Victoria Day

A free day! Woo-hoo! Jim and I were both off work, so what did we do? Wine tasting! Surprised?
One of our favorite is Featherstone. They were offering a little seminar with a riesling tasting flight. It was a vertical flight which means, same wine variety, same vineyard, different years. It's a great way to compare the effect of weather on the taste of the grapes and the wine. The first part of the seminar was out in the vineyard.

Here is the winemaker, David Johnson, explaining the benefits of trellising the vines.

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We then went into the barn, which has been converted to a tank room. There was a nice table set up with 5 glasses each. We got to taste riesling from 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005. There were 4 gentleman in our group who were visiting from Austria, so it was interesting to get their take on Canadian riesling. They bought a whole bunch of stuff, so I guess they liked it!

They have a lovely shop and tasting bar.

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We also got to say hello to Bocci. He is David & Louise's Jack Russell. He's a rough coat as opposed to Simon who is a smooth coat.

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I just love Bocci's dog house.

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Since we were just down the road from Vineland Estates, we stopped in there and scored some 2001 Gewurtztraminer for $9.95 a bottle! It will have to be consumed soon, but with summer right on the doorstep, white wines are always refreshing in the hot weather.

From there, we hit.....guess? Fielding! I think I mentioned before how much I like the wines here. There weren't any new releases, except for what was available during my birthday shop and sample weekend. It was their first anniversary weekend though, so we got a free taste of a reserve wine.

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On the way there, we spotted a small beaver on the road. When I tried to get a better picture, he ran away.


Jim suggested then that we stop in Grimsby at Kittling Ridge. Kittling Ridge is a winery, but also a distillery. I've had some of their wines and didn't think much of them, but was keen to try their spirits. They had a lot of tasty treats available. Jim is a big, huge single malt Scotch fan. I think Scotch is pretty groady. We both enjoy a nice glass of Canadian whisky (called Rye in Canada). They had 3 different ones. The sipping whisky was really very good, so I got Jim a bottle of that. They also had a tasty brandy-based coffee liqueur. One of my favorite cocktails is a Black Russian. I'm going to try and make one with it and see how it tastes. The highlight for me of our visit to Kittling Ridge was this.
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It's a maple liqueur. Jim doesn't like maple. Bah! What kind of a Canadian is he? I, on the other hand, looooove maple, so this is all for me.

By this point we were starved so we came back to Burlington and went to a pub called the Poacher. This place has been around for eons.

The atmosphere is good and the food was very tasty. I got a veggie burger because I was craving one and their's was better than most. They also have home-made fries. Not as good as Dad's but good nonetheless.

We then got Simon and took him for a run at the dog park. It was so friggin' cold up there that we only stayed for about half an hour. There weren't very many people (or dogs), but Simon found a couple to play with and had a good, hard run. We were all tired by this point, so finished off the day. We were too tired to go for the fireworks, but we could hear them outside.