Canadian Wine Guy » Off Wine Topic

Sunday Night Read

CanadianWineGuy — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 23:26:03 +0000

Hope everyone is well, making homemade Pizza and sipping some white wine.

Here is a nice little read on a GTA-Golden Horseshoe scammer that hits home. Feel free to pass it on.

Enjoy your Sunday, we will get a review up tomorrow.

-CWG

TTC Wage Hike Again?

CanadianWineGuy — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 18:52:12 +0000

This is definitely OFF-TOPIC, but I just got wind with this article that the TTC is going to raise fares again, which led one of our fellow readers to send me this little summary of the TTC Business plan, I felt I’d share:

TTC Business Model:
1) beg the government for money
2) make sure we get our yearly wage increase & bonuses
3) bleed the riders dry
4) if all else fails, go on strike & hold the riders hostage until the government forks over more money.

Figure it may make a few people smile.

Cheers

CWG

back from russia

CanadianWineGuy — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 23:03:37 +0000

ten days away and I have just returned. Wine will be drunk in the days to come, reviews will be posted.

chat soon

-CWG

Bacchus Comes Home

CanadianWineGuy — Sun, 31 May 2009 01:10:54 +0000

Busy things at CWG household, and if you look at the pictures below you will know why, introducing Dantry Danes Boozin’ Bacchus:

A Hello to 57 Countries

CanadianWineGuy — Thu, 28 May 2009 01:00:52 +0000

Tonight has been a night of beer and EUFA Champions League (Congrats to Barcelona!), and in the spirit of multi-nationalism, hello to all the people from 57 countries that visited CanadianWineGuy.com over the past few days. More reviews of wine, food and life to follow in the days ahead.

Who ordered summer in May?

CanadianWineGuy — Thu, 21 May 2009 23:15:00 +0000

I arrived home today to summer, what a glorious day here in Toronto. Back from another trip, on tap for the next few days are a 2004 Burrowing Owl Meritage, a Bordeaux and a bunch of beer at good friends tomorrow night (neat funky micro brews!).

I will get the Owl review up tomorrow, till then it is great to be home!!

Hola

CanadianWineGuy — Fri, 15 May 2009 01:25:30 +0000

It has been a bit since I posted, and I do have to thank John for picking up my slack. For those that are not aware I often travel for work, well in the past two months it has been a great deal more travel then has been expected. On top of that, there has been more work at home, between getting our amazing condo for sale (cry) and with a puppy on route (see below). With that said I am going to try and get back into a habit of jotting down tasting notes as I can. Currently I am having a 2005 Peter Lehmann (of Barossa) Shiraz that while may have a 91 rating from Wine Spectator Online, has me wishing I was drinking some of my friend’s basement wine. Despite a lackluster wine with below average fruit, below average structure and overall a below average experience, the view and weather is stunning, so I will leave you with a few things. First is a picture of the soon to come home Bacchus, an amazing blue Great Dane from Dantry Danes. Second is a picture of the skyline as I write this, almost enough to make you fall in love with Toronto! And lastly a link to our Condo listing, because if I cannot use this to self advertise, then what can I do??!!

Our Condo

Leffe on Tap

CanadianWineGuy — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 16:46:49 +0000

Nothing says Paris like taking a pit stop at a brasserie (does it matter which one?), grabbing a table and watching the world walk by. As we sit close to Congres (Maillot) we are enjoying one of the finest Belgian ‘pressions’ there is, Leffe. Despite my body being unsure of where it is (40 hours ago I was in Seoul, 20 hours ago in Toronto) I have to say a warm spring day in Paris can sure make you not care.

blog more later

Fast Hello from Yakutsk, Russia

CanadianWineGuy — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 01:37:50 +0000

With John picking up all the slack with posts, there is a reason why. I have just spent the past 3 days travelling from Canada to get to Yakutsk. I would talk about the wine if I would dare drink it, so let’s say it is vodka for me, stick with what they know!

Chat soon, till then see entry #8 on this list!

PhillyD.tv

CanadianWineGuy — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 03:19:26 +0000

No review tonight as it was a martini night. Just wanted to pass on a link to one of the better video-bloggers (or whatever you want to call them) that has an intense and large following. Insightful, humourous and poignant, Phil DeFranco is pretty sharp. His website is here and he has his own youtube channel with a ‘small’ number of subscribers (344,524). Note some NSFW (then again why would you watch youtube or similar at work?)

enjoy

Monday Morning WHAT THE???

