Blog suspended

Hello to my english fellow readers.

Starting an English and a French blog is something that was a great challenge for a start. Having a schedule that is already tight in time, it is actually very hard to keep up with the number of articles I want to post. Writing in English turned out to be a hard thing to do as I find myself a very poor user of the Shakespeare language. For all these reasons and also the fact I would love to develop a web site, the English blog will be inactive for an unlimited time. Thank you for reading me and everyone of you have a great Holliday Season and all the best for the new year to come.

Feature products for December

For December, the Yukon Liquor Store in Whitehorse features mainly sparkling wines: Champagnes. What’s better for the coming holliday season? Dom Perignon is by far the most expensive at 194.65$ a bottle!!! If you can afford it… Champagne is the right choice for this holliday season and there are 3 more featured: the Duval-Leroy Design Paris: I would love to taste this one: a 40 % Chardonnay and 60 % Pinot Noir , the Mumm Cordon Rouge Brut, very good bubblie and the Moet et Chandon Brut Imperial: I had the chance  to visit their caves 15 years ago and they have 98 millions bottles aging in there and they have kilometers of caves, some of which were built in Roman times. Amazing!!! Make your choice and have a great holliday season.

RCMP checkstops

Impaired driving is and remain the leading criminal cause of death in Canada. Surprised? I’m not at all. To ensure higher security on the roads for the Holiday season, RCMP will conduct some random check stops throughout the Yukon. So drive sober, find a designated driver or call a taxi. Be wise and stay safe for you and others around you. Have a great Holliday season and stay alive.

New Liquor Regulations: consultation

If you go at the customer services counter at the Whitehorse Liquor Store, you can find a package with the proposed changes in the liquor regulation and a feedback form about these changes. You can submit your ideas and comments until January 16 2009. You can also find this package on the Yukon Liquor Corporation website and submit your form by email, fax or regular mail.

Some of the key proposed changes include:

Fines and penalties for liquor-related offences would be increased.

With written parental consent, minors would be allowed to deliver liquor in restaurants (would not include opening, pouring and mixing); enter bars for limited work purposes, like deliver food in a bar, perform repair and maintenance work, bus tables, but would not include working as a server or a bartender; and would allow them to perform in bars, not including adult/exotic entertainment.

Bars would not need to be attached to a hotel and restaurant customers would no longer need to eat a full meal to be served liquor.

You can find the full list of the proposed changes in the package at the website listed earlier in this post.

Wine of the week

Hello to all my readers. There will be no wine of the week this week and this will not be a steady post every week as I thought it would be. I will instead write a Wines of the month post, which will list some of the wines I experimented in the last month. I’m currently preparing a show for CBC French radio for December 13th as well as some posts on: tannins, the holiday season, professions associated with wine, decanting and carafing and climate change versus viticulture, which promises to be highly interesting, as it is what I will focus on so it becomes with time my trademark. Anyway, a lot of things coming up, hoping you will enjoy reading them as I do writing them in the easiest way to read possible for all of you.

Thank you kindly for your understanding and your patience.

Wines of the week

Last Wednesday, I tasted 2 great wines that were at the Wine and Fine Food Festival and that were refered to me by some friends: The Sokol Blosser Evolution and the Morgon Cote du Py 2005. We had a wonderful caribou stew homemade by my friend Stéphane. It was a really great stew and for me a first time having this game meat. The wines for this dish were a good match, especially the Evolution. For me, the Morgon was a little too strong for the stew, but Stéphane liked it better.

The Evolution is a really well balanced, off-dry wine, with lots of orange in the nose and the palate.

This wine is a blend of 9 different grapes. I received a comment earlier this month by the Marketing Communication Manager of Sokol Blosser Winery:

We hope you enjoy the Sokol Blosser Evolution! Our blend of nine white varietals has been hugely popular in Canada, something we’re very proud of. Not only is it fabulous with cheese fondue, as you suggest, but it’s also a great pairing with spicy Asian-fusion dishes.

Thanks for giving us a try – I invite you to come to the Winery in Oregon to see us soon!

Cheers,

Kitri McGuire
Marketing Communications Manager
Sokol Blosser Winery

They are right to be proud of this wine. I would take it with spicier foods and I will in our next dinner with Peter Turner, the Vino Borealis columnist, as it will be a spicy foods dinner, asian foods, probably not fusion, but indian and maybe chinese. The menu is not set yet, but this wine will certainly be on the table. I highly recommend it for cheese fondue. Definitely a must buy. Hurry up, because there is not a lot left on the shelves at the Whitehorse Liquor Store. Available for 25.15$. On a personal note, I will gladly visit this winery in a near future. They look like they have a great spot and that they do things with pride and love of the winemaking art. Also, Oregon is probably the most beautiful state I saw and I would love to it again.

