Peter Turner

Peter lives on a lake just north of Whitehorse, and says “I’m a ‘wine enthusiast’, not a ‘wine connoisseur’… I still have lots to learn!” In a past life, he was a wine merchant for the largest wine store in the U.S. Midwest, offering more than 4500 choices. He blames his life-long love of wines to growing up in Montreal with wine-loving parents, who let him start tasting at about age two.

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Pour one out during the pandemic

Almost a year into this pandemic, we’re all dreaming about travelling again. Last summer, during the B.C. bubble, my wife and I took a road trip to explore Okanagan vineyards.

Matching Wine to Cheese Fondue

I’m always interested whether when people choose the foods for dinner first, and then select accompanying wines, or vice versa. I use both methods. Several weekends ago my partner and I hosted a cheese fondue in honour of a friend’s birthday. The recipe called for a white wine to melt the cheese. We don’t really …

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Some New Wines to Look For and Try

Since September there have been some good additions to the Yukon Liquor Corp. (YLC) shelves. October and November seem to be emerging as the wine tasting season in the Yukon. In the span of five weeks, I participated in, or organized, three events: the October Rotary festival in Whitehorse, the second annual tasting held by …

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Opening That Bottle Again

I have a confession. After encouraging friends and readers to participate in Open that Bottle Night, I remembered I had committed to attend the Rotary Club banquet where I found myself sipping the only red offered, a Jackson Triggs Merlot ($8.75). It’s a passable food wine and I will admit to it being infinitely more …

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Winter Reds

As Northerners, we are profoundly touched by the end of winter, the slow return of warmth and the rapid return of light to our lives. Suddenly, we become aware of just how set in our ways we have become, and we resolve to change our lives. We start to put away the hats and mittens and …

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Spanish wines? ¡Si!

I, and the fellow wine enthusiasts I know, seem to have wandered from country to country in the process of discovering wines. We have familiar territories and sometimes work up the courage to explore new lands. I grew up tasting French wines first and, later, Californian ones. In the 60s, when I was a child …

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Sipping Rosé Wines for Spring

The return of the light and the steady drip drip drip of the snow melting has re-awakened my yearning for all that the Yukon has to offer us in our other, non-winter seasons. Last week, I stopped at the Liquor Corporation store to look for a couple of rosé wines (rosé meaning “pinkish”) to try …

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Kitchen Sink Wines

With the exception of New Years Eve, I think I drank two glasses of wine in January — not propitious behaviour for a wine writer. I even missed having something nice for my birthday, but I guess the flu followed by pneumonia is a decent excuse. I even managed to lose 10 pounds, which under …

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Wine Indoors or Out

Two weekends ago, a friend and I drove up the road from Rabbits Foot Canyon, to Fish Lake, to take her dog for a walk. While the roads were mostly dry, there was still a good foot or two of snow scattered intermittently along the path that we walked. The sky was blue and the …

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The Italian Connection

I guess when most of us think of Italian food, we think spaghetti and those old-school straw-covered flasks of Chianti. I am channelling that scene from Disney’s Lady and the Tramp where they slurp on opposite ends of the same pieces of spaghetti and then share the meatball. So when I spent 10 days in …

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What do you pair with muskrat?

I, like many wine enthusiasts, love the challenge of finding the right wine to pair with a meal. Many people start with this simple axiom: white wine with white meat; red wine with red meat – not a bad starting place as few things taste better than a citrusy Sauvignon Blanc with mussels, or a …

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Reds for a Gathering

It’s always fun to be on the lookout for new wines to try, and this past weekend gave me the opportunity to explore two tasty and moderately priced red wines from Italy. They come from less familiar areas of Italy, that nonetheless are making excellent wines. There’s a wonderful trend in wines from countries around …

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Wine Throughout the Year

As we race toward Christmas and the new year of promise that follows, I can’t help but reflect on the wonderful and poignant experiences that have transpired over these last 12 months. Post-Christmas, last year, began with a wonderful evening among friends at a cabin in Tagish, meeting and making new and special friends and …

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Wine for a Winter’s Eve

So now the rich, velvety darkness of the Yukon winter has descended and the temperatures at my cabin have dropped below minus 20, several evenings. And yet, it is probably my favourite time of year here. The blue lights are strung in the trees along Main Street and are alight by 4 p.m., as the …

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Thai Food: A Delightful Challenge

Last Saturday evening, a friend of mine invited me and several of my co-workers to dinner at her cozy little apartment. My friend is an artist, and her work and her exploratory nature have taken her all over the Pacific Rim. Along the way she washed dishes in tiny island restaurants, trading her scrubbing skills …

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Wine Ephemera

Our copyeditor for What’s Up Yukon recently sent an e-mail to me, where she related that she had stumbled across an alternate definition for the word “Methuselah”. She cited the online dictionary where it said: Methuselah PRONUNCIATION: (meh-THOO-zuh-luh) MEANING: noun: 1. An extremely old man. 2. An over-sized wine bottle holding approximately six litres. ETYMOLOGY: …

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The Ideal Wine Collection?

