RKS 2026 ONTARIO WINE: Yes We Have Gamay in Canada! leaning post Gamay From Niagara, Ontario

There is more to Niagara Falls than water! There are many wineries in and around Niagara Falls. There are numerous historical sights. There are a plethora of dining options.

What a shame the Canadian government and local tourist promotional bodies are limping behind the surge in wine tourism.

One the first wineries I encounter on my way from Toronto to Niagara-on-the-Lake once I pull off the horrible QEW highway is Leaning Post. No fancy tasting room or dining facilities mind you.

We try a leaning post 2021 Gamay. Ontario does Gamay well.

Aroma: This light-coloured red wine is loaded with aromas of cherry and blackberry sharp and pure. Deep down in the well dark chocolate and Montreal smoked meat from Dunns lighter than Schwartz’s if you want precision. A faint suggestion of oak.

Palate: Smooth. Minimal tannins. Controlled acidity. Merging with the cherry is some strawberry. Light on its feet. Good sipper particularly in summer if lightly chilled.

Food Match: Feta and watermelon salad. Tomato salad. Only ripe field tomatoes please!

Cellarbility: A bit orange brickish around the rim indicative of a mature wine. Drink in 2026.

Price: $28 CDN.

RKS 2026 ONTARIO WINE Rating: 90/100.  (Tasted 28April2026)

(leaning post Gamay 2021, VQA Four Mile Creek, Leaning Post Wines, Stoney Creek, Ontario, 750 mL, 12.5%).

RKS Literature: The Regalness of Sperm Oil! (Herman Melville)

“But the only thing to be considered here, is this-what kind of oil is used at coronations? Certainly it cannot be olive oil, nor macassar oil, nor bear’s oil, nor train oil, nor cod liver oil. What then can it possibly be, but sperm oil in its unmanufactured, unpolluted state, the sweetest of all oils?

Think of that, ye loyal Britons! We whalemen supply your kings and queens with coronation stuff!”

Herman Melville, “Moby Dick”, 1851.

RKS Literature: Violent and Beautiful Death in Italy (D.H. Lawrence)

“The colonel, poor devil-we knew him afterwards-is now dead. It is strange that he is dead. There is something repulsive to me in the thought of him lying dead: such a humiliating, somehow degraded corpse. Death has no beauty in Italy, unless it be violent. The death of a man or woman through sickness is an occasion of horror, repulsive. They belong entirely to life, they are so limited to life these people.”

D.H. Lawrence,  “John” , 1916. 

RKS Literature: Giovanni Returns to America for the Last Time Intending to Return to Italy in Five Years (D.H. Lawrence)

“Nothing was more painful than to see him standing there is his degraded, sordid American clothes, on the deck of the steamer, waving us good-bye, belonging in his final desire to our world, the world of consciousness and deliberate action. With his candid, open, unquestioning face, he seemed like a prisoner being conveyed from one form of life to another, or like a soul in trajectory, that has not found a resting place.

What were his wife and child to him: they were the last steps of the past. His father was the continent behind him; his wife and child the foreshore of the past; but his face was set outwards, away from it all-whither, neither he nor anybody knew, but he called it America.”

D.H. Lawrence, « John » 1916. 

Lost in Puppydom: Rory Dylan Stephen’s Puppydom: AS FOR POTTY TRAINING COMMUNICATION IS A TWO-WAY STREET: 66.47% THERE!

AS FOR POTTY TRAINING COMMUNICATION IS A TWO-WAY STREET: 66.47% THERE!

I am making progress in the potty-training department. Let me rephrase that by saying WE are making progress. The responsibility for depositing my bodily fluids and substances in the right place is a two-way street. You can’t expect a puppy to act solely on admonishments and criticisms that will miraculously enable us to “do the right thing” as that Spike Lee movie was titled.

Alright, I know guilt when the mark isn’t where it should be and that is a component of the potty-training mindset but have some compassion as my puppy bladder is tiny. Success in puppy training is puppy signalling you when puppy has to go. It could be a bark, a nudge or movement towards the nearest door leading to “outside activities”. Dear humans look and TRAIN YOURSELVES for these signals. Puppy TRAIN YOURSELVES to impart these signals. Humans should REWARD puppies not only for “doing business” outside the home but for giving you the “gotta go signals”.

I am 66.47 % towards success as pertains to potty training. Quite amazing since my arrival at Bob and Fay’s it was juice and poop at will with no guilt and regrets. If I have ‘an accident” these days I got the guilt but often, yes often, Bob and Fay don’t pick up on the signals I give yet it may be me not giving the signals or giving them too late.

Let me make myself clear POTTY TRAINING IS A TWO-WAY STREET!

Dog no perfect. HUMAN NO PERFECT!

Patience can only truly be a virtue with two-way communication!

RKS Literature: Celebratory BBQ of the Cannibals (Herman Melville)

“I had seen a sailor who had visited that very island, and he told me that it was the custom, when  great battle had been gained there, to barbeque all the slain in the yard or garden of the victor; and then one by one, they were placed in a great wooden trenches, and garnished round like a pilau, with breadfruit and coconuts. And with some parsley in their mouths were sent around with the victor’s compliments to all his friends, just as though these presents were Christmas turkeys.”

Herman Melville, “Moby Dick”, 1851.

RKS Literature: The View of a Good Presbyterian as to Other’s Religious Obligations (Herman Melville)

“I cherish the greatest respect towards everybody’s religious obligations, never mind how comical. And could not find it my heart to undervalue even a congregation of ants worshipping a toad-stool; or those other creatures in certain parts of our earth, who with a degree of footsmanism quite unprecedented in other planets, bow down before the torso of a deceased landed proprietor merely on account of the inordinate possessions yet owned and rented in his name.”

Herman Melville, “Moby Dick”, 1851.

RKS Literature: Marriage and the Third Thing (D.H. Lawrence)

“It is in the spirit that marriage takes place. In the flesh there is connection; but only in the spirit is there a new thing created out of two antithetic things. In the body I am conjoined with a woman. But in the spirit my conjunction with her creates a third thing, an absolute. A Word, which is neither me nor her, nor of me or her, but which is absolute.”

D.H. Lawrence, “Il Duro”, 1916. 

RKS Literature: Who is Captain Ahab? (Herman Melville)

“He’s a queer man, Captain Ahab-so some think-but a good one. Oh, thou’lt like him well enough; no fear, no fear. He’s a grand, ungodly, god-like man, Captain Ahab; doesn’t speak much; but when he does speak, then you may well listen. Mark ye, be forewarned; Ahab’s above the common; Ahab’s been in colleges, as well as ‘mong the cannibals, been used to deeper wonders that the waves; fixed his fiery lance in mightier stranger foes than whales.”

Herman Melville, “Moby Dick”, 1851.