The Morgon Cote du Py 2005 is not, say, friendly at first. With a strong tar nose, you have to give yourself time to go deeper in his hidden fruits in mouth, really subtle, but more expressed with food.

Stéphane thought so too. At last, he prefered the Morgon, but he is more the red type. With the Beaujolais Nouveau coming out real soon, I wanted to give space to a Cru Beaujolais so we have a good introduction to the new vintage of the Nouveau, which promises to be more expressive on the fruit side and a lot friendlier than his close cousin Cru Morgon Cote du Py. Still available at the Liquor Store for 27.55$

I would like to thank Stéphane Poirier for this dinner.

We had a great time as we prepared a CBC French Radio Whitehorse show, 55 minutes about wine, at l’Émission Rencontres that will air on December 13th at 17h05. It will be really interesting. I’ll see you there. Until then, stay wired and cheers!

Wine of the month: Beaujolais Nouveau

The third Thursday of November (November 20th) will be the official release of the Beaujolais Nouveau. There has been so many beliefs about this wine that are still spread in the public today, that I decided to put together some information about this fresh, fruity wine that is an icon in celebrating the new harvest.

This wine also called vin primeur, is generally from the lesser districts and is seven to nine weeks old. In the last century, casks of the newly made wine were shipped by paddle-boat down the Saône River to the bars and bistros of Lyon, and later Paris, so that city people would have something with which to celebrate. Regulations started to be put in place in 1938 and in 1951, the latter regulations were revoked to officially recognize the Beaujolais Nouveau as a new appellation and the release date was decided to be on November 15. By 1960, almost half a million cases of Nouveau were being sold. Today it is nearly 65 million bottles that are sold around the world, nearly half of the Beaujolais annual production. In 1985, the release date was changed to the 3rd Thursday of November in the purpose to always put the release near a weekend.

Grapes used to make the Nouveau (Gamay) may come from the Beaujolais appellation or the better Beaujolais-Villages appellation. Beaujolais Cru grapes from the ten top northern villages(Fleurie, Brouilly, Côte de Brouilly, Chénas, Chiroubles, Juliénas, Morgon, Moulin-à-Vent, Régnié and St-Amour) are never used. Over manipulated, cheap commercial Nouveau can taste like melted purple popsicle, while the top quality ones have an exuberant berryness. It is meant to be consumed within a month of its release while the fresh grapey flavors are still in full tilt. The wine would not turn bad after a year of course, but it would be less vibrant. It is, among the world’s reds, one of the least tannic wine. It matches perfectly with humble meats, roasts, stews and… cheese fondue!!!

It is a marketing success due to the efforts of Georges Duboeuf, the largest negociant in the region. Some others worth mentioning would be Bouchard Aîné and Joseph Drouhin, but Duboeuf is by far the most popular promoter of the Nouveau. It will be available at the Yukon Liquor Store in Whitehorse in the last week of November. So let’s celebrate the new 2008 harvest with good friends. Next month we will go deeper in the Portugal wine Madeira: a dessert wine that can age for hundreds of years.

Cheers!

Wines of the week

Last Tuesday, my roommate Stéfanie and I had dinner at Peter Turner’s cabin near Porter Creek.

This is a real nice little place with a beautiful view on Echo Lake. There is no running water, but there is electricity and… Internet! This was our first time visiting a cabin in Yukon. It was a great experience. Holiday season is coming real fast and cheese fondue as well as any other fondues are really popular at this time of the year.

A large majority of people is still confused to pick the right wine for that kind of meal. Again of course, there is no right or wrong answer. If you like the match, there you go! In the mean time, to help those having a hard time or the ones that would like to have suggestions, Peter and me wanted to list some wines going first with a cheese fondue made from the scratch by our host with Emental and Gruyère cheese, with a little bit of nutmeg, lemon juice, dried mustard and white wine (REALLY GREAT!!!) and second with Nutella-chocolate fondue served with fresh fruits for dessert.

For any meal you are having, think of the strength in spice or in taste of the dish you plan to cook and try to go with a wine equally strong. In the case of cheese fondue, the smoothness of the dish require a medium to strong white or… a light red! YES!!! I know. How come a red wine you would ask? Light and non-tannic reds like Pinot Noirs, Bourgognes (Pinot Noir based), Gamay or Beaujolais (Gamay based) can be the perfect match for cheese fondue, as well as they could be with some stronger fishes (salmon) or white meats like chicken for example. With the Beaujolais Nouveau coming on November 20^th (probably in Whitehorse a little later, end of November as I’ve been told at the Liquor Store), it would be, with cheese fondue, a good way to celebrate the new 2008 harvest. We will talk a little more about this wine in my next Wine of the month review.

