Lamie & I attended the ‘Quick Track to Wine Mastery’ wine-tasting class at the Gourmet Food & Wine Expo. We tasted 6 ‘archetypal’ wines that will supposedly help us to make sense of all the dizzying array of wines out there. The session was very informative, if at times baffling.
Richard Best (a.k.a. “The Frugal Oenophile“) would ask us to nose the wine, and he’d ask what we smelled. My fellow ‘classmates’ would pipe up, “Pepper!” “Apples” “Bananas” “Sulphur!” “Grapefruit” “Grass?” (of course these are not all for the same wine). How on earth do they smell all that?! Then I realized, I don’t have a very strong sense of what all those stuff smelled like. Hmm… my olfactory sense is definitely not my best sense.
Still, I learned a bunch of very useful stuff, and I finally learned something about what I like. For whites, Chardonnay is ok, I don’t much like Sauvignon Blanc on its own (though I’d be game to try it with food), and Riesling is ok too (the one we tasted today wasn’t the best Riesling I’ve had). For reds, my favourite is indeed Syrah/Shiraz. Cabernet Sauvignon is rather too spicy and extravagant on its own for me…
The Expo itself was cool. Food Network had a stage there where there were live cooking shows. There was good food to sample, from burgers to sushi, to pasta, to steak, to delicate pastries, cheeses, and chocolate truffles…and ice-cream! There was live music as well… it was no mean experience! :)
Toronto Skyway
Journey of the Heart 