Want proof that 1 + 1 = 3? You have only to attend, as I did recently, a wine tasting lead by Dr. Champlain Charest who brings all the passion of a collector and connoisseur extraordinaire and Georg Riedel who adds the magic of the wine-specific glasses that he designs. Together, they add up to a whole new dimension to appreciating wine.<\/p>\n
Growing up worlds and a generation apart, the two, at first glance, are unlikely colleagues. Champlain Charest, 69 is the son, he says, \u201cOf a poor Quebec farmer who could afford only one jug of cheap, sweet wine a year.\u201d A teddy bear of a man, it\u2019s not hard to imagine him donning a red velvet suit with white fur trim and ho-ho-ho-ing his way through a children\u2019s Christmas party. In contrast, Georg Riedel, at 49, cuts a trim, suave figure \u2013 the epitome of continental sophistication. The eldest son of a well-to-do Austrian family, he heads up a family firm that has been producing beautiful crystal for ten generations. A love of good wine brought them together professionally but a mutual respect and admiration cemented a friendship.<\/p>\n
Charest clearly recalls his first glass of good wine. \u201cI was 33 years old and became associated with a Paris-trained radiologist who knew about wine,\u201d he told me. The wine that would change his life was a Petrus. He doesn\u2019t remember the year. \u201cI became contaminated, then contagious and since then I\u2019ve infected many people with the bug. I drink wine very often,\u201d he says, \u201cat least every day.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 1970, he began to collect seriously, amassing, within a few years, a cellar with 2,000 bottles. Soon he had too much, but he still wanted to collect better wines. So he opened a restaurant. In 1988, Bistro \u00e0 Champlain was the first Canadian restaurant to receive Wine Spectator\u2019s Grand Award. Today with a 40,000-bottle cellar, he is very selective. The bistro, located in a restored 1864 log cabin on the shore of Lac Masson, an hour\u2019s drive north of Montreal, provides Charest with a means of sharing his passion. <\/p>\n
\u201cA passion is a chronic disorder that a doctor can\u2019t cure, but I\u2019m very happy that I chose wine as my passion,\u201d he says, giving a nod of approval to a Roman\u00e9e Conti \u201989 that he has ordered with lunch. \u201cNot many other passions last as long or are as well shared.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cBut wine,\u201d he adds, \u201cis not like beer that you can drink from the bottle. For wine, you need the right tools.\u201d Describing the tools, Georg Riedel compares his wine glasses to a musical instrument. \u201cUnused, both are rough and cold. But when a musical instrument is played by a virtuoso, it\u2019s a miracle. Our glasses are not merely glasses, but are finely- tuned instruments to convey the message and the excitement of the wine and to please the passionate of the world.\u201d Forty years ago, Georg Riedel\u2019s father Claus discovered how the shape and size of the glass effect the way we perceive wine. When Karl Kaiser, Inniskillin\u2019s winemaker said that in the new Reidel Icewine glass, his icewine tasted exactly as he dreamed it should, Georg Riedel knew the magic was working. Once again. <\/p>\n
The Wine Establishment 2000<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Want proof that 1 + 1 = 3? You have only to attend, as I did recently, a wine tasting lead by Dr. Champlain Charest who brings all the passion of a collector and connoisseur extraordinaire and Georg Riedel who adds the magic of the wine-specific glasses that he designs. Together, they add up to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":198,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beyondlavenderhill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/162"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beyondlavenderhill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beyondlavenderhill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beyondlavenderhill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beyondlavenderhill.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=162"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/beyondlavenderhill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":163,"href":"http:\/\/beyondlavenderhill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/162\/revisions\/163"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beyondlavenderhill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beyondlavenderhill.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}