how to celebrate a successful ontario wine awareness campaign? with more ontario wine of course. spotlight city's 30 days of local wine guide (which, by popular demand, was extended to 50 days), culminated in a "local wine party" with about 60 eager participants and as many bottles of wine. there were dozens of wines featured, and winemakers themselves mingled with guests, poured and drank with the crowd. i was most excited about my personal ON favourite, le clos jordanne, being on hand, about finally getting to sip some of a much talked about rare riesling and a very interesting fume blanc–all i could smell was salmon and as unappealing as that may sound, i loved it.
as impressive as the selection of wines were the nibbles and the setting. you think you can imagine how good the sweet escapes treats were just by seeing how good they look above, but they are even better than that. they blew me away and really, i'm not the biggest fan of the sweet stuff. but their sweets featured some of the local wines from the event(!) so i had to try. i popped more than my share of the rosehill run rosé strawberry mousse white chocolate cups. they were perfect: just the right balance of berry and rosé in the light as air mousse, served in delicate white chocolate vessels. and nancy's cheese brought just the right selection for the cheese boards including crowd-pleasing blue benedictine and a fantastic fifth town goat cheese (i ate the last piece. or more accurately, pieces…) but the nicest surprise of the night was getting to know zach from the depARTment, the lovely space where the event was held, and claire of circuit gallery who was showcasing digital works by artists like susana reisman. i got to talk to each of them about the space their collections and to susana about her pieces which i truly loved. all in all a very enchanting evening and a home-grown one at that.
