Category: Wine Align

Gourmet Food & Wine Expo 2011

Gourmet
Food & Wine Expo 2011
Go Local!

Each November I look forward to the Gourmet Food & Wine Expo. The Expo is a large showcase of everything food and drink.  I attended the opening VIP night on Thursday and then back on the most popular evening – Saturday. I really didn’t mind battling the crowds and endless choices of wine. It was all in the name of research right? It was fantastic to see many Ontario wineries featured this year.

Always a great time!

The annual Gourmet Food & Wine Expo is held in November at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, South Building. Each year the Expo offers 38,000 guests an unparalleled opportunity to sample over 1,500 fine wines, spirits and beers from around the globe.
www.foodandwineexpo.ca

Angela Aiello, Erika Neudorf &
Tran Bronstein – wine lovers!

The energy of the show was great! Everyone was in a good mood, relaxed and looking to have a great time. Don’t come to the event to save money. Splurge a little and indulge your taste buds. Give yourself a budget and stay within in…or around it. Samples are purchased with tickets. How many tickets something will cost will vary, depending on what exactly you’re trying. One sheet of 20 tickets will run you $20. The expo is a great way to sample a wide array of food and to tour the world of wine under one roof.  Sometimes you’ll be lucky and meet the actual people behind the wine from winemakers to the winery owners. There was a photo booth in the center of the pavilion that you could go in and take candid photos. That was a great idea…take some before and after shots. 😉

David Lawrason & Bryan McCaw
http://www.winealign.com

Another highlight of the event each year is the Tutored Tastings. These are 22 seminars during the course of the show. The seminars for this show included: Taste like a Pro Vitners’ Barrel Tasting, Blind Value, Awesome Argentina. Special guest speakers guide you through the tastings. Saturday evening is usually the night of the Gourmet Gala (extra cost):

The Gourmet Gala will give you the opportunity to taste gold medal sparkling wines and six exquisite courses of chefs’ finest creations, each paired with two top rated International wines. www.foodandwineexpo.ca

Other features of the event included:
Celebrity Chef Spotlight
Connoisseur’s Corner
Food Network Stage
Fine Wine Tasting Lounge
All You Need is Cheese stage

Tara and Nicholas Colaneri
www.colaneriwines.com

My highlights:
* Discovery Burning Kiln Winery www.burningkilnwinery.ca
* Wines of Georgia pavilion
* Talking with the Colaneri’s of Colaneri Estate Winery
* Discovering some gems at the Vintages booth
* Running into friends and just talking with people!

I learned so much about the wines of Georgia. It’s definitely on my list of places to visit. One of my favourite wines of the show was the Bagrationi 1882 Reserve Brut sparkling wine. Wow. I also enjoyed the various wines from Kindzmarauli Marani (Kindzmarauli Wine Cellar). I’m still practicing how to pronounce this. There are so many indigenous grape varieties in Georgia that I’ve never heard of! I urge you to look up the Georgian alphabet. I’m now fascinated with this country.

In Georgia’s most famous wine making region, Kakheti, there is a small place, Kindzmareuli, which the renowned Georgian wine derived its name from. Its situation at the foot of the Caucasian mountains, in the Alazani Valley… http://www.gwineimports.com


A good resource for Georgian wine: www.gwineimports.com

Wines of Georgia
More about Georgian wine
Jolene Aiello &
Erin Nicholson
Thanks for pouring Jo!
Wines of Georgia!

Dos and Don’ts:

* Do go out of your comfort zone: seek out new regions or unexplored grape varieties!
* Do buy more than 1 sheet of tickets at a time so you don’t have to wait in those long lines.
* Do purchase tickets to the show in advance. You can purchase tickets online!
* Do dress light. It gets quite warm with so many people in the pavilion.
* Do spit the wine: you’ll be able to try a lot more and maybe even remember what you’ve tried.
* Do drink plenty of water.
* Don’t drive!!
* Don’t wear parfume. It distracts from the wine aroma.
* Don’t come to the event looking to get your drink on. Everyone is always on pretty good behaviour but you do have the odd person that didn’t really monitor how much they were drinking. 
 * Try not to lose your tasting glass!

See you at the 2012 show!
For more information: www.foodandwineexpo.ca

Visit the Gourmet Food & Wine Expo on Facebook: www.facebook.com/gourmetfoodandwine

Follow the Gourmet Food & Wine Expo on Twitter: www.twitter.com/gfwe

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My Birthday with Beringer

Laurie Hook and myself

I recently celebrated my birthday and what better way than to spend it tasting Beringer wines with the head winemaker herself! Happy birthday to me!  Hosted by Wine Align, the event was located at the trendy Yorkville restaurant Sassafraz. The event was featuring wine with tapas-style food. Ok, tapas it was not. It was like a five-course dinner! The food was delicious and there was a lot of it. Good thing my dress was stretchy.

Love the place setting

The chief winemaker for Beringer is Laurie Hook. She made the tasting very casual and really gave us a sense of Napa throughout the ages. She’s a real history buff so she described what the Napa Valley looked like millions of years ago geologically speaking and what makes it so unique. She discussed everything from the growing of the grapes to the wine making methods at Beringer. After the tutored tasting, she made sure to go to every table to talk to people. She was super. No attitude and very approachable. 🙂

Fancy Shmancy!

Wines Tasted:

2009 Nappy Valley Chardonnay
2008 Beringer Private Reserve Chardonnay

2009 Napa Valley Pinot Noir
2008 Napa Valley Merlot
2008 Knights Valley Cabernet Sauvignon
2007 Beringer Private Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon
A surprise on the menu: 1997 Cabernet Sauvignon
Some examples of what treats were on the menu:
* Spice rubbed lamb chops with olive jus
* Buffalo mozzarella and aged asiago ravioli, tomato basil broth and chiffonade of Swiss chard
* Seared beef tenderloin with shallot confit pommes royale, sauteed shitake and asparagus fricasse, lobster butter
Lobster butter?! I love these two on their own…and now, combined! 

Delicious Food…yum

It was such a great way to spend my birthday. At the end of the tasting, Executive chef, Bradley Macdonald, came upstairs to see how we liked the food. Of course, we all clapped. The food was delicious. We asked him how he liked the wine. When he said that he wasn’t allowed to try any on the job, we made sure that the situation was rectified. He joined us for a glass. What really topped off the night was the celebrity sighting downstairs in the restaurant: Collin Ferrel, Bruce Willis, Jessica Biel and Ethan Hawk sitting at a table. They were in Toronto filming Total Recall. I heard that the Beringer winemaker, Laurie, gave the table  signed bottles of wine. 

Beringer Website:
www.beringer.com

I strongly urge you to join Wine Align. It’s an online community where you can get tasting notes on what’s in the LCBO and read both reviews of professional critics and regular people.
www.winealign.com