Vintage Temagami
Feisty Fiano | Durable Duero
I spent part of last week on a little canoe trip in Temagami with Mrs. Wine Box. We left from and came back to what might be my favourite hotel, the Temagami Outpost on Lake Maskinonge. Hotel may be a somewhat forgiving term for the Outpost, which is a century old former logging camp, turned sportsman’s, then kids’ summer camp, now resort. It’s the kind of hotel where the rooms are log cabins, meals are taken in a dining hall, and the toilets are housed in their own separate complex.
The point of The Outpost is to get away, and their signature luxury service, apart from seeing all of the stars on a clear night, is to remove their guests from the curses of modernity. Staying at the lodge, is a kind of midway point between digital slavery and freedom (there is satellite internet in and around the main lodge, but otherwise no service). The real escape is the canoe trip, for which they will outfit their guests as completely as desired.
I spent my summers between the ages of eight and eighteen canoe tripping around Northern Ontario and Quebec. As a kid, I stayed at the Outpost as a camper and then a guide, when it was a literal outpost for the camp I went to further south in Algonquin Park. But until last year, I hadn’t been there, nor paddled my way to a campsite to spend a night in a tent for 35 years.
Mrs. Wine Box, on the other had, is a dual-national and spent her summers in the Brecon Beacons in Wales. When our kids were young, and my father-in-law, at whose house we stayed, was alive, our family naturally followed this tradition. Hiking the Beacons and Black Mountains is its own kind of rugged escape from modernity, and you can see all the stars when it’s clear at nights, so I adapted happily.
When our circumstances changed and we started to spend more summer holiday time in Canada, it was Mrs. Wine Box who suggested we head north for a canoe adventure. I was trepidatious. As an adolescent I was used to canoe tripping pretty hard. The longest trip I was on was 36 days out. I worried that I might not have the patience to accompany someone unaccustomed to roughing it in the bush. Would our canoe trip be more like a long, arduous uphill portage than a clear paddle down a long lake with the wind at out backs?
I needn’t have worried; we had great fun on a three day, two night tour around the Chinichugi Waterway network of lakes around the outpost. By last winter, we were already planning route for our second outing. And making a reservation for a fully outfitted trip for this July.
No service in the Northern Ontario wilderness renders a cell phone to little more than a camera. That is a luxury truly worth paying dearly for, but it’s only part of a canoe trip’s promise of escape from modernity. The other part is altogether in one’s head.
Nothing happens on a canoe trip unless you do it. The canoe will not paddle itself, nor carry itself over the portage. The packs will not pack themselves, nor be put in or out of the canoe, nor be put onto or off of your back several times a day. The campsite will not set it self up nor strike itself down, nor will dinner make itself nor clean itself up. You do it or it doesn’t get done.
A canoe trip is an endless set of problems that require constant solutions, most of which require physical exertion. There’s not a lot of room left in the mind during the day for existential worry or status anxiety. And at night the sleeping bag beckons hours before one would consider retiring in the city.
The constant barrage of physical, and occasional mental problem solving is good therapy, but it also makes for great hunger. The staff at the Outpost asked us if we had any menu requests for the food they provisioned us, and we replied in unison that we’d be happy with whatever they gave us because we already knew it would be delicious. And it was; hunger is the best sauce after all.
This brings us to the subject of the canoe trip wine. [You were wondering when I would get to that, weren’t you?] We don’t own much camping equipment, which is why we are so pleased to be outfitted, but we do own quite a number of sturdy water bottles. One of which we reserve for wine, which we bring with us.
But what wine pairs with a canoe trip? Any wine pairs with a canoe trip, just like any hot meal will. It will taste delicious, I can assure you. If you think the Frascati you had on the piazza tasted better in Italy than it did at home, then I promise it would taste even better sitting on a rock after a seven portage day.
As it happened, we took a bottle of the Gormaz Ribera del Duero reviewed below. To prepare it for meal service, it went through a particular elevation. First, I began decanting it into a water bottle that was too small (500ml) and had to stop half way and double decant it into one that was too big (1L).
Having ensured maximum surface area oxygen exposure with the oversized container, I doubled down and let it slosh around all day in the mid-summer heat in our packs. That was just for the first day, on the second, with only half a bottle left, it sloshed around even more with double the amount of air. I can’t think of a better way to oxidize and ruin a wine, though as it turns out this Tempranillo was made of tough stuff..
