Join us for an after-hours wine shopping and tasting event at Byward Wine Market. I will be joined by Lollo co-owner Larissa Beznaczuk-Smyrnew and we’ll be popping various delicious bottles to taste for your holiday entertaining and gifting. We don’t have a list of what we plan to open, we’ll decide that on the fly and might take some requests too! But you can expect some great value party wines as well as some nice high-end gifting wines.

This is as close to the best dream California dinner in Ottawa as I could ask for: Atelier hosting Napa Valley’s famed Staglin Family Vineyard for a special 5 course menu. And if that’s not luxurious enough, we’re mixing in an added bonus of some 15-20 year old back-vintage bottles of Roederer Estate’s top California estate Brut, L’Ermitage.

To celebrate Luca Speri’s return to Ottawa, we thought we’d pull out the stops and skip the Vapolicellas and Ripassos and do an all-Amarone wine dinner with vintages going back 20 years to 2003!

We’re excited to announce that Thomas Bachelder will be hosting a tasting of his Niagara wines at the Byward Wine Market next Wednesday April 19th at 6:30pm.

Having made wine for over 2 decades across Burgundy, Oregon, and Niagara, Thomas has been one of the most influential figures in Canadian wine, particularly in Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. He’s one of the founders of the i4c Chardonnay festival in Niagara and has been at the forefront of building Niagara’s reputation as a world-class wine region abroad.

It’s been a while since the last Capital Wine emails. With lockdowns a thing of the past and life more or less back to business as usual, it’s actually been busier than usual leaving less time for the weekly write ups. But with Christmas coming and so many holiday celebrations I’ve had many requests for gifting wines, holiday party wines, and sparkling for New Years Eve. So I thought I’d send out a quick Capital Wine holiday gift guide!

Following our fun Pop-Up Wine Bar event last month with Rosewood Wines, we wanted to schedule another wine party ASAP, so we’re excited to announce that it will be with one of our very favourite American producers, Division Wine Co from Portland, Oregon!

If you’ve been following along with us throughout the pandemic, you’ve certainly heard about these guys a few times. We did a Capital Wine feature and Zoom tasting last year with Tom Monroe from Division, but this time it will be Kate Norris, the other half of Division visiting us for an in-person wine party!

ATTENTION BRUNELLO LOVERS! On Monday May 30th we will be hosting Alessandro Bindocci from Il Poggione in Ottawa for an exclusive winemakers dinner at North & Navy. If you love Brunello, then you’re probably familiar with Il Poggione as one of the most famous producers in Montalcino, and to celebrate Alessandro’s visit, we’re pulling out all the stops for an all-out, decadent dinner by Chef Adam Vettorel paired with the whole range of Il Poggione’s Rossos and Brunellos.

We’ve been waiting a long time for things to open back up enough to do in-person events at the Byward Wine Market, but that time has finally come! And what better way to kick things off than with a visit from one of our favourite wineries, Rosewood! We had Will Roman, General Manager and Head Bee Keeper on a Zoom tasting earlier this year, but if you’re unfamiliar, check out this earlier post all about Rosewood.

So here’s the scoop: Next Thursday May 12, Will Roman, along with pal and Head Winemaker Ryan Corrigan will be in Ottawa for a day of Rosewood fun. We’ll be doing an afternoon trade tasting for restaurant industry folks followed by 2 consumer events at the Byward Wine Market in the evening. Unfortunately the afternoon event is only open to restaurant folks, but the evening is going to be our first party at the shop…so clear your Thursday schedules. Here’s the details…

This week we’re especially lucky to have in stock not just one wine from Cameron Winery, but three. There’s a handful wineries I count as my all-time favourites above all else, and one of those is definitely Cameron Winery in Dundee, Oregon.

At least in North America, I see Cameron as the penultimate winemaker’s winery…a kind of artist’s artist, or musician’s musician. A Townes Van Zant, John Prine, or Robert Johnson figure that the mainstream doesn’t know, but is followed by and has influenced so many other greats. And maybe it’s better that the mainstream doesn’t know, because they make very little wine and if the Kardashian-Jenner crowd started tagging them on Instagram it would become even harder to get any allocations. It may not be a commercial household name, or a 100 point wine, or a Top 100 list wine in the magazines, but that doesn’t matter at ll. Those who know, know. In my experience it’s been mostly other winemakers and the real legit Pinot and Chard geeks that go crazy for Cameron. Not the Belle Glos or Domaine Serene crowds, but the Coche-Dury and Raveneau folks. His wines are not at all showy or ostentatious, but have subtle complexities in a way that’s much more rare these days from new world wines. But I guess that’s a direct result of the dedication to terroir with dry-farming, organic viticulture, wild yeasts, and the traditional Burgundian production techniques used by Cameron founder/winemaker/owner, John Paul.

