RKS 2025 CANADIAN Wine: Ontario Sauvignon Blanc from Wending Home: Elegance with Attitude

If you are mired in the New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc mud you enjoy its “thickness” and potency as the old gooseberry and cat’s pee hits you squarely in the eyes. If you prefer a “thinner” or perhaps more elegant Sauvignon Blanc you might turn to Bordeaux or Ontario!

I enjoy Sauvignon Blancs from Bordeaux and decided to try a Featherstone 2022 Sauvignon Blanc from Niagara, Ontario and noticed a stylistic similarity to Sauvignon Blanc from Bordeaux.

I decided to further this Ontario investigation by trying a Wending Home Sauvignon Blanc to determine if this similarity to Bordeaux Sauvignon Blanc might be indicative of a “Niagara style” Sauvignon Blanc.

Aroma: Primarily white grapefruit with guava, mango, pear and Spanish clementine. As the wine warm some mild oak wafts upward.

Palate:  Initially gentle, diffuse with discrete acidity but some tannic presence on the finish imparting some “elegance with an attitude”. Seems some French oak involved here.

Personality: Definitely not Zealie nor Frenchie. I am Ontario ari ari Oh!

Food Match: I would say Ontario asparagus but that is long gone and replaced by dreadful Mexican and Peruvian. Pork Souvlaki skewers with Sheppard peppers, zucchini and eggplant all from the fields as we celebrate the fall harvest.

Cellarbility: Will happily loiter about until 2026-year end.

Price: $28 CDN.

Comments from the peanut gallery: At $30 expect stiff competition from lesser priced Bordeaux Sauvignon Blancs. Canadian patriotism at a price…..?

RKS 2025 CANADIAN Wine Rating: 91/100. David Lawrason 90.

(Wending Home Estate Vineyard 2020 Sauvignon Blanc, VQA Creek Shores, Wending Home Estate Vineyards and Winery, St. Catharines, Ontario, 750 mL, 12.8%).

RKS 2025 CANADIAN Wine: Rosehall Run’s 2024 Unoaked Chardonnay From Prince Edward County in Ontario, Canada

Rosehall Run 2024 Unoaked Chardonnay is an “entry level” Chardonnay from Rosehall Run in Prince Edward County although it is a VQA Ontario wine as opposed to VQA Prince Edward County. Wonder if the grapes were trucked in from Niagara?

Aroma: Pear, apple, lemon, pineapple and some lemon meringue pie.

Palate: Crisp and taut. While crisp it is smooth without any acidic interference. Green apple with lemon and lime influences. Short finish.

Personality: OK, I am not VQA Prince Edward County so I may have lost local identity but I am unmistakeably an unoaked Chardonnay. Curt and to the point.

Food Match: An ideal match would be Lemon-Pepper Zucchini Pasta with Dill. I have found pasta with zucchini is best prepared with coating sliced zucchini with olive oil, salt and pepper then roasting in the oven after sleeping in the fridge for 48 hours. The recipe I worked from called for one large zucchini but I added 9 more and the roasting lends the pasta a rich texture although you end up with almost a zucchini puree after baking it.

Cellarbility: Consume no later than 2026-year end but do not expect improvement with ageing.

Price: $19 CDN.

RKS 2024 CANADIAN Wine Rating: 85/100.

(Rosehall Run 2024 Unoaked Chardonnay, VQA Ontario, Rosehall Run Vineyards, Wellington, Ontario, 750 mL, 12.5%).

RKS 2025 CANADIAN Wine: Bachelder Bai Xu Single Vineyard 2021 Gamay Noir

From vines planted in 1981.

32% whole cluster.

Decant for one hour imparting more life and fruit.

Aroma: Loads of red cherry! Secondary notes of raspberry. Tertiary notes of dark chocolate and earthiness.

Palate: Not much tannic grip. Smooth. Modest acidity. Airy cherry and raspberry. Fruity. Long peppered finish with a tiny bit of sweetness.

Personality: I am a lightweight. Easy to get along with. Discrete and subtle I am an ultimate unpolitical.

Food Match: If I was in New York at my favourite bistro Les Deux’s Amis it would be a Bucky Burger. But for certain reasons I won’t be returning across the border anytime soon.

Cellarbility: Perhaps until 2026-year end.

Price: $30. CDN.

RKS 2025 CANADIAN Wine Rating: 93/100. Wine Align Community Score 92. Jamie Goode 94.

(Bachelder Single Vineyard Bai Xu 2021 Gamay Noir, VQA Four Mile Creek, Bachelder, Beamsville, Ontario, 750 mL, 12.5%).

RKS 2025 Film: “Live a Little”: Bosom Buddy Interrail On the Road Picture?

One can’t deny the Swedish film “Live a Little” falls within the on the road genre with two mid twenty buddies Laura (Embla Ingelman-Sundberg) and Alex (Aviva Wrede) seeking to tear up Europe on a trip they have been planning for years. But as in the Brit film “How to Have Sex” the surface gloss shouldn’t throw you “off the rails”.

