While I was on vacation a few weeks back, I did tours of County Durham Brewing Co. in Pickering and Magnotta Winery in Vaughan.
Although County Durham is a very small brewery, the owner, Bruce Halstead, is a friendly and knowledgeable guy. Xavier and I visited him on the (all too hot) Monday of my vacation. Bruce thought we were crazy for wanting to drop by in such heat, but he humoured us, anyway.
According to Bruce, County Durham is the smallest craft brewery in Ontario, and I believe it. His facilities are tucked away in an industrial complex south of Bayly just east of Brock, and some of his equipment is many years old. He told us he acquired his bottling machinery when another brewery went under, and he's spent a lot of time rebuilding it. It's not even fully automated, but it sounds like it does the trick.
The Magnotta tour was kind of neat, but the beer and distillery sections aren't part of the tour, even though they are on site. The wine-making area is obsessively clean and sterile -- and it looks it. I'm sure it makes sense for it to be that, but all the mental images of an Old World-style winery were shot to hell as soon as I looked into the winery.
The most impressive part of the Magnotta tour is the cellar, where there are hundreds of oak barrels aging wine. It was just neat. They even have a big oak boardroom table surrounded by executive chairs. I guess maybe they conduct meetings in the cellar on occasion.
Anyway, since the last time I've written on this blog, I've sampled various types of beer and wine, including several Magnotta vintages (a White Merlot, the Trionfo and some others -- I wish I'd written down all the names at the Magnotta tasting bar), the various Magnotta beers (none of which impressed me, sadly) and all kinds of import beers, like Mythos Hellenic Lager (not impressive, but how could I turn down buying a beer called Mythos?), Chimay (damned impressive, but a little sweet), Sergeant Major IPA (yummy and hoppy), Chateau Banana (absolutely vile, but for anybody with a morbid curiosity, I still have one in my fridge -- and you're welcome to it) and various others.
posted by Chris @ 9:59 AM
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