Patient discipline
The rich rewards of the Nebbiolo grape requires great patience. While it customarily offers notes of violets, tar and anise, it may take at least a decade of aging to manifest its deep flavours of orange, black fruits, leather and spice. Grown almost exclusively in Italy’s Piedmont, the Nebbiolo vine readily demonstrates the influence of […]
The Road to Hockeytown
To say that Jimmy Devellano is a sports fan would be a gross understatement. He lives and breathes sports virtually 24 hours a day. He has executive roles with the Detroit Red Wings and the Detroit Tigers, and he follows other sports and teams as well. Jimmy grew up in Toronto and, as a kid, […]
The Hunk Brothers
On the minus side, coming out of our endless and brutal winter, I realize I watched far too many home decorating shows for my liking. On the plus side, however, I have learned that most of these shows have a very similar theme: a commonsense and, quite coincidentally, handsome contractor saves the bacon of a […]
County sisters
On this Mother’s Day I don’t expect flowers, cards, gifts or visits. Nope. Today, Mother’s Day, I am thinking about all of the wonderful women who have helped me become a better mom. Many of those women lived, or are living, here in the County. For those of you who know me, and very few […]
Heartbreaker
The Toronto Raptors certainly captured the imagination of their die-hard fans, and a larger group of casual fans, last week. They played a tight series in the first round of the National Basketball Association championships, losing 104-103 to the Brooklyn Nets in the seventh and deciding game. It ignited the interest in the game on […]
On the cusp
Doing something just because one can isn’t always the best idea. Sometimes you need to consider what should be done. Making wine in Ireland is a cautionary tale. The difference between winter and summer in Ireland is basically the temperature of the rain. It will always be a challenge to get the amount of heat […]
Anyone for a game of…
I had better confess right off the bat that I don’t own a smartphone and have never been into playing electronic video games on any device. So that might colour what follows. What had caught my eye was a short article in a recent edition of the Sunday New York Times entitled “Monopoly Loosens Grip […]
Blessed
This morning, Sunday, I have to get up and at ‘em early, early, early. Well, early for me. I’m not an early morning person. I used to be an early morning person. I had kids and a job and, at one time, a long commute. But I hadn’t even heard the seven a.m. bells of […]
Delightful complexity
It beggars the mind to think that Ireland is listed as a wine producing country by the labyrinthine bureaucracy of the European Union. Grapes do have, admittedly, a history in the Emerald Isle. Cistercian monks first planted vines in the late fifth century—most likely for the production of sacramental wine. I suspect they laboured long […]
The joys of inadvertent English
You know them. The grammar police— those officious people who patrol print newspapers and swoop down for the kill over picayune points of English grammar, such as the failure of a sentence to contain a verb. Every once in a while, they show their hand in letters to the editor pages, demonstrating how some egregious […]