LCBO Food & Drink Autumn 2015

SUE-ANN STAFF ESTATE MAKING DAZZLING RIESLING FROM HER FAMILY VINEYARD A ward-winning winemaker Sue-Ann Staff first made her reputa- tion over a decade with Pilliterri, making Rieslings grown in the light, deep, sandy soil of the plain. In 2009, she went home to her family’s 200-year-old farm on the very brow of the escarpment and opened her own winery. Conditions up here are very different, with vineyards of heavy, unforgiving clay that is so shallow in places she can’t actually drive in a trellis post, but her Robert’s Block Rieslings are thrilling, bright, flinty and sophis- ticated. And now she has created a very different line of wines—also from her own fruit but much more approachable. “I call them Fancy FarmGirl because I’ve been accused of being that over the years!” jokes Staff. The Riesling is called Frivolous White and it’s light, fresh and versatile.     This spring, Staff stopped making the wines for Megalomaniac but we can still taste her talent in the 2013 and 2014 vintages. The Rieslings are well worth seeking out—same variety, same winemaker, but different vineyards and very dif- ferent wines. Yet another style of Riesling she has mastered is traditional-method bubbly, available in selected LCBO stores.“That one’s called Sparkling and Sassy,” explains Staff, “which I’m told is also a reflection of my personality, though it really refers to the bright, zippy acidity that makes it such a great aperitif.”

CHARLES BAKER THE MAESTRO—OUR ORIGINAL PERFECTIONIST “GARAGISTE” A fter years as a server in top Toronto restaurants, young Charles Baker liked the idea of a country break and signed on to help with the harvest at Cave Spring Cellars. “I stayed seven years,” he recalls today, “and, in the process, fell in love with Riesling.” And after he moved to Stratus Vineyards as Director of Market- ing and Sales, he decided to make some of his own, using Stratus’s equipment and some spectacular fruit he found on a windswept ridge in the benchlands. The five acres of impeccably farmed Weis 21b Riesling belonged to renowned chef Mark Picone who runs his culinary studio on the property. Baker bought it all, made his wine (he was Canada’s first garagiste —a “virtual winemaker” without a winery) and produced a masterpiece.     This year is the 10th vintage of Charles Baker’s Picone Vineyard Riesling, a savoury, cerebral, floral wine that perfectly reflects the terroir of the high, breezy vineyard and the different weather of each successive vintage. Round but with racy acidity, it shows at its absolute best with Chef Picone’s elegant, precise cuisine; the match, like the wine, as finely tuned as a concert violin.

PORTRAIT OF SUE-ANN STAFF BY STEVEN ELPHICK; PORTRAIT OF CHARLES BAKER BY NADIA SKORUPSKI; PHOTO OPPOSITE SHOT ON LOCATION AT CRUSH WINE BAR, TORONTO

108  FOOD & DRI NK AUTUMN 2015