2010 Toronto Wine and Cheese Show

It's been a couple days and I've recovered nicely.

And though the show itself didn't turn out to be the drunk fest it was last year we wisely took a cab to the International Center.

Overall, the show felt smaller, less dense, less people...less fun. I can't put my finger on it but it seemed less busy, the "streets" between the booths seemed wider and one side lacked booths altogether whereas last year it had something going on everywhere. The drink tickets cost more too...instead of $1 per ticket like last year they jacked it up...$21 for 20...what is this, the TTC?? Dumb. I say why not just keep it an even number and make a few more wines 'cost' an extra ticket to taste? Even the oysters were smaller.

The 'fine wine' area was fancied up for sure. Rather than last year's white linened tables, they set up an actual faux "Cheers-like" bar. But the selection of fine wine was not as interesting to me as it was last year. No first growth Bordeaux at all that I saw.

Le Petit Mouton de Mouton Rothschild '05. 2nd wine of Chateau Mouton-Rothschild was really good, quite modern and surprisingly forward. 91.

Calon Segur '06. Damn good Bordeaux. More old school than the Rothschild. 92

Gaja Conteisa '04. Nebbiolo with a touch of Barbera. Delicious "Super Piedmont".  Very young but quite sweetish. Built to last but is drinking surprisingly drinking well now. 92

Blandy's Medira '68. This old Madiera tasted like pralines and cream, walnuts, yummy. 91

Also tried a Grand Cru '06 Échezeaux Burgundy which was really nice, a bit tight still but delicate, subtle and very refined. Long finish. But it's yet another example to me of just how much I don't "get" Burgundy. I understand the complexity, the elusive subtlety, the earthy fruitiness. But frankly, I just don't taste $185.

I did, however, taste the $112 in Torbreck's '08 viognier. This was the most unusual viognier I ever tasted. Smokey, waxy. I wrote down "Lagavulin". Amazing. 92+

But by the time we got to all this good stuff I was tasting fairly quickly so as not to be late for the food paring event which turned out to be quite fun.

Tickets for this food pairing event were $80 a head. We were lucky enough to get comped tickets via winealign.com so we certainly can't complain.

There were 6 tasting booths, each with it's own chef (and sous chefs) and sommelier. You go around tasting each dish sample and it's accompanying wine and judge which pairing is the best.

Each one was great. Judging was really splitting hairs...and it really was not a fair competition as you will see.

Each wine was surprisingly every-day wine costing no more than $20 a bottle. D'arenberg Original, Kim Crawford Sauvignon Blanc a greek muscat, a Canadian cabernet franc, an Argentinian malbec and an ice wine (probably the spendiest of the 6).

I was hoping for more exotic wines.

Back in the main wine show area these wines would cost 1 or 2 (possibly 3 for the ice wine) to taste. That's about $8-$12 worth of tasting. And the food, though great, was served in very small, several bite, samples. Perhaps in an top scale restaurant a couple of these might cost you $5-$15. Though most people would not think that was much of a deal for a few bites of rice or a single silver dollar sized slider. Yummy, though they were. Having said that we did go back for seconds for one dish and tried some other spirits afterward. So, taking everything in consideration, people got what they paid for.

The first pairing we tried was a red-pepper mock tartare (complete with faux yellow pepper egg-yolk) with an un-oaked Vineland cabernet franc. The "tartare" tasted like sweet peppers, and so did the wine. A very clever match, though I can't say that I loved either the dish or the wine all that much, but the pairing was a good one. Though I suspect this pairing was reverse engineered; The wine had a strong red pepper flavour, so they made a red pepper dish. Unique.

Second up was spiced Indian biryani with a greek muscat white. An excellent pairing from sommelier and super-nice guy, Zoltan Szabo. I prefer pairings that contrast each other rather than match each other. This was a nice contrast with the bold and refreshing greek white cooling the warm savory rice. Simple and perfect. I think in the end it's simplicity is what was overlooked.

Third was a spicy tuna tartare matched with an ice wine. I really liked this idea until I tried it. The tuna tartare, in addition to it's great chile-pepper heat, was unexpectedly very sweet. I'm not sure how it was sweetened but it was sweet. And sweet + sweet = very sweet. I think this would have been much better if the tuna tartare kept the heat but lost the sweet. The the ice wine would then have it's place in quenching the palate. Instead I found the whole thing a bit too cloying.

Fourth was a sort of lamb stew/ragout served on a strip of fried won-ton with a Catena malbec. Totally yummy but a rather obvious choice. A dry, white Bordeaux might have been an interesting contrast to cut through it's richness but what do I know.

Fifth: Here's the winner. Poached halibut with lobster meat and a creamy sauce with black rice risotto made by a team of people and served with the Kim Crawford Sauvignon Blanc. Yeah, rich and delicious indeed. This is the one we went back for. But the wine match was totally obvious and unoriginal. Well, I suppose it's slightly more original than if they had chosen a really buttery chardonnay. I felt that serving a citrusy wine like that with fish was playing it pretty safe. But the food was damn good though and I've always like the wine. Personally, I think the dish was rich and earthy enough, especially with that risotto, to stand up to a medium bodied Pinot Noir, a Burgundy even.

Finally, sixth was a smoky, slow-cooked bison slider with D'Arenberg D'arrys Original shiraz/grenache. Loved the slider and I like the wine but I thought the smokey slider over-powered the wine, which is relatively light and fruity. Here is where they could have brought out a great big modern Aussie shiraz.

Even though they tell us "it not about the food or the wine, it's about the pairing". How can rice compete with lobster? It can't. Thus the whole competition was unfairly skewed.

I suggest next time they have budget and man-power constraints to keep the play fair.

But like I said, it's splitting hairs, everything was delicious and the whole event was fun.

After we tried a Greek liquor made from tree sap or some damn thing called Skinos . Interestingly weird. "Buckley's booze" I wrote.

Also tried "Vice" ostensibly a martini pre-mix of vodka and icewine. I think they came up with the name, thought it was clever then mixed some mediocre vodka with some mediocre icewine to go with the name. Pretty awful stuff. Do yourself a favour; if you feel like such a concoction, do a shot of Grey Goose, then sip some nice ice wine.

One other wine we had, which was fun, was a Batasiolo Moscato D'Asti ($17 @ LCBO). At 5.5% it's basically wine-beer. Sweet, lychees, granny smith apples, will be a fun summer drink. 87.

There were a dozen or so other wines I tried which I will review on winealign.com

you can find all my reviews here: http://www.winealign.com/profile/1042

So after all that we grabbed a cab downtown to do some more drinking...

after more wine and scotch we got home to find our neighbour's having a belated St. Patricks day party, we grabbed some Guinness from our fridge and went over...Advil and water capped off the night.

I found the water light bodied, minerally with perhaps a touch of swimming pool. 86

The Advil were pretty blue-green gelcaps, no bitterness at all. 100

Best score of the night.