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Old 06-02-2008, 08:27 AM   #1
TommyBB
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Toronto Sun wine article.

Enjoy
Quote:
The Toronto Sun

June 1, 2008 Sunday
FINAL EDITION

As you head out on Niagara tours, seek wisdom from a wine snob. Not those hoity-toity critics. The guy snoozing on a park bench

BYLINE: BY MIKE STROBEL

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 6

LENGTH: 670 words

Wine critics must go to a special school.

Somewhere dry and oaky with a hint of nuttiness.

What the hell are these people talking about?

Our own esteemed wine scribe, Rick VanSickle, refers to a Riesling thusly: "Throws off a note of petrol with citrus and grapefruit backed by bracing acidity."

Petrol? What, $1.20 a litre?

Here, have a sip of Sunoco. Whatever you do, don't light a cigar.

The Star's Gord Stimmell describes the "rusty nail notes" of some South African reds, and recommends a California Cabernet Sauvignon with bison sausages. Which is an extremely rare meal at my house.

"A burst of gunpowder presaging a ripe, fruity core," the Globe's Beppi Crosariol gushes about a grand cru.

"Stylish but not demanding," the National Post's Margaret Swaine says of a Valpolicella.

Yes. Nothing worse than a demanding wine.

'EAT YOUR CHEESE!'

"Let me breathe! Don't guzzle! Eat your cheese!"

Nor do I wish to drink anything tasting like toast, earth, nettles, crushed stone, tobacco, cedar, smoked game, saddle leather or tar, all glowing terms used lately by wine critics in The Big Smoke.

I suspect wine snobs are just amusing themselves.

If you plan to tour Niagara vineyards this summer, you'd best learn the lingo. So you appear to know your stuff, though you're just there to get drunk for free.

For instance, if someone says you need a "big, dumb, easy" wine, do not punch him.

Big means more alcohol, dumb is a wine so young it still can't "speak," and easy means pleasant.

Wine is fleshy when it tastes fatter than a meaty wine. Got that?

Or it can be peppery, plump, pruney, puckery, perfumed or ponderous. That's just a few of the Ps.

Years of study, surely.

Or can any Dom, Rich or Hardy be a wine snob?

Back in the day, I knew wines. Many wines. Quantity over quality.

But I'm on the wagon, so must recruit others to a blind taste-test.

One bottle is the LCBO's cheapest, a $6 Italian a cut above salad dressing.

Another is a saucy little $11 French number.

The third is a lovely $25 Aussie Cabernet Sauvignon.

Let's start in the newsroom. Webmistress Irene Thomaidis has a 20-something palate and party eyes.

But she picks the Italian salad dressing. "Now, there's a Friday afternoon wine," she beams.

Enjoy, Irene. Pass the croutons. Now, about these other two? Describe them, in wine snobberish.

"Well, if this one is vinegar, that one is piss," she replies.

Maybe this is harder than it looks. I turn to cartoonist Andy Donato, who has swilled more wine than Irene has swallowed water.

Andy picks the Cab right off. But he should know. He makes his own.

Maybe I'll find a truer test where winos live. Can a guy on a park bench match sniffs with a wine snob?

Up to Allan Gardens I go, Sherbourne and Gerrard.

Even the squirrels look like they could use a drink.

Six men with paper bags loll under a sugar maple.

Any of you fellas drink wine?

Six hands go up. A couple hold bottles of bad sherry.

Paydirt. Daniel "Frenchie" Roy's mom is a retired sommelier in Rimouski.

(A sommelier, you lout, is a wine expert.)

Frenchie, 40, is shorn like a paratrooper, which he was before the chute of life got a little tangled.

"I'm down on my luck right now, but I used to go to art shows and wine tastings.

"You meet people who don't know what they're talking about."

Frenchie knows how "robe" describes a wine's colour and consistency.

"Though it's hard to tell with a plastic cup, Mike."

And he knows a decent Cab when he tastes one.

Even after a tete-a-tete with Captain Morgan.

"Full bodied, with a touch of fruit and an aftertaste of barrel," he says of the Cab.

Ray Thomson, 53, ran computers and toured wine bars from Paris to Argentina, before IBM downsized him to Seaton House and a regular bench at Allan Gardens.

Ray, too, aces the taste test, though he prefers the little Cotes du Ventoux.

"Not too tangy or pulpy. Sweet, but not too sweet."

(Swirl, sniff, swish, sip, pause.)

"Perky," he says.

Man, you never know where you'll run into a wine snob.

Mike Strobel's column runs Wednesday to Friday, and Sunday. mike.strobel@sunmedia.ca or 416-947-2265.
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