LCBO Food and Drink Holiday 2016

Tenuta Sant’Antonio Amarone Selezione Antonio Castagnedi LCBO 435222, $45.95 This wine comes at the dish from a different direction, seeking out the lamb’s naturally sweet, fragrant juices. Pressed from air-dried grapes, am- arone always plays games with our notions of sweetness, ripeness, dryness, bitterness… This one is notably intense with great length and brooding energy. Try it on its own—there’s a juicy black cherry and blackcurrant heart, ringed by dried fruit, prune and the scent of old leather. Now taste it with the lamb and that fascinating gastrique. I’m left with an impression of concentrated black fruit and a final note of bitterness, like an unexpected twist of melancholy in the last couplet of a Shakespeare sonnet. Yes, I love this pairing! How can you tell? Brunello di Montalcino is one of Tuscany’s greatest native sons, made only with Sangiovese grapes from the warm hills around Montalcino. The wine spends years in oak and ages further in the bottle before release, emerg- ing as a powerful thoroughbred, firm and intensely flavourful, especially from a splendid vintage like 2011. Raspberries, damsons, pomegranates, a certain minerality… The wine’s complex illusions are better enjoyed than analyzed, but it’s fun to feel those tight, sleek tannins loosened by the sa- voury fat on the lamb, letting the dark fruit glow more strongly. The wine goes mano-a-mano with the spiced gastrique—in a dance not a fight. CastelGiocondo Brunello di Montalcino VINTAGES ESSENTIALS 650432, $50.95 Two wines, two approaches to our succulent lamb