With the lifting of Ontario lockdowns announced, hopefully this will be our last Saturday Night Lockdown wine club ever. And we’re celebrating with a very special theme that we never got the opportunity to get to last year, the wines of Jura, France. Same deal as usual: the wines are featured at the Byward Wine Market in Ottawa and Pan Chancho in Kingston all week, come grab the wines and send me an email that you’d like to join the Zoom!

Jura has been one of the most under-rated wine regions for decades, if not centuries. This is some of the most traditional wines still being made on the planet, almost identically to how they were made several hundred years ago. The Bourdy family has been making wine in the same space since 1475. Since the middle ages! Think about that, it’s like fully medieval, knights in armour, Game of Thrones, wine in barrels delivered by horse and buggy times! They’ve worked in the same cellar of the same house, in the same way, for 17 generations! And they still have wines for sale as far back as 1781 to prove it! These are probably the most age-worthy wines in the world. This $40 Cotes du Jura Blanc will outlive your grandchildren, I don’t care if you’re 25, it will still outlive your eventual grandchildren.

It’s cold, we’re buried in snow, restaurants are closed and we’re all hoping this is the last weekend of lockdown, so we’re lining up one more top tier feature for this Saturday’s Zoom tasting with another special guest, Brian from Marietta Cellars in Sonoma, California! Cold snowy weather is perfect for cooking up a warm, rich dinner of some wild game, mushrooms, root veg with the perfect bottle of red. And when faced with this weather/food situation my mind usually goes to one of my favourite wineries, Marietta Cellars. More details on the Zoom Tasting at the bottom, but first, here’s an updated post I wrote in 2020 that perfectly sums up why I think these guys are so great.

Marietta is the kind of operation that I’d want to have if I owned a winery. And northern California is the kind of place I’d love to live: the mountains, the hunting, the fly fishing, living off the land, and making great wine with so many interesting micro-climates.

This weekend we have a special treat on Season 2, Episode 2 of our SNL (Saturday Night Lockdown) Wine Club. We’re going to be joined by Will Roman of Rosewood Wines in Niagara! Will’s family started Rosewood in the early 2000’s and he is now the General Manager and Bee Master. Yes, they also have an apiary and produce honey and mead! So we’ll be featuring their wines all week at the Byward Wine Market ahead of Saturday’s Zoom tasting.

Will and I met about 10 years ago as two young guys kicking it in the wine industry, and we got to know each other over the years as we frequently crossed paths at wine tastings and industry events. Since Will took over management of his family’s winery 7 or 8 years ago, it’s shifted gears a few times, smoothly evolving from a young winery that focused on classic-style Niagara wines to an avant garde winery that has been delivering some of Niagara’s most exciting, top quality wines. They don’t stop moving or rest on their laurels, and they love pushing their own boundaries with constant experimentation. Several of their wines remain classic in style but many have moved into more raw, “low-intervention” style. We can’t quite call them fully “natural” as not all the viticulture is entirely organic (that is really difficult in places as humid as Niagara) but their philosophy and style very much go as natural as possible.

Well here we are again. It feels like deja-vu, back in lock-down with restaurants closed for the next few weeks in peak winter. And shortly after the Premiere’s announcement my phone started pinging with questions if we were going to start the Lockdown Wine Club Zoom tastings again? Well…I’ve got nothing better to do on Saturday…so let’s drink some good wines together!!

I’m feeling like making some warm and hearty meals this weekend for the cold weather to help cope with the depression of what I’m calling “Seasonal Lockdown Syndrome”. So let’s explore a region that makes nice big rich wines that we never got to delve into last year: Castilla y Leon in Spain!

Castilla y Leon is a pretty large overall region in northern Spain that politically borders the eastern edge of Portugal and almost reaches the Atlantic in the north. But its most famous sub-regions are geographically central in the Iberian Peninsula, so it has a warm continental climate throughout most of the region that is tempered by the Duero river and areas of high elevation. And two of these more famous sub-regions are Ribera del Duero and Toro.

It’s crazy how supply chain issues and the general pandemic hustle can distract us from how fast time flies, but just like that the holidays are already upon us next week. So I’ll keep this short with maximum info and minimal reading on some excellent go-to wines for the holidays.

