Jamie Kennedy is making me check my labels.
Not ten minutes after speaking with the Toronto chef, I find myself making a cup of tea and looking at where the hell my "Duende" cuppa came from.
But then Kennedy has that effect.
A longtime advocate of organic growing, local sourcing, and biodynamic farming, Kennedy puts his practises where his beliefs are, and come February 8th, he'll be hosting an event at his Wine Bar to prove it.
Domaine Marc Kreydenweiss is a French winery renowned not only for their lovely wines and spirits, but for their biodynamic farming practises -a natural approach that involves refraining from chemical pesticides and a respect for soil reconstitution based on seasonal treatments.
Antoine Kreydenweiss, official spokesman for the winery, is travelling from Alsace for an evening of wine pairings and tastings, commencing at JK Wine Bar at 8pm. The night before (Thursday), he'll be at The Fine Wine Reserve for an evening of tasting and discussion.
That the Kreydenweiss winery fits into Kennedy's overall vision of healthful, natural food in sync with nature is no surprise.
Kennedy says he was concerned with local sourcing and organic food as far back as "the Palmerston days", a reference to the beloved restaurant he ran in the 1980s. That dedication, he says, " resulted in alliance of growers and users -whether they be consumers, regular citizens or chefs -to focus, foster & nurture relationships between growers and users in that field."
The consumers at the wine bar, he explains are " eager to try anything we present.", noting that customers have become more conscious in their consumption practises.
"There's a growing sense of trust about those kinds of direct relationships that weren't as important to people 10 or 15 years ago. It's taken other parts of society to recognize the way we're going is not good in a larger sense. People are more tuned into things like their carbon footprint, fossil fuels -things like that -and it's not limited to our sector of the economy, either. These are issues we've talked about for 20 years or more."
Environmental awareness -from food production to wineries and beyond -is something Kennedy says goes past the merely fashionable.
"It's here to stay, it's not a trend," he says passionately, "Yes, I do think there's a food culture developing -but part of that is identifying what's unique and what you do in that place."
Because the nature of the wine bar is seasonal (its menu changes daily), there is what Kennedy calls "the anticipation of things becoming available according to season, and that in turn, is what becomes more important -because people -rightly so -should look forward to the taste of asparagus in spring, not settle for mediocre asparagus year round."
The practise of seasonal, local, organic cultivation is one that has a natural extension to viniculture, too.
"Guys like Kreydenweiss don't brag about it," he explains, noting that another biodynamic grower, Chapoutier, have an equally big winery in the Rhone, "It's time for these kinds of farming practises, and relying on chemical input year after year ...it depletes organic matter, renders the soil dead. The plants can only respond to what you put in, rather than the soil regenerating its own material."
So the question is, how can the average food-loving person respond?
"Become more active," says Kennedy firmly, "Support local by buying it. The more people buy it, the less it'll cost."
Sounds like a delicious recipe to me.
For more information on the wine events, go to www.wineonline.ca.
For information on Domaine Marc Kreydenweiss, go to www.kreydenweiss.com.
For information on Jamie Kennedy, go to www.jamiekennedy.ca.
