Monda's menus: Après-ski fireside feast

This meal is guaranteed to warm your tummy—and your toes

By Monda Rosenberg

Updated November 2, 2012

Après-ski
fireside feast

·Warm brie with bruschetta topping

·Spicy braised lamb shanks with cognac

·Sweet potato and butternut squash brûlée

·Steamed bok choy

·Hazelnut maple-rum apples

* Make this meal a Cook for the cure event.

Wine match

This richly spiced and flavourful dinner needs a wine with equal gusto that's full bodied and robust. The dry red Amarones from Valpolicella in the Veneto region of northern Italy meet this challenge well. To make these big, potent and concentrated wines, Corvina, Rondinella and Molinara grapes are air-dried for at least 40 days after harvest and then vinified.

	Masi Amarone Della Valpolicella Classico 1996 ($30) uses grapes that have been dried for more than four months on bamboo racks. Dark purple garnet with a virile 15 per cent alcohol, it has a full velvety body, yet is elegant and classy. Deep and complex, it has layers of raisin, prune, fig and other tastes.
	Less intense and pricey is Negrar Amarone Classico 1996 ($21), with grapes dried on grates until January to achieve a full, velvety, spiced fruit taste. Ripasso wines from the same region and grapes are passed over the Amarone marc (such as skins, pips) after the original wine is made to achieve some of the flavours without the high cost.
	Masi Campofiorin Ripasso 1996 ($15) has full-bodied velvety power with some dried raisin and spice tastes. To my knowledge, no winery in Canada has attempted to duplicate the Amarone process, but a really good Baco Noir, such as Henry of Pelham ($12), can deliver a lot of smoky, velvety plummy flavour. Margaret Swaine

* Prices are approximate and depend on the level of taxation in your province.

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