Wine for your Valentine

The month of February is the month to show your loved ones how special they truly are. Of course we should show appreciation every day but in reality we don't. It is not because we don't care or we don't want to. The fact of the matter is that we are often so caught up in our everyday lives that we may forget to appreciate the ones that are near and dear to us. But it is never too late! We know you can't make up for lost time but you can start to show your appreciation on Valentine's Day.

Valentine's Day is one of the most celebrated occasions of the year. People all over the world shower their loved ones with greeting cards, chocolates, flowers, special dinners, and gifts but why not surprise your special someone with an amazing wine as well? Aside from sending the usual gifts, send something a little sweeter such as wine for your Valentine. Why buy wine for your Valentine? If you choose the perfect wine, it will start the night perfectly and you won't want it to end. For more visit http://www.peller.com/

Niagara Wine Festival returns to its roots

The Niagara Wine Festival is strengthening its community roots. After spending a few years pursuing a more cosmopolitan crowd from outside Niagara, festival organizers have turned their attention to making the marquee event a real homecoming in St. Catharines.

Expect more local musical acts on stage at Montebello Park in September, and look for more of your neighbours walking in the popular annual grande parade.

Kimberly Hundertmark, the festival's interim director of events, said organizers are taking stock of what the festival means to Niagara and listening to calls from the community to bring it back to its roots.

Two years ago, many St.Cat h a r i n e s residents balked at beefed-up entry rules for the grande parade designed to make it more polished and ended up cutting out some local groups.

"When you look at it, it is a homecoming," said Hundertmark, the city's tourism and attractions manager who was brought in last month to organize this year's festival.

"There's a lot of people from out of town coming to it. But essentially the people that are in the cars (on parade day), and that are lining the parade route are people that have grown up here, people that live here. It just made sense to make it more local."

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Niagara Restaurants and Wines

Niagara wines are renowned throughout the world in competitions as one of the most outstanding, particularly the ice wines, which are prepared from grapes yielded after the first winter rime. The rich and potential soils with moderate climate also support the tender fruit growers with their crops, which comprise of peaches and strawberries.

The Niagara Escarpment and Lake Ontario wineries have shaped an exclusive microclimate appropriate for the manufacture of World Class Wines. An individual would experience the stunning countryside of this region as we spend the day itinerant from one winery to another.

There is a wine trail occasion happening every month. To sign-up or pre-pay for our events is not required - just simply you need to show up on the same day and pay your admission fees. A list of wine trail associates is supplied for your convenience along with restaurants and other attractions that may be of interest during your stay.

And as you are required to eat on your trip to Niagara winery in order to keep yourself energized for sightseeing and other activities, have a dining experience that is both pleasing to the appetite and romantic for you. Like some of the hotels in the area, there are many restaurants that overlook the Falls, offering you with romantic views that will help keep the ardent tone of your trip steady throughout. Though sightseeing in Niagara Falls is romantic in itself, the romance can also present itself in, restaurants we select to dine in. There are a variety of restaurants with various wines that overlook Niagara Falls, providing you and your special someone with breathtaking views and romantic moments.

Rose is the top wine for summer

Rose is the quintessential summer wine, and a sparkling rose, like the good value non-vintage Segura Viudas Brut Rose, is double the pleasure.

For my palate, Segura Viudas is the finest Spanish sparkling wine. I enjoy its top brut, Heradad, both for its elegant flavors and texture, and stylish silver-based bottle. But until a recent tasting of the brut rose, a year or more passed since my last taste of any Segura Viudas sparkling wines because, like many consumers, I order French and California sparkling wines instinctively. A twofold mistake.

In November 2003, I visited Segura Viudas, located in Spain's Penedes region. Its 11th-century farmhouse has been expanded into a modern winery with wine cellars descending five stories into the Mediterranean soil. Jose Ferrer and his family own Segura Viudas and the California sparkling wine company, Gloria Ferrer.

Segura Viudas is made according to the Champagne method: After the primary fermentation of changing the grape juice into alcohol, the wine is transferred to bottles, fresh yeast is added and the wine undergoes a secondary fermentation, which creates the bubbles and additional aromas and flavors. Lastly, the spent yeast cells are disgorged from each bottle, a small amount of fresh wine mixed with sugar (called dosage) is added to fill the bottle, and the cork inserted.

The non-vintage Segura Viudas Brut Rose is a blend of 80 percent Trepat and 10 percent each Monastrell and Garnacha, which are traditional Spanish grapes grown in the Penedes region. Two years of aging the wine on the yeast yields an eye-appealing strawberry shade with summer fruit scents of ripe cherries and strawberries.

A mouthful of cherry and raspberry flavor comes bundled with elegant bubbles and fresh, crisp acidity in the finish. Reflecting its Spanish Mediterranean origin, the brut rose is perfectly refreshing on a warm sunny day.

The wine's versatility makes it perfect as an aperitif, delightful with shrimp cocktail, grilled shrimp with yellow rice, mildly spicy ceviche, and fresh fruit salads with summer peaches, nectarines and plums. Its incredibly affordable price allows adding bottles to the ice bucket without freezing your budget. The non-vintage Segura Viudas Brut Rose is distributed by R&R Marketing in Fairfield. It retails for approximately $9.

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Five Reasons To Drink Pink Wine

Reputations can be tough to shed. Perhaps none are more stubborn than rosé's. Why? The wine industry--by cranking out millions of bottles and casks of bland, too-sweet white zinfandel in the 1980s--did its best to kill the notion that pink wine can be a tasty, refreshing, refined drink.

Today, though, rosé is no longer the pink-headed stepchild of the wine shop. According to data from the Wine Market Council, of those Americans who drink at least one glass of wine each week, 18% of the time they drink pink.

Chalk it up to a competitive global wine market, improved grape-growing and winemaking practices and a few important flag wavers such as highly regarded New Zealand winemaker Kim Crawford (in his case, with a rosé called Pansy!, mostly marketed to the gay community). Maybe it's a combination of all three that's made rosé one of the best value-for-dollar wine categories on the shelf.

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