Tasting

My favourite position is Dogliani style

Real talk: installing six pieces of IKEA furniture on a Sunday with subsequent plans to write, study, and plug away at a work report is a stupidly ambitious goal, but I knew plans wouldn’t work out as soon as I woke up hungover to see the delivery truck arrive just outside the window. Who says yesterday’s steamed golden lava bun-stained shirt isn’t fashionable? Cue scenes with nails that won’t screw and Viognier to quell such frustrations, and then Googling how many calories are spent putting furniture together for eight hours. And then, do you ever have fucking fantastic conversations with an AIDS physician on a Saturday night and 5-more-minutes yourself way too many times? Jesus Christmas.

Piedmont week is the thicc daddy of the Northern Italian portion of the Italian Wine Scholar, so you might imagine such panic coinciding with work and moving.… read more

Quaffing · Tasting

Odd Italy

The Vancouver International Wine Fest of 2016 is creeping up slowly – already? I distantly remember my tongue-related worries about trying Shiraz after Shiraz after Shiraz, so a duplicate worry replaced with the acidic Sangiovese grape was the first thing that came to mind when I found out that the theme for 2016 was Italy. And originally I wasn’t super stoked to find out Italy was the featured region, but recent bottles of inspiration have reminded me of grapes and regions I, for some reason, forgot to consider. I’m secretly hoping there will be a seminar on something fucked like a long flight of artisanal Pinot Grigio or “You Won’t Believe These 8 Pinot Grigios That Pair Well With Shitty Buzzfeed Videos”.… read more

Life · WSET Diploma

WSET Diploma – Unit 3 – Week 10: Piemonte and Veneto

Back to reality. It seems like everyone around me is getting post-holiday ailments but I’m doing my best to survive. The holidays were fun but thankfully, they’re never really over-the-top for me (besides last year’s Soave incident). I swatted all New Year’s Eve plans out of my view in favour for cooking myself a meal, drinking a bottle of wine, and sleeping at around midnight: and you’d think that would end up totally bumming me out, but I had a satisfying sleep as the planet fully rotated into 2015, and I woke up at a decent hour to do some wine reading.

I’m riveting. I know. No hangover: that was a thing, though!

I’m not the biggest fan of New Year’s resolutions, mostly because I don’t plan that far ahead, and because I think it’s weird to make weird and shallow decisions at some quasi-arbitrary time of the year.… read more