Laura and Alex arrive in Warzaw looking to party down as apparently this seems the depth of their youthful intelligence. Trusting and naïve they locate a couch surfing home and meet Parisian Lucas (Oscar Lesage) a fellow couch surfer. And clubbing they do drowning copious amounts of shots. Oh the follies of youth!

The following morning Laura wakes up in the couch surfing palace in the buff with no memory of how she ended up in the bed or who with. A condom lies on the ground. Through flashbacks she pieces the story together and Lucas is the one.

Laura blames the alcohol. Is Lucas a creepster taking advantage of a virtuous Swedish lady? Was alcohol laced with some evil date rape drug? Or possibly is Laura so hemmed in by propriety and her boyfriend Elias (Odin Romanus) her sexual misadventure is really an adventure of sexual liberation? As the flashbacks progress could it be Laura was conscious of the event and a willing participant. Why did one of the couch surfers upon hearing Laura’s description of her Lucas encounter note,” You didn’t say you passed out.”? Are we witnessing self deception on the road to a form of moral and sexual liberation. As Alex says about her own sexual adventure “one needs to live a little”.

A movie about young adults testing the water and fine and dandy until the ice of trust cracks and sends a few sinking into the cold depths below. The concepts of trust, monogamy, sexual aggression and stereotypes, guilt, faithfulness, forgiveness, healing and sexism arise.

Laura’s story as evidenced by the shots of women, seemingly random at the film’s conclusion, could be a message that Laura’s adventure or misadventure is not unique.

You can watch the trailer here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNLESq_Mf44

Written and directed by Fanny Ovesen.

Will be available in North America on digital platforms on 16September2025.

RKS 2025 Film Rating 83/100.

RKS 2025 CANADIAN Wine: Liebling Wines’ 2022 Cabernet Franc

Liebling Wines is not a winery. It is what we call a virtual winery where those who craft wines use the premises and sometimes the expertise of an established winery permitting lower costs and perhaps more experimentation with small batch production.

Liebling Wines finds its roots in 1984 when Matthias Oppenlaender arrived in Niagara, Ontario from his native Germany planting a 40-acre vineyard in Queenston. Matthias and his children Jessica, Alison, Aaron, Michael and Danny carry on his mission of grape growing expanding it to purchasing grapes from select single vineyards the family manages across Niagara, Ontario and using those grapes and those grown in their vineyard to vint this Cabernet Franc.

The Cabernet Franc is made at Marynissen Estate in Niagara-on-the-Lake. Given Cabernet Franc is arguably Ontario’s premier red grape and given the expertise and experience of the Oppenlaender’s with grape cultivation this wine should not disappoint. Right?

Aroma: Think raspberry and Niagara cherry. Think gentle. Think discrete oak. Think sort of elegant Pinot Noir. Think a rather unique Cabernet Franc.

Palate: The gentleness continues. And my thoughts about this Cabernet Franc and Pinot Noir continue. Soft raspberry and Bing cherry. A touch of tartness. Purposely a bit thin? Aged in French oak for 20 months with a gentle but long-lasting finish.

Personality: Consider me a unique Ontario Cabernet Franc with some elegance.

Cellarbility: Might knit to structured elegance through 2026 and 2027.

Food Match: Grilled Arctic Char.

Price: $32 CDN.

RKS 2025 CANADIAN Wine Rating: 91/100. David Lawrason 90. (Liebling Wines Oppenlaender Vineyard 2022 Cabernet Franc, VQA Four Mile Creek, Marynissen Estate, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, 750 mL, 12.5%).

RKS 2025 Wine: The Road Less Travelled Can Be Bumpy

Many a wine drinker is happy in their pod like Sigourney Weaver returning home in “Alien” drinking a very limited range of wines whether that be brand, varietal or geographical. It could be trepidation about moving off the beaten path. A Cabernet Sauvignon offers comfort to many a consumer but a Kéfrankos may terrorize others. Stick to Niagara and stay away from Lake Erie North Shore. I am not here to congratulate or chastise you about the path you are on. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

I am continually on the lookout for new wine horizons and/or new wineries. It can be a rough ride facing more failures and disappointments than flag waving successes. But to borrow a well known “human relations phrase’ for metaphorical purposes it is better to have loved and lost than never have loved at all.

It has been some time but I recall Le Volte Dell’ Ornellaia is a Tuscan reliable and there is nothing wrong in my book on occasion to enjoy an old reliable.

A blend of 55% Cabernet Sauvignon, 40% Merlot and 5% Petit Verdot. The different varietals were fermented separately in small steel tanks to maintain their characteristics. The wine was then aged for 10 months partly in barriques used previously for the famed Ornellaia and partly in concrete tanks.

Aroma: Penetrating and concentrated blueberry and blackberry. Interesting tertiary notes of date squares and root beer.

Palate: Blackberry, raspberry, black cherry and tinges of black licorice. Moderately long but solid finish. There is tension between decadence and freshness a question of concrete balancing the oak? Similarly at times the tannins seem simultaneously silky and brusque.

