It’s the most ✨sparkling✨ time of the year! And while we all know that sparkling wine should not be reserved solely for special occasions, there’s something about this time of year that most certainly calls for bubbles! 🍾 After all, you can’t spell “Happy Holidays” without “sparkling”. Actually… you can. But why the heck would you want to?! 😜
Holiday Wine 101: 10 Tips for Selecting Wine for the Holidays
Despite all the good cheer and festivity, the holidays can be pretty stressful – especially if you’re hosting and in charge of selecting the wine! So we’ve put together some helpful tips and tricks – call it Holiday Wine 101 if you will – to help take the stress and guess work out of selecting your wine for the holidays. Whether you’re hosting, or in need of the perfect host or hostess gift, these Top 10 tips will make your holiday wine shopping and experience as easy as can be!
The Trius Tour – Billions of Bubbles Ahead!
We had the absolute pleasure of experiencing #TheTriusTour at Trius Winery in beautiful Niagara-on-the-Lake this past weekend. This fully immersive (and incredibly Instagrammable) tour highlights a few of Trius’ star performers: the Trius Rosé, the iconic Trius Red, and of course their all-star award winning Sparkling portfolio, which is comprised of the Trius Brut, the Trius Brut Rosé, and the Showcase Blanc de Blancs – easily our favourite Ontario sparkler of the past year. But, before we delve deeper into the billions of bubbles, it must be said that in all of our wine travels around the world, we’ve never …
A Sparkling Recap of VQA Into the Bubbles
If there’s one thing we love, it’s sparkling wine. We could talk your ear off about the diversity of the category, and not to mention blog about it all day long. If you’ve seen some of our ventures with the Sparkling Winos project – like, our Sparkling Wine Map of Ontario – you’d have noticed that not only are we passionate about bubbly, but we’re totally enamoured with what’s happening in our own backyard. So, it was with immense pleasure, excitement and gratitude that we took on hosting duties for Wine Country Ontario’s VQA Into the Bubbles event on September 26, 2018!
When Cool Climate Sparkling Wine Meets Cool Climate Cuisine…
Did you know that sparkling wine is one of the most food friendly and versatile wine styles? That’s right! Forget “red or white?” with dinner. You should be thinking “red, white or sparkling?”! Don’t believe us? 🤔 Well, give us the benefit of the doubt and let us convince you… twelve times over! We’ll take you through an exceptional twelve course tasting menu, and give you twelve examples of how the dishes from Niagara-on-the-Lake’s Backhouse Restaurant paired perfectly with twelve
i4C 2018: Putting the “Cool” into “Cool Climate Chardonnay”
This past weekend we had the pleasure of attending the 2018 International Cool Climate Chardonnay Celebration (i4C) – and what a whirlwind it was! 😍 Not only did we get the chance to attend as Sparkling Winos (where, spoiler alert, we tasted some pretty spectacular Blanc de Blancs from around the world), but we also had the opportunity to capture and share the event through Wine Country Ontario’s social media channels which helped us to focus our time on the absolutely amazing things happening right here in our beautiful province. (Note: in case you missed our social media takeover, check …
Sparkling Winos on CHCH Morning Live!
We had a ✨sparkling✨ time talking about Ontario bubbles and the Niagara Homegrown Wine Festival on CHCH TV this morning! 🥂 Check out the full segment below, and be sure to come hang out with us at RBC Picnic in the Vineyard this Friday to taste all of these wines… and so many more! (And don’t miss Tim Bolen’s epic sabre at the end of the video… nailed it! 😎🗡🍾)
Two Sisters Vineyards, A Family Affair!
Two Sisters Vineyards and us go way back. How far back? Well, back at least to the Summer of 2015 when we took a bike tour through Niagara-on-the-Lake, which included a pit stop at the super scenic and impressive winery. As we rode up the tree lined boulevard leading to the entrance, sweaty and tired (and thirsty 🙊), we had many questions. What’s the story of this beautiful vineyard? Who are the two sisters? Do they have a sparkling wine? And, when did this beautiful château pop up in Niagara-on-the-Lake? We may not have gotten all the answers on our …
Fielding Sparkling Rosé NV – Review
This is “POP or FLOP”, where we taste test sparkling wines so you don’t have to! (Tough job, we know! 😉) This week we’re sippin’ on Fielding Estate Winery’s NV Sparkling Rosé, from the beautiful Beamsville Bench (located on the Niagara Peninsula of Ontario, Canada). You know we love our Canadian sparkling wine… and have gone coast to coast in search of the best bubbly being produced in the world’s second largest country! 🇨🇦 So, where does this sparkling rosé rank? And is it a bottle of bubbles you should POP? 💁 Or is it a FLOP? 🙅 Let’s see!
A Closer Look at the Spectacular Sparkling Wines of Ontario, Canada!
That’s right! There’s a lot more to Canada than maple syrup, polar bears and a strapping young Prime Minister! The country is home to a broad range of climates and micro-climates, with many viticultural areas on the same ideal grape growing latitudes as much of France. In our last post (A Look at the Sparkling Wines of Canada… Eh!) we took you across the country, from coast-to-coast, and gave you an overview of the amazing cool-climate sparkling wine crafted in the Great White North. Now we’re going to focus in on each of the 3 main viticultural areas in greater detail, starting with our home province: Ontario! (With British Columbia and Nova Scotia to follow in subsequent posts 😉).