A few days ago on a quiet Saturday evening, Dundas Street glittering with warm light from modest windows and doorways, we stepped into Archive, a sometimes familiar haunt of ours that serves small foods and amazing wines. Some years ago, this is where we had discovered the pleasures of Pearl Morissette, a vibrant boutique winery near Jordan Station in Ontario.
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Our visit that evening was to pick up a Pearl Morissette X Perugini panettone, made for them by a seventy year old woman, who's fifth generation baking family, owns La Fralalanghia Ristorante in Bonea, Benevento, Italy (on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius ) and delivered to the winery in time for Christmas.
Panettone is an Italian holiday tradition; a tall sponge cake eaten in slices or just pulled apart and enjoyed by all. This particular beauty in a black Pearl Morissette box is no ordinary cake. Not only lovingly made by someone’s gifted Nonna, it has 500ml of grappa baked into it, along with traces of apricot. I can tell you, it is to die for.
Inside Archive, ready to hand over our holiday treasure and insisting on pouring us a sample of Pearl Morissette’s incredibly complex 2012 Riesling, was the effervescent and passionate Svetlana Atcheva. It seemed she had a problem, a wonderful mistake, a Panettone Predicament!
By some misunderstanding, 400 cakes had arrived at the winery—not the 150 that had been intended when this culinary holiday special was first dreamt. With joy, we sipped the Riesling, tasted a slice, felt it melt in our mouths and bought another—a luxurious treat to be sure, but one made with aged and loving hands, in a way that mass producers could never emulate. Brought to us by the rebellious and masterful team at Pearl Morissette.
A cake to make anyone feel like royalty.
If you hurry, you can have one too and be a part of the Panettone Solution.
Here's a pic of Svetlana and I with my coveted Panettone. I'm so glad I could be part of the solution to the #PanettonePredicament
Happy Holidays from Dead Queens.
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