By Bryan Calandrelli, Niagara Region Editor We all know it. Chardonnay has an image problem. It lost its way by rooting itself all over the world without regard for its culture, forgetting what made it so great in the first place. It
By Bryan Calandrelli, Niagara Region Editor It
By Bryan Calandrelli, Niagara Region Editor I
By Bryan Calandrelli, Niagara Region Editor Niagara Ontario does not use the term
By Bryan Calandrelli, Niagara Region Editor TasteCamp North 2011 is just around the corner, so I thought it would make sense to introduce some of the wineries and people we'll be meeting during the U.S. portion of the programming. Niagara USA might not have the international cast of winemakers that you
By Bryan Calandrelli, Niagara Region Editor I recently made my first visit to the region's newest winery, Black Willow Winery, in Burt. The tasting room for is housed in a newly renovated barn that sits right on Lake Road (Rt. 18) less than a mile from the southern shore of Lake Ontario. There isn't an adjacent vineyard yet, but with all the orchards surrounding the property, it has the quaint rural feel that you associate with wine country. Once inside, I was immediately impressed with the crisp and delicate nature of the whites. With grapes sourced from Cayuga Lake, the…
By Bryan Calandrelli, Niagara Region Editor The keynote speech at this year
The Niagara River divides two wine regions as an international boundary between the USA and Canada. By Bryan Calandrelli, Niagara Region Editor As you
By Bryan Calandrelli, Niagara Region Editor There was really no telling what my fellow NYCR editors were going to think about my Niagara Wines of the Year finalists — but I did know a couple things going in. I knew that I was the only wine editor who had tasted most of the wines. I also knew that I had chosen a diverse lineup so I didn
By Bryan Calandrelli, Niagara Region Editor I’d love to say that deciding Niagara’s Restaurant of the Year was a difficult one, involving dozens of meals and a few days of intense deliberation. In reality it was the opposite. Carmelo’s Restaurant in historic Lewiston wins hands down in Niagara Wine Country, USA – and it would be hard not to declare it restaurant of the year in Western New York in general. The fact is there’s no other restaurant that comes close in matching the effort chef Carmelo Raimondi makes towards sourcing local ingredients and local wines. The result is an…