Report from - The Fin Winery Tour ... May 10, 2009
30 May 2009- Details
- Category: On the Road with the Grape Guy
WARNING: Some language may not be suitable for some readers. Reader discretion is advised.
What would you do it I told you to get the ‘F’ to Beamsville and take part in an F’in wine tour. I suspect, depending on my tone, you might just tell me to F-off. But that’s precisely what three F’in wineries were telling you to do on the weekends of May 2 & 3 and 9 & 10. They wanted you to pry your lazy carcass off the F’in couch, pile your F’in bones (and any other effer you could talk into going with you) into the car, and come on down to the Beamsville area and take part in the “F’in Winery Tour”. The effers I am referring to are Flat Rock, Featherstone and Fielding – and I would not be wrong in calling them Mother-Effers because May 10 was Mother’s Day – coincidence? I think not.
For this event each winery had cooked up, or at least concocted, an F’in dish to pair with their F’in wine, and each dish was based on a pasta that start with the letter “F”.
Featherstone went with a hot Fettuccine dish, they called “Featherstone Fettucine” – they showed real creativity here in the naming. Owner Louise cooked it up right in front of you, using garlic and gorgonzola, along with flour and fettuccine. I have to admit what it lacked in name it made up for in flavour; it was F’in good, and paired nicely with one of my favourites, their 2007 Gamay.
Flat Rock showed a little more iniative when naming their Fusilli dish, “Flat Rock’s Fabulous Fusilli”, a cold pasta salad with prosciutto, asparagus, olives, green onions and asiago cheese paired with their two Twisteds, 2006 Red and 2007 White. The white was good on its own, while the red paired well with the salad. As an aside, I recently got a taste of the 2008 version of Twisted white and it’s frickin’ phenomenal.
Finally, Fielding freaked everyone out by dishing up “Feel-Good Farfalle” (as a kid I used to call this pasta “Fart-Full” – just cause it sounded funny) – the dish contained red, yellow and green peppers, olives, sausages, herbs, balsamic and oil. It was served in a fiesta-sized cup and paired with 2007 Red Conception and/or 2008 Rockpile Pinot Gris.
The F’in Winery Tour was a fun frolic for friends and family, a simple event worth the two-fivers you would have paid for it; and thankfully something these F’in wineries will be continiuing for years to come. When asked about the name and the reactions they have been getting to it one winery told me that they had just one complaint about it. One customer emailed to say that this type of event “debases the winery” and the “seriousness of what they are trying to achieve with their wines and the industry”. Obviously this is the same guy who called the FCC about Janet Jackson’s boob during the Super Bowl a few years ago (it debases the seriousness of the sport; as if the cheerleaders aren’t showing enough of their own goodies; not that I’m complaining, but I digress).
This F’in Tour is lots of fun, worth the price of admission and I’m glad to see wineries taking iniative and banding together to create unique and fun filled experiences, with food, that lighten up the mood and make wine, for lack of a better term, “fun”. Taking the seriousness out of wine and putting a free-spirit back into it. As for my overall impression of the F’in Winery Tour, I’d say I had a fuckin’ good time.
