Michael Pinkus Wine Review - On the Road with the Grape Guy

Report From - South African Wine Society Holiday Dinner ... December 3, 2010

06 Dec 2010

Details: Category: On the Road with the Grape Guy

Tonight, I attended the South Africa Wine Society's (SAWS) annual holiday dinner, food was decent, the people I met were fun and entertaining, but not as entertaining as their keynote speaker (who happened to be me) ... As a wine writer I was very interested in the wines being poured. As I admitted in my address, on the whole I am not a huge fan of South African wine, I have liked quite a few, but many others have left me very cold with a bitter taste in my mouth. So tonight I wanted to see what the SAWS drinks: do they bring in and sample only the best? Turns out it was a very Graham Beck-centric evening, but their cellar was raided for some real gems ... (to read about the wines and see pictures of the evening, click here).

To read about more interesting adventures thru the world of wine check out the On the Road With the Grape Guy blog.

Report from - Taste the Season, Niagara-on-the-Lake ... November 6-7, 2010

29 Nov 2010

Details: Category: On the Road with the Grape Guy

When last we spoke about Taste the Season (version 2010) my posse had just picked their "most looking forward to" quintet of wineries. Finally, the day arrived to take our passports and palates on the road to test out our paper impressions. With 22 wineries we split the days into two, with each member of the group keeping their own individual notes about the wines, the foods and the pairings. Thankfully, we are all old enough that our brains could not remember what our individual 5-star hopeful selections were going to be, so it was like dealing with a clean slate, nobody had any preconceived notions about what they had selected.

Before moving on it is important to catch some of you up about what Taste the Season is. Taste the Season is one of the premier events on the Niagara wine route calendar. It is put on by the Wineries of Niagara-on-the-Lake every weekend in November - the 22 wineries of the organization pair a wine and food which passport holders get a chance to come by and try. This year they posted the pairings well in advance of the actual event. Each year that I have attended I have written up a list of the best and worst pairings. This year I decided to do something a little different: hand each person in my party the list of pairings and ask them to select what they believe will be their favourite five. This year my 'posse' included my wife (Erica), my mother (Gloria) and myself - we picked our "five favs" independently and I posted them a few weeks before we set out on the trail. Here are the results of the days tasting: (read about the best pairings of the weekend)

To read about more interesting adventures thru the world of wine check out the On the Road With the Grape Guy blog.