Tuesday, September 3rd: A meeting with Karen Gill to discuss the October cruise on the Danube to Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Croatia and Hungary (ending with a couple of days in Budapest).
For dinner, I opened a bottle of Battersea Viveaux 2024, a Charmat-method sparkling wine made with a field blend of Niagara grapes – Auxerrois, Pinot Meunier, Viognier, Grüner Veltliner ($20.00).
Thursday, September 5th: Dinner wine with pasta: Stonebridge Cabernet Franc Reserve 2018. Noticed that the temperature of my wine cabinet was 75 degrees! Called my guy John at KoolR and he suggested dusting the cooling unit. This did no good, so he said he’d be around on Saturday morning at 8 am to fix the problem.
Friday, September 6th: Spent the morning taking wine out of the wine cabinet so that John could unplug the cooling unit and get at it. A time-consuming process. Since Deborah leaves for Paris tomorrow for a week, we thought we’d go out to our favourite local restaurant, oddBird in St. Catharines. Since oddBird appeared on a Top 100 list of Canada’s best restaurants, it’s been difficult to get a reservation. We secured a place at the bar for 4:30 pm! Mercifully, oddBird has reverted to displaying its menu on a chalk board (when COVID hit you had to take a photo of a square to see the menu on your phone).
oddBird’s chalkboard menu
We ordered a dozen oysters to start, with a glass of Domaine Queylus Tradition Chardonnay 2021. Deborah ordered seared foie gras from the Hudson Valley, with a glass of Big Head Red No. 4, and I, blackened octopus with a glass of Cloudsley Cellars Pinot Noir 2023 (which turned into two glasses).
Deborah’s foie gras
My blackened octopus
oddBird’s wine list
Saturday, September 7th: At 8 am John turned up with a new cooling unit. $400 later the wines were back in the cabinet at 57 degrees.
