825, they set the area on its agricultural path. By 1950, the Niagara Peninsula boasted more than 4,000 fruit farms, with peaches and cherries the dominant crops. Many former orchards have been transformed to vineyards. But Niagara still supplies about 90 percent of Ontario's peaches, plums, nectarines, and apricots—as well as the lion's share of plums, pears, and cherries. That's according to the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, the agency charged with paying attention to such things. The folks in the area seem to keep an equally close eye. They wait...Read More

Tawse and Redstone prove Niagara wine’s a natural

Posted on July 25, 2017June 6, 2020 by Pat and David

Toronto financier Moray Tawse is a lifelong lover of both red and white Burgundy. A happenstance tasting of a great Chardonnay from an obscure (and now defunct) Niagara winery changed his real estate shopping plans back in 2001. Rather than seeking out vineyards to buy in Burgundy, he turned his attention to the fledgling Twenty Valley, which comprises vineyards in Beamsville, Vineland, and Jordan in the town of Lincoln and extends eastward to the city of St. Catharines. A wine geek's heaven, this region is a patchwork of different soils and subsoils. The Twenty Valley chicken clearly crossed the road because it preferred the terroir on the other side. Now Twenty Valley is home to more than 50 wineries. (For details, see Niagara's Twenty Valley...Read More

Niagara cheese assumes a local accent

Posted on July 23, 2017June 6, 2020 by Pat and David

Niagara College has played a big role in the Niagara peninsula blossoming as a foodie destination. The school is turning out talented graduates with a commitment to making the most of the region's bounty. The college's offerings run the gamut from culinary and hospitality programs to winemaking, viticulture, brewing, and distilling. The college even operates a teaching brewery as well as Canada's only commercial teaching winery. As we traveled through the region, we met many of its talented graduates and interns who intend to make their careers in the region. But in the pantheon of food and drink, one thing is missing. “There are no courses on cheesemaking offered in the area,” Vivian Szebeny of Upper Canada Cheese Company told us. Szebeny is a partner...Read More

Inniskillin icewines hit the sweet spot

Posted on July 20, 2017June 6, 2020 by Pat and David

Like many wine drinkers, we've always thought of icewine as an after-dinner treat. But if Inniskillin (www.inniskillin.com) has its way, we'll be drinking it with dinner as well. As Debi Pratt told us when we toured the property, icewine makes an excellent, if somewhat extravagant, table wine. Inniskillin is another pioneer in the Niagara wine region. It was founded in 1975 by Austrian-born Karl Kaiser and Canadian Donald Ziraldo. “Karl said, 'If I'm going to live in a new country, I'm going to drink the wines of my new country,'” Pratt told us. Ziraldo had actually planted Riesling, Chardonnay, and Gamay vines the year before at his commercial nursery. But when Inniskillin launched, the winery relied heavily on two winter-hardy French hybrid grapes, Vidal Blanc...Read More

Château des Charmes: French connection pioneers

Posted on July 18, 2017June 6, 2020 by Pat and David

vqaontario.ca We couldn't visit the Niagara wine country without paying homage to Château des Charmes (fromtheboscfamily.com/chateau-des-charmes). In 1978, founder Paul-Michel Bosc planted the first all-vinifera commercial vineyard in the region. He was determined to prove that the grapes of Burgundy and Bordeaux could flourish in cold-climate Niagara. Bosc represents the fifth generation of family winemakers. Raised in Algeria, he earned a degree in viticulture and oenology from the University of Burgundy. After evacuation to France at the end of the Algerian war in the 1960s, he took his young family to Canada. Unlike some Niagara pioneer wineries, Château des Charmes remains a family operation. It has expanded to four vineyards covering 280 acres (110 ha). They lie in the Four Mile Creek and St. David's...Read More

Niagara Peninsula: the next great foodie destination

Posted on July 15, 2017June 6, 2020 by Pat and David

We went for the wine, but we stayed for the food. Serious winemaking with vinifera grapes began in the Niagara Peninsula in 1975. When we last visited about 15 years ago, Niagara icewines were world class and table wines were making tremendous strides. An Ontario wine dinner in Toronto last fall (hungrytravelers.com/ontario-wine-country-becomes-world-player) convinced us that Niagara has matured as an important producer of good wines. So in late May we packed up the car and drove across Massachusetts and upstate New York. We spent a week exploring this bucolic peninsula that sits about an hour's drive east of Toronto. Most of the wineries lie in a band of soils and climatic conditions between the limestone ridge of the Niagara escarpment and the south shore of...Read More

On a hot day, good Vouvray lifts a salade Niçoise

Posted on July 13, 2017June 6, 2020 by Pat and David

The mercury was pushing 95°F (35°C) and the dew point was well into the sticky zone. When we brought a chilled bottle of Vouvray to checkout at the wine shop the clerk sighed. “Hooray for Vouvray!” she said. To which we could only add, “Amen.” Chenin Blanc doesn't get a lot of respect in the wine world. It makes naturally sweet, loosey-goosey wines that go well in picnic baskets. But a good Vouvray, like the 2015 Marie de Beauregard from Saget La Perrière, shows how polished Chenin Blanc can become. The chalk and flint of the soils from the vineyards in La Roche Corbon outside Vouvray city come through quickly on the nose. Pears and acacia honey dominate the first tastes, followed by a hint...Read More

Harvest brings Battersby’s big tastes from small kitchen

Posted on July 2, 2017June 6, 2020 by Pat and David

A few times a year our neighborhood restaurant in Harvard Square, Harvest (harvestcambridge.com), holds a Sunday supper in its “The Book & the Cook Series.” These 6 p.m. suppers remind us of being back in Europe, gathering for a less than formal meal at the end of the weekend, often around a big table. Mind you, the meals are far more elegant than our Euro repasts. They invariably feature a cookbook author who is also a chef. With input from the author, Harvest's executive chef Tyler Kinnett (right) and pastry chef Joshua Livesay oversee a meal compiled (or sometimes adapted) from the cookbook. Their realizations are invariably spot-on. They demonstrate both the skill of the Harvest staff and their willingness to step into the background...Read More

Zucchi oils exemplify art of blending EVOOs

Posted on June 27, 2017June 6, 2020 by Pat and David

To blend or not to blend? We'd like to believe that the world's best olive oil is pressed in Jaén province in Spain from Picual olives. That's the oil we like on a Caprese salad made with fresh mozzarella and garden tomatoes. But more than a thousand cultivars of Olea europaea trees grow around the Mediterranean basin, and most are used for making oil as well as for cured and brined olives. Which really are best? Every Spaniard, Italian, Greek, or French person believes that the best oil comes from the family olive grove. They are right because it's a matter of taste. Surprisingly, most olive oils are blends. They might be blended at harvest from groves with many cultivars. They might be blended after...Read More

Finca La Beata shows Bobal at its meatiest

Posted on June 23, 2017June 6, 2020 by Pat and David

Regular readers know we've been doing a survey of Bobal wines from the Utiel Requena region of Valencia. As we contemplated a dish to eat with the 2013 “Finca La Beata Bobal” from Dominio de la Vega (dominiodelavega.com), we faced a quandary. The sheer weight of the bottle signaled a Very Important Wine. (Empty, it clocks in at 1.2 kg/2.7 lb.) When it arrived at our door, the weather was cold and dank; now it's hot and steamy. Based on the other Bobal wines, we suspected that it would cry out for very beefy beef. But steamy summer is not the time for rabo de toro, the classic Spanish braise of oxtail. Then we remembered that Andalucían superchef Dani García used oxtail in the scrumptious...Read More