On the face of it, Canadian wine would seem as improbable as wine from Siberia or Greenland. But Ontario is just across the border from the New York’s Finger Lakes region, which boasts plenty of successful winemakers. The same goes for British Columbia, hard by Washington State. All these places enjoy hot summers, with large expanses of water to protect grapes from the worst effects of winter. So there is no objection in theory.

And in practice? Wine of some sort has been grown in Canada for a couple of hundred years, much of it disgusting. The European grape Vitis vinifera succumbed to disease, so the Canadians used the local versions, Vitis labrusca and Vitis riparia. These were pretty nasty, and their unpleasantness could only be partly disguised, usually by turning them into imitation port and sherry. Read the rest of this entry »

I once found myself in Leningrad, in what was then the Soviet Union. Mikhail Gorbachev had only lately come to office, and it was easy to see why he was demanding reform. The place was shabby, the people ill-dressed. Long queues snaked out of the few shops that sold anything worth buying. And the food was vile. My most painful memory is of an evil-tasting grey goo that appeared on every dish I ordered. Apparently this was pureed aubergine, ubiquitous thanks to a bumper harvest.

After a week of it I asked a tour guide if there was anywhere I wouldn’t be served aubergine, pureed or otherwise. He gave me the name of a Georgian restaurant, reputedly the best in Leningrad. The place wasn’t too bad. They served a reasonably interesting meat-ball dish. In any other context this would have made little impression; after a week of Soviet aubergines it tasted like manna. But the real surprise was the wine. Read the rest of this entry »

More than once in these posts I have voiced doubts about the stories surrounding the names of certain wines and grapes, most recently Château Chasse-Spleen and Pinot Meunier. Enjoyable as these tales are, they often sound more like marketing inventions than genuine traditions, and even the more plausible ones sound decidedly odd.

One place that throws up more than its share of such stories is Beaune, in Burgundy. Although none of its wines has Grand Cru status, Beaune makes several of the region’s best Premier Crus. My own favourite is the Vigne de l’Enfant Jesus. Apparently its name derives from the fact that the vineyard used to belong to a Carmelite convent. The nuns, it is said, were so struck by the wine’s silkiness that they declared “It slips down the throat as easily as the Infant Jesus in velvet breeches.”   Read the rest of this entry »

Some wines are worth trying merely for their curiosity value. Ripassa is one such; this is another. Pinot Meunier is one of the obscurer grape varietals, though it ought to be better known, being one of the three grapes permitted in Champagne. “Meunier” means “miller”.  According to legend the grape was so named because the underside of its leaves seemed dusted with flour. (Do peasants really dream up these fancies, or do marketing men cynically invent them for the benefit of credulous townies? I often wonder.)

Read the rest of this entry »