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Cy Jamison is a Toronto-based wine journalist and food critic who has worked in Europe and has visited many of the top châteaux. He drinks great wine when somebody else can afford it, and looks for the best plonkers when he . .

. . .has to pay for them himself. With this column, he hopes to guide you to some of the best buys from many countries, and sometimes to titillate you with a special-occasion fantasia on a theme by Pérignon, or Latour.

Primary Sites:
Barcelona, architecture, cuttlefish ink and wine (Jamison) *
Barcelona -- like its wines -- might be underrated, says evalu8.org's Wine Editor Cy Jamison. [More]

Betwixt lovers: Cy Jamieson's 2007 tribute to Valentine's Day *
Valentine’s Day is certainly for lovers, but not for old loves who may be tattooed on a posterior or a forearm, as Johnny Depp found when he tried to remove his "Winona Forever." [More]

Dulce et decorum est (Jamison) *
There may be no use crying over spilled milk, but complaining about spilled wine may be more satisfying, as evalu8.org's Wine Editor Cy Jamison discovered in Provence, recently. . . [More]

French syrah wows, but so can Aussie and BC shiraz *
The chapel on the hill of Hermitage, renovated after years of neglect, has always been a place of pilgrimage for oenophiles in search of La Chapelle, the legendary syrah-based red that for centuries has ranked among the greatest in the world... [More]

Home for the holidays -- a round-up of seasonal wines (Jamison) *
In an increasingly stay-at-home age of balky computers and boring DVDs, a varied drinks cabinet can offer some comfort in the dark days before spring. [More]

Hunting and fishing for wine/food pairings *
The hunting and fishing season –- and I'm not talking about the pursuit of Osama bin Laden -- brings up some of the most interesting wine and food challenges. [More]

Internet sleuthing, bull's blood for Halloween *
Spooky...Finding wine on the web should be transparently simple –- the product is finite, clearly labelled, easily illustrated, the price is mostly fixed, so what's the problem? [More]

Is a perfect wine glass worth paying for? *
A Vancouver reader raises an interesting question: does the size and shape of a wine glass really make a difference to the taste of wine? [More]

It's a merlot, just don't expect the label to tell you *
The march of merlot continues across the wine world. But many who order it in restaurants as if it were a brand name are unaware that the best examples hide their varietal charms under the rubric of St-Emilion and Pomerol, where not even a hint of the varietal appears on the label.< [More]

St. Patrick and a wee nip of the uisce beatha *
St. Paddy was a missionary soul in Ireland at a time when prohibitionists and puritan zealots had not been heard from. The early clerics of Ireland took what they wanted from the church -- which was...certainly not abstention from drink. [More]

Today's wine lab wizardry of debatable value *
Most of us are resolved to go deep into the New Year in pursuit of lighter and cleaner eating and drinking. But how do you get the facts to make an informed decision about what exactly is in your food or wine? [More]

Valentine's Day: When a rose by any name is not enough *
Author: by Cy Jamison

Valentine's Day: While it's easy enough to find a chocolate-flavoured wine to match the truffles, it's more difficult to match a wine to your bouquet of roses. [More]

Valentines by the bouteille 2006 (Jamison) *
evalu8.org's Wine Editor Cy Jamison celebrates the proper accompaniment to aphrodisiac foods. . . [More]

Wine Notes: Canadian Wine for Dummies *

Cy takes us on a "tour" of a good wine-buying book, and offers his picks of the season... [More]

Wines of California ** 1/2
ISBN:0571190308
Author:Stephen Brook
Publisher:Mitchell Beazley, $21.95

Stephen Brook’s guide to California wines is meticulous in its 198-page rating of the leading producers, but the book is neither as critical, nor as comprehensive, as it needs to be.

Buy this book from Powell's:

The Wines of California [More]

Secondary Sites:
Cy Jamison's seafood Paella with cuttlefish or squid ink *****
Here's the paella recipe you've been waiting for -- compliments of evalu8.org's esteemed wine columnist, Cy Jamison. . . [More]

Hugh Johnson's Pocket Wine Book 2002 *
ISBN: 1840004436
Author: Hugh Johnson
Publisher: Mitchell Beazley, $21.95

Hugh Johnson is famous for recommending the world’s coolest wine scoring system, which starts with a sniff (his minimum score) and runs the gamut right up to "the whole vineyard." Our wine editor Cy Jamison reviews... [More]

Red wine tannins linked (again) to heart health *
As any claret-lover can tell you, a good tannic Bordeaux is what you need to cut into a fatty goose or a roast leg of lamb... [More]