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| Boozin' On a Sunday Afternoon
I like to drink all year round but I especially like to drink in the summer. Drinking on a patio is the greatest thing in the world. Maybe it’s because they’re the last bastions of adulthood in that they allow you to drink and smoke at the same time. I was trying to plan something on my patio for David Chrystian’s birthday and knowing he loves to drink almost as much as I do, I wanted to have some kind of a tasting party, but not wine. I ended up running into Michael Pataran at a City Bites shindig and he mentioned that he’s now a sake consultant. Perfect. I asked if he felt like leading a sake tasting at my place and he was quickly on board. I invited Zoltan Szabo, because you can’t have a tasting in this city without that Transylvanian maniac, and a few other friends. I asked Pastry chef Rebecca Collum to do dessert and also invited Allyson Reid-Bowering, Fenwick Bonnell and Tara Zachariah – three friends with a decent thirst. I planned to do two dishes for the first course, followed by two dishes from David and finally Rebecca would do two desserts. Zoltan would bring some fine wines, Michael would provide sake, Fenwick (co-owner of Powell and Bonnell, award-winning design firm) would do the table while Allyson would decorate the house with Chinese lanterns and floating candles. Tara and Kerry would just show up and enjoy the evening since they both would be stuck at work. We started the evening with a nice, easy on the palate (and pocketbook at only $7.95 per) vinho verde from Portugal called Aveleda. Once everyone had introduced themselves we all settled around the sake master. Michael proceeded to blow our minds with an intensely detailed discourse on sake: "The proper pronunciation is sah-kay, not sa-kee that means salmon in Japanese." Sake is expensive because it’s time-consuming, laborious and has such low yield. For instance the rice for the sake needs to be polished down to 70% of its original size. The starch in the rice is in the middle so they polish off all the fats to get to the starch. Michael also explained, "Premium sake is always chilled, never heat sake. Sake is only brewed during the cold months; the colder it is the more refined the bottles." The first sake, Tanrei Junmai, is a +5. With sake the higher it is, the drier it is. First we’re instructed to plug each nostril and breathe through it to see which nostril is stronger, then use the strong one to check out the bouquet of the sake. Then we taste. This sake is dry and crisp with Zoltan getting notes of aloe vera and cucumber skin. Michael points out melon flavours as well. The second bottle is called Momokawa nigori Genshu, nigori means cloudy in Japanese. “They filter this through bigger holes so there’s a lot of sediment. Shake it well or you’ll just end up drinking the alcohol.” Michael tells us. He shakes it up and pours, “This is a love it or hate it taste.” he says before we tip back. Kerry gets coconut milk and bubblegum flavours, to which Michael adds banana peel and Zoltan adds overripe watermelon. “I like the sweetness,” says pastry chef Rebecca, “just not the coating in my mouth. I want to brush my teeth after drinking this.” “This is a drink shrouded in mystery, no other countries make it. It’s not like wine where lots of other countries make it. The way they came up with something like this way back when is just amazing. It’s like cavemen coming up with a car.” Says Michael After the tasting everyone heads to the dining room where Zoltan opens some wine. Rebecca and I plate and serve my first course of black rice pancakes with coconut milk, topped with a salad of shaved green mango, ripe mango and daikon in a coconut and ginger dressing with confetti of nori to finish. Next up, a simple udon soup with shrimp and snow peas. Zoltan has the wine flowing non-stop and keeps standing up and threatening to show us that he has no tan lines. Luckily an impromptu strip tease is averted. I keep watching the empties pile up in the corner as David plates his course with some help from Michael. A soba noodle salad with seaweed, sesame and roast eggplant topped with sliced steaks and sausage bought from the Mennonites David visited on his most recent trip to see the folks in Grimsby. Rebecca then presents us with her dessert courses, a mango, coconut sorbet with a splash of lime and a banana, coconut tart with chocolate sweet dough crust. The sorbet is refreshing and not too sweet, an excellent counterbalance to the tart. After dinner Zoltan, his shirt unbuttoned to the navel, tries to start a dance competition in the living room. With no takers from the tipsy, overfed guests he and Michael make their exit, soon followed by everyone else. The next day our boozy recycling bin gives the neighbours something to talk about. One day of recovery and I’m off to Coupe Space for a beer tasting with Stephen Beaumont. Sacha and Bill Douglas recently opened this event gallery in Leslieville. Sacha feeds everyone as we arrive to give us a base for the tasting ahead. She starts with oven fries in paper cups with smoky paprika ketchup, followed by mussels in lager then directs us to snack from the bowls of peanuts, pork