I enjoy trying to pair almost any dish with the right wine—but not everybody does. In fact, there are even hundreds of Toronto restaurants that might be missing out on the whole concept.

“One of the common tropes in epicurean circles is that ethnic cuisines do not pair with wine so much as it does with rum and beer,” says sommelier Beverly Crandon, of Caribbean extraction herself. “These preconceived notions make wine that much less approachable to first- and second-generation diaspora dwellers (Caribbean, Latin, African, and East Indian).”

That means that many restaurant-goers are not even bothering to ask for more wine options, and that many facilities are missing the boat by not providing a thoughtful wine list on the menu to help better service and educate their clientele.

Crandon, along with a team from African-Caribbean and Latin roots, are trying to rectify that missed opportunity with Spring into Spice. The second annual edition of this one-day festival will take place June 3 at the Stanley Barracks Gardens at Toronto’s Hotel X, but I got to experience a sampling of the spicy event last week at The Kettle on Queen Street West. It was a global mashup of tapas, pairing traditional Indian flavours with international wines, but with an Ontario leaning, including a Niagara wine from each of Cave Spring Vineyard, Nyarai Cellars and 80x Wines.

It was a reminder that the type of wines Ontario does particularly well—from rosé and sparkling to off-dry Riesling—tend to make excellent pairings for spicy foods.

“It’s important for us to represent Ontario—we have great wines in our own back yard—but to showcase other regions too, because the festival is all about diversity. ‘Try this dish from Trinidad with this white wine from Rueda, Spain!’” Crandon adds. “The festival was ultimately born because I found that people from certain cultures weren’t pairing wines with their food. They were doing that because there was this narrative running in their heads that said, ‘You can’t do that.’ So we started ‘Spring and Spice’ to change that narrative and to get people to experience cuisines they’ve never had before and wines they’ve never tried before—all in an open-air and non-pressure environment, so that they can discover all these new things and learn something about other cultures.”

The Kettle was an apropos venue for the media event. Founded a year ago by chef Faiz Shaikh and Sana Lakdawala, the restaurant offers modern Indian Fusion cuisine, highlighting the “mouth-watering flavour of India in a Canadian way.”

Our five-course tapas menu tantalized the tastebuds:

Brussel Sprouts Pakora with organic chutney, paired with Cave Spring’s Blanc de Blanc Estate sparkling

Crispy Marsala Tandoori Fish with Spain’s Diez Siglos Nékora Verdejo 2020

Chicken Shami Kabob with 80x Wines’ When Pigs Fly Rosé

Pulled Beef Nihari Crostini with California’s Conundrum Red

Gulab Jamun Cheesecake with Nyarai Cellars’ 2021 Folklore.

Our luncheon coincided with the launch of the 2023/24 Wine Country Ontario Travel Guide. Featuring 150 Ontario VQA wineries, it’s the largest edition ever. You won’t find Nyarai Cellars on any of the maps, as it’s a virtual winery, meaning the grapes are purchased from various vineyards, but the winemaker employs equipment and someone else’s winery to produce the final product. I was lucky enough to sit with Nyarai winemaker Steve Byfield, the only Black winemaker in Canada. (The name Nyarai (pronounced Na-Rye), incidentally, is derived from the Southern African Shona dialect, meaning “humility,” and the talented Byfield certainly exemplifies the attribute.) Byfield will be in attendance next month at Spring into Spice.

For more info about the event, click here, and to learn a little more about The Kettle, click here.