CanadianWineGuy — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 15:05:24 +0000

Shockingly (note SARCASM alert) the City of Toronto is going to bump property taxes AGAIN this year. So in 2008 and 2009 they will have instituted their own land transfer tax as well as raised property taxes by 3.75 % and 4%. Couple this with the 20% property assessment raise over the next four years (5% per year) and you have to wonder what the politicians are thinking.

Want to solve the Toronto budget crisis? Cut back on special interest social projects, levy user fees Monday to Friday for 905 commuters to the downtown core (toll the inbound roads) and cut back Toronto City payrolls.

Kitchen Done!

CanadianWineGuy — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 15:20:31 +0000

Well after two plus months we have finally been able to use unpack and move back into our kitchen. The whole process was relatively painless with a three week house/dog sitting and the three week vacation keeping us away from the bulk of the work. Only the past two weeks had been difficult as we saw the end but simply could not reach it without a few last things to be done. Since words cannot describe the changes, here are before and after pictures:

Time Flies With No Internet

CanadianWineGuy — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 09:45:57 +0000

Dinner at La Citta was outstanding from the service, the fried calamari to the ribeye. Our wine was robust and enjoyable despite being opened a tad too early (3-5 years).

From Melbourne we travelled southwest, first to a recommened vineyard just outside of Geelong (Pettavel) where we grabbed a few bottles. We left there to embark on the Great Ocean Road (gor) a twisting, turning sensary overload. Cliffs, sand,waves and dramatic views fill your eyes at every bend. Our goal was to get at least to the Bay of Islands despite the warnings that it would be at least eight hours to the Twelve Apostles, some 20 kms before the bay. Weather was distictively not Australian, cold, windy and wet, regardless we had a blast and actually made it to Portland before expiring. Of note beyond the regular GOR sights, we went to Otway Lighthouse, a good hour detour (there and back) where we not only witnesses the stunning view upon the old lighthouse but also got to see 18+ Koalas in their natural habitat (aka not a zoo).

Today was spent driving and sipping. We hit the Coonwarra wine region and spent time drinking and buying great reds from recommended winearies: Wynn’s, Zema, Mejalla and Balnaves. With cellaring in mind we snagged primarily big Cabs from the four estates.

With Adelaide in our sights we drove (still live kangaroo-less) to the Adelaide Hills where we will continue our wine tasting tomorrow.

Wow so much, so little

CanadianWineGuy — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 08:07:26 +0000

No internet for past few days so no blogs, that means a fast summary since tonnes has happened:

- drove from Sydney to Nowra via the Royal National Park, stopped at Garrie beach and enjoyed almost pure solitude despite being only 60 minutes outside of Sydney

- grab a few bottles of red and spent the night in the great company of my aunt Sandy and uncle Rob in Nowra. The reds were lovely (one Hunter Valley blend that was trenmendous) and the pork tenderloin scrumptious.

- left the next morning for the start of our journey to Melbourne, a wee bit worse for wear… Jervis Bay ended up making up for the early start. The beach at Hyams may have the whitest sand in the world.

- from there we decided to forgo the advice of family and went for Eden instead of the Snowy mountain route. Happy we did, great route, no traffic, interesting scenary! We made Eden, had an interesting stay with a great morning start at the wharf watching fishermen unload and pelicans fly.

- spent Sunday driving from Eden to Melbourne via the coastal route with a side treck to Phillip Island. Despite 1300 kms over 2 days we managed to see some amazing things despite no live ‘Roos or Koalas (outside of the zoo of course). We arrived in Melbourne to have great Italian and a solid “house red”, restaurant and red names escape me.

- Tonight we are off to La Citta for dinner thanks to our Melbourne native/ Toronto living friend David Colebatch, we will get back to you on the results.

Happy Gobble Gobble

CanadianWineGuy — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 09:56:46 +0000

Long day of walking, people, animals and other critters. Started the day off with a fantastic breaky at The Book Kitchen then went straight off to Circular Quai to catch the ferry to the zoo. The Toranga Zoo is one of the worlds best, but six hours of walking later the feeling was we may have overdone it. Even the stunning ferry ride back into downtown Sydney could not seem to bring the life back into us.

As we sat at a local Thai place tonight I realized that we had not had a single glass of wine since our arrival. Tomorrow we shall change that as I think we will have completed our adjustment and should be back to normal.

Happy Thanksgiving to all those back home!

cheers