rinds and edamame she’s set up on the tables. First off, beer is defined as any alcoholic beverage made from the fermentation, not distillation, of grain. “Sake is technically a beer because it is made with rice, which is a grain.” Stephen tells me when I mention the sake tasting I just hosted. We start with a beer from Oakville called Black Oak, it’s not bad, it’s light with an intense coriander flavour. The next beer is a Cantillon Gueuze, a lambic beer, meaning it has been fermented by wild, airborne yeasts. Then it is barrel-aged and combined with older lambics and bottle-refermented. Stephen explains that this process is much like that used to make champagne and that it has been granted the Apellation d’Origine. It’s a very acidic, mouth-puckering swirl of sour lemons. “If you sat down and drank a two-four of this stuff you could hurt yourself because of the level of acidity.” He warns. We skip along tasting beer after beer each one more complex or crazy than the last. We come to a German beer made with grains smoked over a beech wood fire. Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier has an intense aroma of hickory sticks and bacon and deep smoky taste until we’re instructed to plug our noses and have another drink. The smoky taste disappears and you get a very nice flavour coming through until you unplug your nose and the smoke billows back. Throughout all the beers Stephen is constantly filling us in on the history behind them, as well as facts and figures that surprise and illuminate. Did you know that beer is at least 6,000 years old pre-dated only by mead, the only difference between tasting wine and beer is that you don’t spit out the beer because aftertaste is an important part of the whole beer experience and needs to be evaluated, that beer should be stored just like wine, that low alcohol beer doesn’t age well, or that it takes six weeks to make a bottle of Budweiser? Stephen brings out what looks like a bottle of champagne. This is a Deus, Brut De Flandres that is fermented in Belgium then trucked to a secret location in Champagne where it goes through a second fermentation in a champagne bottle and a process whereby all the yeasts are coaxed into the neck of the bottle, the neck is frozen and the yeast removed. “A lot of people in beer circles are negative about this beer because they think it’s a gimmick. It’s not like champagne and it’s not like beer, it’s this whole other thing.” The final beer is what we’ve all been waiting for, the strongest beer in the world! The large gold-painted ceramic bottle full of 25% beer comes in its own box and retails for $100. “This is the only beer you can open, pour a glass then put it away and pour a glass in another six months. It won’t go flat because it already is. Carbonation can’t exist with that much alcohol.” Stephen tells us, "It's called Utopia and it's made by Sam Adams, more for promotional use than anything else.” Which is a shame because it’s really good. It has to be sipped slowly like a liqueur and has a silky bourbon, sweet maple taste. “It tastes like maple candy” a taster to my left says. Someone else asks “Could you get a two-four of these and take them up to the cottage?” Sacha brings around little Dixie cups of her delicious take on beer and beer nuts, beer ice cream with spiced, candied pistachios. The night ends with a comment from one of the tasters that definitely sums up the experience, “I would never get the amount of flavour varieties at a wine tasting as what I’ve tasted here tonight.” No kidding: face-puckering acid, coriander, hickory sticks, bacon, maple candy… One of my many jobs this summer is doing the in-house catering at the Argonaut Rowing Club. Every week we have a pub night for the members where I do a small menu and come up with a drink special. A few weeks ago we did white sangria with fresh Ontario strawberries and last night was a Nelly boy, a drink invented by my husband Kerry that uses Sri-Lankan gooseberry (called nelli fruit) cordial, garnished with mint from Fenwick’s garden. It’s a fabulously refreshing drink for a sunny patio. Unfortunately educating your taste buds in this town may be problematic, most of the beers we tasted at Coupe-Space are unavailable at the L.C.B.O and most of the sake they carry is of inferior quality (Michael got his bottles at Metropolitan Wine and Spirits), which is ridiculous! For now, if you want a better selection of beers you can head to Kenmore New York, just over the border outside of Buffalo. Look for a store called Premier Gourmet where they carry about 800 brands of beer. Here in town head to Beer Bistro, where Stephen Beaumont is a co-founder or check out Michael Pataran’s sake selection at his new venture Kappo Izakaya and Sake Bar when it opens in April ‘08. Then, send the jerks at the L.C.B.O. an email telling them where you spent your beer money. Maybe they could give a little Bud Light shelf space over to some 25% Utopia! Nelly Boy Muddle some fresh mint leaves in bottom of a Tom Collins glass Finally, If you’d like to look into how much of a drunk you actually are, my editor sent me this link when I pitched the story to him. Check it out, I dare you: See All of Ivy's Gremolata articles here. | |
