This month, we caught up with the very busy Daniel Speck, Vice President and Director of Sales for Henry of Pelham Winery - he was actually on the road and chatted from his Blackberry!  Henry of Pelham is a premium estate winery located on the Short Hills Bench at the base of the Niagara Escarpment in St. Catharines, Ontario. Its 170 acres have been owned  and operated by the Speck family since 1988, on the premise that fine wine is grown, not made. Dan spoke about the role the winery has had in his life and some of their signatures wines.

Henry of Pelham Wines to Try:

Cuvée Catharine Rosé Brut
LCBO 004051 $30.15
An award-winning bubbly made from traditional Champagne grapes Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. This wine is crisp and refreshing with a lovely balance of citrus and berry aromas and flavours, with a touch of toastiness. Perfect with seafood, including oysters and caviar.

2005 Baco Noir, Reserve
VINTAGES 461699 $24.95
This classic Niagara grape gives its best expression in this wine. It’s deeply coloured with rich, jammy blueberry and blackberry flavours, perfectly balanced with crisp acidity and a rich, long finish. Paired up with sausages or game meat like venison and you’ve got yourself some perfect Canadian comfort.

2002 Cabernet-Merlot, Speck Family Reserve
WINERY ONLY
An excellent choice for your cellar, this Cab blend offers concentrated dark fruit aromas and flavours, especially black raspberry. Produced only in vintage years this wine will age for at least 10 years. Can’t wait to open it? Decant and serve with a rich meal of braised lamb shanks.

Now when was the last time you invited a bunch of people over for a party?  If you’re anything like me, it seemed like a great idea at the time but at the last minute you start to panic.  I love to cook but when it comes to having more than a few friends over, I tend to get a bit in over my head. 

To help us figure out the tricks behind hosting a great cocktail party, we have Angie MacRae joining us again today. Angie is Chef and Co-host of Food Network Canada’s national tv series This Food That Wine, and she also works as a private caterer so today we are going to learn from her experience – welcome Angie! 

Cocktail parties – it seems like they’d be less work than having a proper dinner party, but it never seems to turn out that way does it?

Listen now or download to iTunes.

If you haven’t seen our show, we explore the ins and outs of wine and food matching in each episode with a guest on the show who is hosting a party of some kind.  Angie figures out the menu and teaches the guest how to put it together, and then I do the wine matching.

One of the things we did quite often on the show is using wine as an ingredient in the cooking, and it turns out that this is a great trick in making a perfect wine match for your meal.  So let’s talk a little bit more about cooking with wine.

 Listen now or download to iTunes.

This is Stacey Metulynsky from Groovy Grapes and welcome to the Groovy Wine Podcast.  I am so excited about today’s podcast because we have a very special guest with us who’s also a friend of mine - Angie MacRae.  Angie is a trained chef and she is also the co-host of This Food That Wine, a national TV show about wine and food pairing.  And if you haven’t already tuned into Food Network Canada to see it, Angie’s the chef on the show, and the sommelier of course is me.  Angie and I share a passion for wine and food, which is why the show was so fun to make, and hopefully why it’s so fun to watch. 

When it comes to wine and food, there are so many things to talk about.  But I know one of the questions I get asked the most is how do I know what wine goes with what food?  And of course there’s no one answer so let’s start there.

Tune into our wine and food pairing podcast or subscribe via iTunes. 

Our October Podcast is with one of the world’s best drink writers, Natalie MacLean, on the topic of her new book, "Red, White and Drunk all Over".  Natalie’s book chronicles her last three years sipping, spitting and slogging her way through the international wine world to visit some its most evocative places and to meet some of its most charismatic, obsessive and innovative characters. This journey includes tasting the world’s most seductive pinot noir in Burgundy’s ancient vineyards , picking grapes under a hot California sun, working retail at a high-tech shop in New York City, disgorging champagne bottles (nearly taking out the cellar master’s eye) and working at a five-star restaurant (dripping red wine across the table linens). Red, White and Drunk All Over has been described as A Year in Provence meets Kitchen Confidential then goes Sideways .        Click here to listen now:  The podcast is approximately 5 minutes and includes an interview with Natalie MacLean   Show length: 4:51 minutes

Our September Podcast is all about the wonderful world of Italian wine.  And as wonderful as it is, it can also be confusing to the wine consumer because of its vast range of grapes, wine styles, and variations in climate.  So we are going to narrow things down a little bit and focus on three different grapes. Our guest is Antonio Mauriello, Italian Sommelier, wine consultant, educator, columnist and reporter.  Together with Antonio we’ll teach you how to pronounce each grape name properly, and then we’ll talk about where they are grown in Italy and why, how they taste, and what foods to pair with them.        Click here to listen now:  The podcast is approximately 9 minutes devoted to the topic of Italian Wine   Show length: 9:42 minutes

Do you VQA?  We recently visited the Niagara wine region to finalize details for our fall wine tour.  On our trip we learned a bit about the new sub-appellation system and some great new wineries.   For this installment of the groovy wine podcast we invited our friends, John Szabo MS and Zoltan Szabo award winning Sommelier, of Szabo & Szabo Drinks Trade Consultants to talk about Ontario wine, the new sub-appellation system and VQA wines.    

This is the first in our monthly series of wine podcasts. The groovy wine podcast will appear here on the groovy wine blog each month. For our first ever groovy wine podcast I decided to interview a very good friend of ours, Aaron Shaw, all about rosé. Aaron has made wine in France and Australia and is a well established wine agent now based in Ottawa. Tune in to hear us chat about red wine in white wine’s clothing - rosé!

Click here to listen now: The podcast is approximately 5 minutes devoted to the topic of rosé wine

Show length: 5:23

Show agenda:

- 0:00 - 1:00 Stacey Metulynsky, Groovy Grapes Sommelier introduces the topic of rosé wine

- 1:00 - 5:00 Stacey introduces special guest Aaron Shaw to talk all about rosé wine.

- 5:00 - 5:23 Closing and teaser for next podcast with John Szabo, Master Sommelier and partner with Szabo & Szabo Drinks Trade Consultants.

Resources: Read our summer rosé wine suggestions.

Podcast production provided by PODCO