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Buyers’ Guide to VINTAGES May 16, 2020
USA Spotlight Comes at a Rough Moment By David Lawrason, with notes from Michael Godel and John Szabo There are two features to this Vintages release: Women in Wine and Spotlight USA. Both themes were plotted months ago, pre-Covid. But of course all the best laid plans have fallen apart. We have not been able […] More
By Sara d’Amato American wine writer Matt Kramer may have coined the term “Somewhereness”, but it is the group of now 13 wine producers in Niagara who have adopted the namesake to succinctly identify their purpose. To embody a sense of place in a wine is the noble aim of any quality minded winemaker. This […] More
Top Values at the LCBO (May 2020)
May Top Values + Getting Wines on your Doorstep by Steve Thurlow I continue my home isolation and am grateful to those agents who have brought wine samples to my house for me to taste. As a consequence, I have been able to be quite productive in finding new wines for the Top50 list since […] More
National Wine Awards of Canada
Discover Canada's best wines! In 2016, 22 judges tasted 1,535 wines from 230 wineries across the country to identify Canada's top wines.
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World Wine Awards of Canada
Seventeen judges tasted 1,000 wines in 21 categories in 2015 to find the world's best wines sold in Canada under $50.
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Gamay is a purple-coloured grape variety used mostly to make red wines, most notably grown in Beaujolais and in the Loire Valley around Tours. It is sometimes used to make rosés as well as sparkling wines such as Cerdon de Bugey. Gamay-based wines are typically light bodied and fruity. Wines meant for immediate consumption are typically made using carbonic maceration, where the grapes are fermented in whole bunches under a blanket of CO2, before being pressed, a method that emphasizes a bright fruitiness (and sometimes gives less desirable notes reminiscent of bananas). Wines meant to be drunk after some modest aging tend to have more body and are produced by semi-carbonic fermentation, where fermentation starts in whole bunches, before the grapes are gradually punched down, in a winemaking style closer to the burgundian approach. The latter are produced mostly in the designated Crus areas of northern Beaujolais (Morgon, Fleurie, Moulin-à-Vent, etc.) where the wines typically have the flavour of strawberries, cherries and spices.