Service was a close to dinner time as possible, so that the one glass each ration wouldn’t be chugged down before the actual meal. Because one must carry everything one takes on a canoe trip, our stemware consisted of the single tin cup each of us was allotted as a universal drinking vessel (I am ahead of you Jancis Robinson). Placing was on the ground, dangerously next to the right foot, while plates were balanced on the knees.
On both nights, it may have been one of the more delicious tin cups of wine of my life.
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New Writing at The Hub
My August column is up at The Hub: “Canada’s got great wine. It shouldn’t be this hard to get our hands on it”. It’s about some of the wineries featured at i4C in Niagara last month; Leaning Post (ON), Camy (QC) and Quail’s Gate (BC). But it’s also about why Canadians ought to have better access to our fine wines:
A few days after the i4C conference, nine of the ten Canadian provincial premiers signed the Operating Agreement on Direct-to-Consumer Sales of Alcoholic Beverages. In theory, this has liberated Canadian wine consumers, unless they live in Quebec, to order wines from anywhere in the country. In practice, Canadian wine consumers have been ordering cases of wine from other provinces since they’ve been able to do so.
Read it all here.
WINE RECOMMENDATIONS
Janare Fiano 2025
Price: $19.95
Channel: LCBO Vintages
Producer: La Guardiense
Country: Italy
Region: Campania
Appellation: Sannio DOC
Grapes: Fiano
Alcohol by Volume: 13.5%
Sugar Content: 4 grams per litre
As I type, pretty much all of Italy is being put on a red alert heatwave warning. So, while it might be nice to imagine sipping a glass of the Janare Fiano in its natural habitat on the Amalfi coast, or the Lungomare in Naples, it’s probably just as well that it is perfectly refreshing in muggy Southern Ontario. Fiano is considered one the fancier white wine grapes from Campania, and although this fresh version was made entirely in stainless steel, the power of its lemon citrus fruit notes retain a kind of richness.
The Janare is a label to showcase the top selection of fruit from Italy’s biggest co-operative, La Guadiense, located in the Sannio Valley east of Naples. I’ll stop recommending well made co-operative wines when they stop marketing them for absolute bargains like this one for $20.
This is ultimately a fun wine, and a perfect quencher for summer weather, but it does want food. Snacks before dinner would be fine: I imagine a white bean purée on a crostini, or cold shrimp. The tech sheet from the winery suggest pairing it with spaghetti and anchovies, which sounds pretty good too.
https://www.lcbo.com/en/janare-fiano-2017-528786
Gormaz Roble 2023
Price: $17.95
Channel: LCBO Vintages
Producer: Viñedos y Bodegas Gormaz
Country: Spain
Region: Castilla y León (Soria)
Appellation: Ribera del Duero DO
Grapes: Tempranillo
Alcohol by Volume: 14.5%
Sugar Content: 3 grams per litre
I have aged out of reliable commentary about what is or isn’t cool. (It’s entirely possible that cool isn’t even cool; I don’t know.) I do remember when the red wines of Ribera del Duero were considered pretty cool, or at least had an if you know you know caché. Also made with Tempranillo, they were a kind of cognoscenti answer to Rioja.
That the 2023 Gormaz is retailing at the LCBO for $18, and not $25, suggests to me those days are long gone. On paper it has two big uncool red marks against it: it’s elevated in American oak and clocks in at a high 14.5% alcohol by volume. In practice, the oak is well integrated, only appearing as a whisper after clearly enunciated and project utterance of dark berry fruit. And the alcohol does not run hot; it’s coolly balanced by a good line of food friendly acidity. This is actually a rather elegant wine; more roast beef than steak, with a confounding symphony or dark cherry, blackberry and blueberry fruit.
If you read the lead piece above, then you know that this wine was given a thorough stress test and resists oxidization beautifully. Yes, it’s high alcohol, but if you opened it on Monday and held yourself to just one glass an evening, it would last through the week. Trick will be to hold yourself to one glass.
https://www.lcbo.com/en/gormaz-roble-ribera-del-duero-2023-50752
Sounds like an amazing trek Malcom !