So what could one possibly do with 300-400lbs of apples from your yard – or perhaps your neighbor’s yard?! How much apple sauce or apple pie does one need? I propose the following solution: wine. My current estimate is that it takes about an hour to convert 100 lbs of apples into a carboy of juice – or about 2 … Read More
Apple Harvest 2010: Round One
Good things come to those who ask. This spring, I was picking up some kijiji-found-cinder-blocks, and the folks who had the blocks happened to have inherited a city lot with an INSANE amount of fruit trees on it. So I asked. And today I received. A few hundred pounds of apples, which dented about 3/4 of one of their trees … Read More
4 Wines & A Plate – Riesling
This was the first time we gave Riesling a go, and my expectations were high. I like Riesling. It was a hot summer day. I had a funky garden salad topped with wood-fire-grilled salmon topped with a puree of 4 varieties of chive an onion, topped with stir fried garlic scapes. Good company. But one can’t win them all. Execution … Read More
Apple Wine Vinegar Do-Over
Okay, I got impatient with cider vinegar attempt #1, and am moving on to attempt #2. Attempt 1 ended in a white sludgy deposit a the bottom, with no trace of anything positively vinegar related. This time, I’ve got some help. Bragg sells organic cider vinegar containing mother [says so right on the bottle]. Others have had good success with … Read More
4 Wines & A Plate: Sauvignon Blanc
The following is a summary of our monthly wine tasting group evening. Wines are tasted blind [brown bagged], food is paired to the varietal, we score the wines, have some good fun talking about them, and unbag them at the end. More details in a Q&A here. Sauvignon Blanc had been on the to-do list since last summer, so it … Read More
A Wild Food & Wild Wine Pairing ‘Moment’
I just had an unexpected notable ‘moment’. I have long contemplated the concept of ‘what grows together goes together‘ when it comes to the game meats we hunt. It’s a reasonably undisputed culinary rule. So thinking of moose and elk, it has begged the question of pairing it with saskatoons, high bush cranberry, labrador tea, and other similar items you’d … Read More
4 Wines & A Plate: Gewurztraminer
I’ve long decided to tone back the ‘fine wine’ content on the blog as I personally believe it can only me moderately interesting content at best for most. I have decided, however, to continue to post abbreviated summaries of our monthly tasting group ‘4 Wines & A Plate’, if for no other reason that to disclose ‘hey, this is something … Read More
Apple Cider Vinegar, Day 1
One of the benefits of cider making [/winemaking] is the opportunity to produce high-quality, negligible cost and effort vinegar. The last batch of vinegar I made was apparently back in 2007, and I recall it being a painless process. Except for maybe the lingering smell. Now I have more space, so I can choose a more appropriate location for the … Read More
4 Wines & A Plate – Shiraz
Shiraz night was a long time coming as one of our regular attendees collects the stuff. What I found in doing my usual homework is that from a critic-score perspective [for what that’s worth], there is superb value here – and your money can buy mid-90s scores vastly more easily than with other varietals from elsewhere in the world. Our … Read More
Oak Tasting
I’m waiting for some wine samples of batch 2 to come up to room temp from cellar temp to do a tasting/assessment as they are all under different oak treatments at the moment. The two far ones have different toasts of oak going on. The last one has both toasts, but in twice the volume of wine. I’m trying to … Read More