In our case, Peter chose the Shepherds Ridge Pinot Noir 2006 from New Zealand,

available at the Liquor Store for 31.90$, subtle fruits going out after a bite of cheese: a real treat. I went with the Hardy’s Stamp Series Riesling-Gewurztraminer 2007,

an Australian available as well at the Liquor Store for only 12.55$, a real deal as it is really outstanding with the fondue. A little bit of effervescence, but not that much and a good body giving this wine strength to match the meal. We started with a bottle of Canadian NK ‘ MIP Chardonnay (17.40$), from a BC winery owned by an aboriginal. I never saw nor tasted this wine before. Very interesting to know about it from Peter who also tasted their Merlot. We all were surprised and delighted to taste a lightly oaked chardonnay. Usually, North American and Australian chardonnays are to heavily oaked in a way we lose completely what a Chardonnay should really taste. We agreed that it had a lot in common with the Chablis (Chardonnay based) or some Italian Chardonnays. Very good choice for a starter Peter.

With the cheese fondue, Stéfanie preferred the white. It was really great to have her over to get her opinion on everything as she is a real passionate about food and good wine. She had a good comment saying that the one who loves food loves life. I agree 100%! We also asked her what she was smelling or tasting. She was shy at first, but she identified some fig and dates in the red. A second taste made us agree with her. In the white, she tasted apple and some pears. As Peter said: there is no right answer, just find out what it reminds you. It is just like music: it reminds our brain the occasion we heard that tune. The emotions we felt at that particular moment are the cement binding this music on our brain. Every time we hear it, it’s like we relive that particular moment in our head and we even feel everything we felt at that time. Wine is a little bit the same: reminding special tastes from somewhere else, but also the occasion we had that wine for and the emotions we felt that stamped the flavors and smells on our brain forever. We use this emotional memory to identify these smells and flavors in other wines and/or foods. Do the test yourself. Take the time to have a full smell of the next wine you’re having. Take the time to find at least one particular smell or taste. Have fun trying to identify them. The more you find, the more complex your wine could be. Share your thoughts with the people you’re having dinner with and ask them what they are experiencing. Thanks for your presence Stéfanie and for your contribution to this dinner.

In between meals, we had the opportunity to have a trou normand: a shot of strong alcohol to make room for dessert. Peter had a Pere Magloire Calvados, an apple brandy from Normandy, France. It is available at the Yukon Liquor Store for 45.05$.

For dessert, Peter pulled out some surprises: a Madeira Blandy,s Duke of Clarence, available at the Liquor Store for 27.45$,

and 3 Ports: Dow’s 10 Years old Tawny (39.55$), the Dow’s 2000 Late Bottle Vintage and Honor Porto Ruby Special Reserve (the latter two not available at the Liquor Store in Whitehorse).

All the fruits and sweetness of the of the fondue were getting their equivalent in all the dessert wines we tried. I preferred the tawny ports and was especially impressed by the Madeira, which was my first time try. Peter was very kind to teach me a little bit about that Portugal wine. It really made me more curious about it and I will make this wine my wine of the month next month.

Finishing that dinner by a walk on the frozen lake (already…!!!) though, with the full moon, bright stars and a clear crisp sky, was probably the best end ever. The emotions I felt on that little stroll, as well as the quality of the people with me and our discussions stamped forever on my brain all the flavors I experienced that night. For sure, I will have comebacks on some of them on another dinner that will remind me this special dinner at my friend Peter’s cabin.

Thank you again for a great night and see you next month for a match with spicy foods. Meanwhile, I hope everybody experience a special meal with some friends so you can start building or extend your emotional memory of tastes and smells.

Cheers.

A great conversation and a draw from a little girl

Tonight was a great one. This little girl just moved me when she pull my apron and looked at me and said: Look what I did for you! There was a draw she did while her parents were having dinner. And she added: And I colored the other side too. Thank you very much. I was touched to the heart.

I also had a very interesting conversation with a gentleman involved in climate change researches. He had interesting insights about how global warming was affecting the wine industry and how it would be good to inform the public about what it really means and can happen in a near future. We will talk about it in the next few weeks and months. He also suggested me a few things to do. Thank you very much Mr Sandford. It is noted and these suggestions and ideas are a great start for great thinking to come.

Glossary of wines

Balance: The harmonious relationship between alcohol, acidity, fruit, sugar and tannin.