If you’re a big Pinot Noir fan, then you’re probably familiar with the name Felton Road. They’re arguably the most famous Pinot Noir producer in New Zealand, and one of the most famous in all the New World. Since the 1990’s they’ve been putting Central Otago on the international map not only for top quality Pinot Noir, but also as an early adopter in the biodynamic movement. Their ‘Block 3’ and ‘Block 5’ Pinot Noirs are some of the most sought after and allocated wines in the southern hemisphere, but what you don’t hear about as often is their Riesling…New Zealand Riesling?

It’s been a while since the last Capital Wine newsletter! I guess the explosion of the pandemic reopening required a disproportionate amount of attention. But I’m looking forward to writing more features again! And to kick things off this week we’re going to starting with something from old, humble beginnings, recently made new again, and incredibly delicious…Piquette! Ever heard of it?

With Canada Day on Thursday, we’re obviously going to focus on Canadian Wines this week at the Byward Wine Market. Unfortunately with the holiday closure couriers will be closed and direct deliveries are delayed until Friday, so any Lifford or winery-direct orders won’t make it for Canada Day…But we are all stocked up with some Canadian beauties at the shop! Come by and make up a nice mixed case of some of our best wines from Ontario, British Columbia, and Nova Scotia!

A couple months ago we did a whole feature on Canadian wine, it’s diverse terroir, and why it’s so special. To spare repeating all that again, you can click this link if you missed it. In addition to that context for why Canadian wine is so good, here’s a few highlights we’re featuring at the shop this week for all your celebration and BBQ needs.

Pieter Walser from BLANKbottle has got to be one of the most interesting, inspired, and avant-garde winemakers I’ve ever come across anywhere in the world. His wine career began during his undergrad at Stellenbosch University in South Africa when he was driving by a winery that was having a sale on unlabelled wines. He had just enough money to buy 3 cases that he resold to friends at a profit and was the beginning of a fairly lucrative side hustle. This is where the winery name originated, from the blank bottles that Pieter would buy and resell to pay his way through school. Then in his final year, the practicum was making their own wine, which he did out a friends garage with purchased grapes. He’s never worked for another winemaker or had a direct mentor, so everything he did was without rules or boundaries, making only what inspires him.

He no longer operates out of his friend’s garage, but rather from a cellar he rents in Somerset West where he works with over 60 different vineyards making over 40 different small lots of low intervention wine. Since he owns no vineyards he’s not beholden to any one thing, he pivots from year to year with different wines that are inspired by different farmers and grapes that he has access to. And I don’t mean just in the usual way, like a winemaker being inspired by a particular terroir, his inspirations are usually broader than that, stemming from odd chance encounters, happenstance, or serendipitous interactions.

It’s too hot right now for me to think about writing about any big reds, my mind is in rosé and crisp white territory with this 30+ early June heat wave. And one of the things I reach for the most when I’m in heat is rosè…wait, that didn’t come out right. One of the wines I like to drink most when the weather is really hot is rosé. That’s what I meant. Not only rosé but also easy to drink, crisp, floral whites. Sometimes it’s an edgy Spanish white like in last week’s features, but sometimes it’s a nice Viognier with all it’s lifted floral notes, plush fruit, and crisp acidity. And luckily there is a great winery that does both of these things really, really well AND at a really, really good price point. That winery is called Cazal Viel based in Languedoc in the South of France and they are one of my first word associations with summer. So this week is all about two favourite wines they produce that are perfect for this weather, AND inexpensive enough to grab a case to fill your fridge, cooler, picnic basket or share a case with friends for some hot summer drinking. Oh an it’s all organically grown and certified sustainable too.

Spain is one of the oldest winemaking countries in Europe, as well and one of the largest producing. Wine culture runs deep through every strata of society in Spain, and has for centuries. But most of Spain’s international fame has been tied up in the famous red wines of Rioja. So much so that the vast and diverse viticultural country that is Spain has become nearly synonymous with Rioja or just Tempranillo in general. For more on that Rioja and that history, check out the ALL ABOUT RIOJA feature a couple months ago. Even though Tempranillo is the most widely grown grape in Spain, there is so much more to Spain beyond Rioja and beyond red wines in general. Spanish whites are all the rage these days, and have been gaining more mainstream popularity in the last 5-10 years. They range from lazer sharp, mineral and fresh, to citrusy and herbaceous, to floral, honied and round…there’s even some epic desert wines from the mountains of Malaga in the very south that were formerly the wine of Kings back before the 19th century when wines like Tokai, Sauternes, Vin Santo, and Port ruled the wine world. This week we’re going to look at 4 different wines from 4 different regions, all made by top producers and really indicative of the regional styles.