Red and White ...and Green?

We took inventory of our booze needs for the wedding, and have come up with a hefty shopping list. For beer, we are sticking with one type: Steam Whistle in bottles. We chose this beer for 3 reasons:

• We like it
• It's locally brewed in Toronto - there's the green factor
• It comes in great retro bottles, a perfect aesthetic fit for our day (we know a keg would be slightly more eco-friendly, but glass is fully recyclable, and we won't have any waste like we would with a keg which could only be half consumed)

As for wine, this was a slightly more involved process. We wanted our wines, red and white, to have some sort of a "green" story. We considered local and organic varieties, as well as those with an environmental/charity tie-in. Weddingbells magazine's current issue published a piece on picking wines and suggested a brand called Plantatree. The producers of this wine would apparently plant a tree for every bottle purchased. Perfect! Unfortunately the Weddingbells fact checker didn't do her job: the wine has been discontinued by the LCBO, and is in fact no longer in production. If you're lucky, your local LCBO may still have a few bottles, but we certainly weren't able to get our hands on several cases.

We scoured the web looking for options, and found that many of the organic varieties were out of our budget, but there seemed to be several good local options, and some with other green aspects. Other important factors we considered were price and label design. Our shortlist:

• 20 Bees (Ontario, local)
• Cave Spring (Ontario, local)
• La Vielle Ferme (France, not really green at all, but we love the wine, the price and the bottle)
• Cono Sur (Chile, a carbon neutral wine, with some organic varieties)

(Runners-up: Simply and XOXO)

We bought all four bottles and attempted to coerce a few of our friends to come by and help us. No takers, though. So, it came down to me, Alex, a large ancovy pizza and 4 bottles of red. We had hoped to buy the same variety in all brands, but found that our local LCBO didn't stock much variety. Maybe the results were a bit skewed, as we were comparing apples and oranges (or in our case merlots and cabernets). Our taste test was blind, so as not to be biassed (I was already leaning heavily in favour of one of our picks based on the bottle). Luckily, we both picked the same two as our favourites. Here were our findings (keep in mind we are not connosseurs):


1st: Cono Sur Merlot - bold and smooth (the WINNER!)
2nd: La Vielle Ferme Récolte - lovely not-too-bold wine that we both liked, but not as much as the first
3rd (tie): 20 Bees Cab-Merlot - tasted more like Apple Cider Vinegar
3rd (tie): Cave Spring Gamay - Disappointingly watery, although to be fair, I have had their other varieties and love them. Not sure I've ever had a Gamay before...This was also the priciest of the bunch.

Alex's parents have offered to help us out with the wine purchase (Thank you!) and we are ever so grateful: getting the caterer has put us over budget. This extra help will hopefully ensure that our costs stay somewhat reasonable.

Cheers!