As I mentioned in my last article, I have been invited to develop a wine list for a restaurant that a neighbour of mine plans to open in the next four to six weeks. I was interested, and flattered, that she wanted my input. It also occurred to me that if a reader wanted to …

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Open that Bottle of Wine Night!

Last week, I visited the Wall Street Journal website to read the most recent article by my favourite wine writers, Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher … it wasn’t there! They retired at the end of 2009. They had my dream job: they are a married couple who, for a dozen years, had written the best …

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Wine on the Go

Last week I was cornered by someone who asked what her options were for taking wine along on a paddling trip. For me, part of the experience of enjoying the outdoors is to end a day with friends by setting up camp with a great view, a good dinner and a glass or two of …

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Message in a Bottle

I try to write a wine column every couple of weeks, unless life gets crazy, as it has over the past month or so. In that period of time, I will usually get the chance to have perhaps two or three dinners where I will want to serve a bottle of wine. Because I’m such …

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Turning to Argentinian Whites

In the week that followed the holidays, when I returned to earth with a thump to reflect on the fun and parties and food and drink I had consumed over the holiday season, there was a moment when I thought I’d spend all of January eating those boxes of mandarin oranges, and drinking nothing by …

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Washington Comes to Yukon

Most Canadian wine drinkers are pretty familiar with California wines. Their Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays have been celebrated in such movies as Sideways and Bottleshock, and their top-of-the-line Cabernet Sauvignons, like the 2007 Screaming Eagle Cab, can command prices of $2,400-3,400 a bottle (US pricing)! A visit to the Yukon Liquor Corporation (YLC) will yield …

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Wine Money Diet: Part 2

One of the delights of wine is that there are always surprises to be found and bargains to be enjoyed, if you are open to trying new things or going off the beaten path. I thought I had a pretty good handle on the Yukon Liquor Corp selection until I went on my “money diet”, …

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Why Wines Differ

Last night a friend stopped by for dinner. He brought moose sausages to grill; I boiled up some Yukon grown red potatoes and added butter and rosemary. We washed it down with the better part of a bottle of one of my “go to” bottles of Italian red wine, a 2009 Citra Montepulciano D’Abrruzzo (about …

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Trying Some Malbecs

After more than a month of grey skies and rain, the sun finally made a re-appearance over my lake. Still, it feels like it is too late for summer, with the first trees turning yellow, the underbrush taking on reddish hues, and falling leaves starting to mass on my road. I am trying to find …

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Planning a Wine Tasting

Several months ago I was asked by my friend Wendy in Dawson City to plan a wine tasting at her B&B, Bombay Peggy’s. We’ll be doing it over the May long weekend, so by the time you read this it will have been completed. I was explaining to a friend the thinking that I was …

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New Finds from Italy (in time for Thanksgiving)

A recent article on the consumption of Italian wine pointed out that, for the first time, the value of Italian wines exported was greater than the value of that consumed by Italians at home. In 2010, Italy exported 3.93 billion euros ($5.3 billion in Canadian dollars) worth of wine, while spending 3.89 billion euros ($5.25 …

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Two Fine, Big Reds

This is a funny time of year in the Yukon. The return of the light and the moving forward of the clocks speaks to the impending arrival of spring. The other day I stood outside my cabin and heard birds calling their songs out, and thought… am I just noticing these calls, though they have …

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Treats for Summer Evenings

It took until the middle of July, but it seems (I don’t want to jinx us) that summer has arrived in the Yukon! The past two weekends have actually been HOT, and I’ve been lucky enough to spend two Saturdays nights kayaking, swimming and sitting outside with friends, enjoying picnic dinners and treats off an …

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The Other Side of the Andes

In my last several articles, I have been reviewing a number of inexpensive, yet tasty Malbec and Malbec blend red wines from Argentina. The high altitudes, dry climates and pure waters of the Andes contribute to the growing of terrific grape stock, which makes a large contribution to the success of the Argentinian wine industry. …

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Tasting the Money Diet

It wasn’t until I moved to the Yukon six years ago that I heard the term “money diet”, but I immediately liked the concept. Sometimes we diet because our life circumstances require it in order to restore or maintain our health. Other times we do it just because we are feeling a little beyond what …

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Looking off the beaten path

Searching for wines is a little bit like a scavenger hunt at times, and sometimes it calls for looking at the outliers of the wine world for new and exciting finds. Here in the Yukon, we’re well familiar with French, Italian, American and Australian wines. More recently Canadian, Argentinian and Chilean wines have become more …

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Refreshing Riff Rock

The members of Whitehorse’s newest band, Abscess of the Dog (AOTD), sit in a comfortable Riverdale living room and drink scotch. Matt Larsen, the band’s drummer, is a new father, and that is cause for celebration. Larsen, Lars Jessup and Kinden Kosick were friends long before they were ever bandmates. Jessup and Larsen are both …

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