the "GOATFATHER" wine

My new favourite wine is now available in the Vintages section of the LCBO:

THE GOATFATHER 2005 VINTAGES 11072 750 mL bottle Price: $ 15.95

Wine, Still Table Wine, Red Still Table Wine14.5% Alcohol/Vol.Sugar Content : XDMade in: South Africa, South AfricaBy: The Goats do Roam Wine Company/FairviewRelease Date: Feb 2, 2008
Tasting Note(an idiosyncratic amalgam of shiraz, cabernet, merlot, barbera and primitivo) Bright, dark red. Smoky, liqueur-like berries, bitter cherry and gunflint on the nose. Supple and sweet but not at all sloppy owing to its firm acid spine. Spicy red fruit and pepper flavors finish with firmness. Score - 88.
(Stephen Tanzer, International Wine Cellar, March/April 2007)

New (to me) Music

1. Peter Green (and the Splinter Group) This is the guy who co-founded Fleetwood Mac when they were still cool and bluesy, and who wrote "Black Magic Woman" which Santana made into a huge hit. Green was as good as, or maybe even better than Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix! Sweet-sounding guitar, and great, gravelly, world-weary vocals. Where has this guy been all my life? Somehow I kinda missed him...
2. Keith Jarrett "Live at Montreux". Incredible jazz piano
3. Sharon Jones and the Dap kings - "100 Days & 100 nights" New, but old-sounding soul music.
4. Josh Groban - "Noel" (yes, that very popular Christmas cd...well, it's good! Not very cool, I guess, but good)
5. Jill Scott - "The Real Thing" She still sings great poems... R&B? Soul? Rap? Jazz? Blues?
6. Angie Stone - "The Art of Love & War" Sweet, sultry R&B
7. KT Tunstall - "Drastic Fantastic" Nice pop/folk/rock chick from Scotland, I think. (Sang her big hit "Suddenly I See" at the Live Earth Concert last summer...that was also a good cd/dvd combo that I got at Costco! Two dvd's and a cd - lots of good stuff on there)
8. "Radio 1 - Established 1967" - A compilation disc from BBC One Radio, featuring newer artists covering songs from 1967 to now...very cool stuff including a cover of "It Must be Love" by Paolo Nutini, and a great version of "Cupid" by Amy Winehouse (Amy, of course, is my personal choice for all of: artist; cd; and, sadly, "train-wreck" of the year)
9. Robert Plant and Alison Kraus - "Raising Sand" (pretty sure I've already mentioned this one here somewhere recently) Happy New Year!

Have an "Elfing-Good" Christmas!!

This is my Christmas Card to all of you: http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1422709350

Christmas Favourites

These are a few of my favourite things...

Porky Pig: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPgq_fxaW7U&feature=related

Best Christmas song ever? The Drifters: http://badaboo.free.fr/merryxmas.swf This song was also in the movie "Home Alone" (briefly) .

I'll come back here and update this entry as we move along in the season.


Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

Robert Plant & Alison Kraus - new CD is Great!

You just "gotta" check out this collaboration between Led Zep's lead singer Robert Plant, and American bluegrass multi-award-winner Alison Kraus with (very well-respected but not-so-well-known-in-the-mainstream) producer/writer/arranger/singer T-Bone Burnett (he worked on the "O Brother Where Art Thou" album of the year for 2002, as well as on the fantastic "Black and White Night" concert cd and dvd with Roy Orbison and friends - Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello, Tom Waits, Jackson Browne, k.d. lang, Jennifer Warnes, Bonnie Raitt J.D. Souther- a real classic itself, so go get that while you're out at the shops)! Anyway... Plant and Kraus rocks, it rolls, it's bluegrass, it's country, it's Everly's, it's...almost indescribable. "Fortune Teller" cut is just a beauty as is the opening track. Different, yet utterly familiar and comfortable all the way through.

www.robertplantalisonkrauss.com Click on "Listen to CD" top left area of the page. My favourite song so far is track#9: "Fortune Teller"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5KF4dKq-6I&feature=related

http://www.calendarlive.com/tv/radio/cl-ca-plant11nov11,0,6282113.story

New (to me) Red Wine

My friend Frank Bo. brought this wine to our last hockey tournament: "Trapiche" Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon 2005 bottled by Bodegas Trapiche Mendoza, Argentina.

...that's right - Argentina, not Australia where I almost always find my favourites. It's a very nice, full-bodied red wine and it's under $15. Quite a nice wine, one that you wouldn't be ashamed to take to someone's home for a dinner party.

Italian Restaurant - "Capocaccia"

Went to this nice Italian Restaurant http://www.capocaccia.ca/location.html last night with my daughters. We had a bottle of their quite decent house red wine, a Montepulciano d'Abruzzo (Citra), as well as the grilled calamari, which was very tasty and tender, served on some kind of greens. The girls each had a personal pizza, and pronounced them to be very good - these are the little wood oven-baked "gourmet-pizzas" like the ones you may think of from places like Il Fornello, but with a much more authentic home-style Italian look and taste. I opted for the Chicken Penne in a delicious, but not-too-decadent creamy parmesan sauce.
(Cost: around $90 plus tip)