Personality: I am a wine of tension making a firm description unlikely. Why not call me beguiling?

Food Match: Vegetarian Ziti. With a sauce made from San Marzano’s or Roma field tomatoes the choice matching the possible dual personality of the wine.

Cellarbility: Until end of 2009.

Price: $29 CDN.

RKS 2025 Wine Rating: 92/100. Wine Enthusiast 93.

(Le Volte Dell’ Ornellaia 2023, IGT Toscana, Ornellaia, Castagneto Carducci, Italy, 750 mL, 13.5%). 

RKS Literature: Yugoslavia’s Tito: One Day a Hero of the USSR The Next Its Perfidious Enemy

“The class laughed just as unanimously when the geography teacher talked about Yugoslavia. Today Tito is a “sinister and perfidious enemy”; but it was only two weeks ago that we were shown the film: “In the Mountains of Yugoslavia”, in which Marshal Tito was awarded the Order of Victory as our best friend and faithful ally. The debate about Tito continued during the break, and most of my classmates agreed that his only crime now was his unwillingness to blindly follow the Kremlin’s orders….”

Valdimir Rott, “In Defiance of Fate Book 1 Joy From Sadness”, 2009.

RKS Literature: The Necessity of Slave Labour in the USSR and the Future of Socialism (Vladimir Rott)

“The abolition of private property killed people’ s desire to create, to take care of themselves, to seek paths to survival and progress. The most essential part of any country’s gross national product-the contribution of each individual’s enthusiasm-was lost. By sending hundreds of thousands of Soviet people to the labour camps, the state tried to make up for this loss by using slave labour.

The logical answer to this situation was a common joke people told each other while looking cautiously over their shoulder:

“What will happen if you build socialism in the Sahara Desert?”

“The first thirty years nothing much. Then there will be acute shortages of sand…”:

Vladimir Rott, “In Defiance of Fate Book 1 Joy From Sadness”, 2009.

RKS 2025 Canadian Wine: Shale Ridge 2023 Cabernet Sauvignon: Gutsy and/or Suicidal

Producing single varietal Cabernet Sauvignon in Ontario is a risky business as far as I can see. Most often it is a bland experience but jazzed up with generous oak it just may surprise you.

Shale Ridge is located in Thedford, Ontario proximate to the shores of Lake Huron in Southwest Ontario. Their 2023 Cabernet Sauvignon is unoaked and there is no indication on its label where the grapes used were sourced from but the wine is VQA. This is an unoaked Cabernet Sauvignon. The risk meter is running hot.

Aroma: There is a truckload of lean raspberry and blueberry with secondary blackberry burbling about.

Palate: Tannic. And the lean aromatics become mean on the palate meaning they are lost in space….dissipated. Tartish cranberry intermingled with prevalent chalkiness.

Personality: Which adjective(s) in the review’s title would you choose.

Food Match: Meat lover’s pizza from Poppa John’s Pizza and Diner in Thedford.

Cellarbility: Drink now.

RKS 2025 CANADIAN Wine Rating: 79/100.

(SR Cabernet Sauvignon 2023, VQA Ontario, Shale Ridge Estate Winery, Thedford, Ontario, 750 mL, 12.5%).

RKS 2025 CANADIAN Film: “Loathe Thy Neighbor”

“Loathe Thy Neighbor” is a low budget Canadian indie film shot in Bruce County, Ontario.

One can’t deny certain of its comedic elements but it is more of a character study than a comedy. Deeply unhappy characters seldom craft a comedy.

City slicker Will Larkfield (Brennan Clost) inherits a farm from his father who had set himself on fire in a Toronto subway station as after all he always wanted to be the centre of attention. Will has a multitude of allergies and his arrival at the farm is marked by the non-delivery of his EpiPen to neighbour Wanda Bellerose’s apiary. Wanda (Lauren Holly) is a cranky and provocative women with nary a kind or welcoming word for Will the “yuppy”. Valerie (Brittany Raymond), Wanda’s daughter, is a kleptomaniac.

Will, Wanda and Valerie are unhappy and possibly miserable characters masking their unhappiness through burying or camouflaging it through character flaws. We obtain hints of the rationale for their underlying misery but the film fails to delve deeper than this scratch on the surface but searching for that on our part may add some attraction to the film. Why do these characters act against social norms?

Weed smoking Officer Norwood of the local constabulary and the zany delivery lady Daphne lend a comedic bent to the film.

Joe (Shaun Benson) is the somewhat eccentric sage operating like the grassy character median before the East German section of the Berlin Wall.

The miserable, jolly and the wise are the buffet table offering a bit of everything for the viewer.

And yes there is an evil and seedy corporation lurking in the fields oddly uniting these diverse characters.

So disappointing to see that $10 US bill change hands especially in this day and age of strained U.S. Canada relations! And the Americanization of “neighbor” is slap in the face to Canadian viewers?

You can watch the trailer here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLMf481wY0Q

The film is directed by Sergio Navarreta.

RKS 2025 CANADIAN Film Rating 72/100.

The film has a Canada wide theatrical release 29August2025.