Quaffing – @sommeligay

I couldn’t come up with a witty title but here’s a cool Sardinian wine I drank made from a grape called Monica

May 25, 2020May 25, 2020 by Josh

I’m always distracted. If I’m not paying attention in my algorithms lecture, I’m reading about the soils of Beaujolais. If I’m not paying attention in a work meeting, I’m recounting the grand cru vineyards of Alsace’s Bas-Rhin in my head. If I’m actively not putting this presentation together on Champagne producers, I’m typing about a grape I’ve never tried before. Daddy needs some positive stimuli in this gross whirlwind and this wine happens to be today’s diversion.

Picked this up during yesterday’s session of exercise, which literally just involved me walking 30 minutes to an inconveniently located grocery store and back home. Counting the previous night’s steps on an app the day after dancing at a nightclub obviously isn’t going to cut it anymore.… read more

Sissy That Wine: Trixie Mattel and Katya

October 2, 2017 by Josh

My current journey has led me to San Francisco’s tech world, where the constant and profuse flow of genius rarely wanes. This city has drilled its tech life into me so viciously that I regretfully find myself trying to turn every non-work situation into a slightly more productive one. Did I buy a bottle of Dolcetto to enjoy before going to see Trixie Mattel’s drag show, only to force myself to write a detailed draft blog post on the grape? Possibly. Did I hand out two sets of business cards to four people I met in line for Katya’s drag show? Maybe. Did I use the 60 seconds I had, meeting Trixie and Katya, to ask what their favourite wines were?… read more

Quaffing

On pairing wines with moods: Keber 2015 Bianco Collio

August 16, 2017August 16, 2017 by Josh

I suppose pairing wine with a mood is sort of like pairing wine and food, where you can either complement the atmosphere, like a melty and indulgent oaked Viognier for a broken heart – or contrast – like a taut and high-acid sparkling Riesling to slap you in the face and tell you to get your shit together. There are classic pairings, though, like oysters and Muscadet, and pairings like Champagne and merriment weave together well enough that their sales correlate with the average American income in the following year; wines like vintage port seem fitting as a pensively cerebral way of celebrating a journey involving arduous efforts.

What a surprise, then, that this wine from northeast Italy was an unintentional complement to the previous night, providing cologne-like florals, gentle intrigue, but a nice level of restraint.… read more

Quaffing

Demière-Ansiot Champagne Blanc de Blancs Grand Cru Brut

August 12, 2017August 12, 2017 by Josh

I’m not going to pretend that an ill-planned day involving a rideshare vehicle arriving at the same time as an unexpectedly delayed train deserves a bottle of wine, but I’m going to go ahead and say that it does because my standards are low this week. Maybe they usually are?

Part of me wonders whether watching all three seasons of The Great British Baking Show on Netflix counts as doing something productive on my spare time – though a friend unquestionably defeated me in that domain by finishing up the first season at the gym. I’ve convinced myself that kneading dough burns calories though, or maybe I’m just doing it wrong: one particular odd spark of inspiration on a Monday involved my regular two pans of cauliflower pizza followed by seventeen empanadas and twenty-four pandesal buns.… read more

Life · Quaffing

On Nova Scotian bubbles, mature Friulano, and aged Californian Chardonnay

June 9, 2017 by Josh

It’s an odd feeling – I’ve spent a decent spoonful of my adult life working outside of Canada, enough that I have to think twice about which boxes and lines I have to fill out on forms. Also very real: living through the lengthy process of waiting at the DMV, and wondering whether I should list my height in centimetres to throw the workers off, only to realize that it’s probably best not to potentially risk going back to the end of the line. Can Fahrenheit not?

Wine availability, politics, and markets are markedly different in Vancouver compared to San Francisco, and keeping my nose close to both is a bit of a challenge, especially with the constantly evolving wine scene in Canada.… read more

Quaffing

Pairing fumes with Italy’s Fumin

January 27, 2017January 27, 2017 by Josh

No – I didn’t misspell “Furmint”, Hungary’s distictive superstar producing fierce white wines. Fumin is missing Furmint’s “T” and “R” – and trust me – many of us would gladly remove the “U” and “M” and be left with “FIN”. And we all know there has purportedly been too much “P” to remove.

Like major historic and tumultuous events that get recorded in textbooks but that people now choose to ignore, Italy’s Valle d’Aosta is a region that always seems like a brief whisper of an afterthought in most wine reference books I’ve read, and a region which has its indigenous Fumin, a black grape with the potential to create cherry-scented, dark-fruited, and muscly wines that are sometimes added to blends for colour and brawn. … read more

Life · Quaffing · Tasting

2016 was questionable, so here are 20 wines to pair with 2017

January 18, 2017January 18, 2017 by Josh

I ended a past blog post – themed: a review of 2015 – with the words “Welcome, 2016. I will cut you.” Though I feel like I did personally make some substantial dents in this crunchy titanium can of a year, the general consensus seems to be that we created a blueprint for goodness, but then said blueprint was stolen, lit on fire, and then puréed with an unwashed beige-coloured towel embroidered with the words “~fUcK yOu~”, styled in Comic Sans MS.

I won’t fill this post with hopes for 2017 so that I don’t build myself a bigger bowl of disappointment, but instead will list wines that remind me of an upwards trend of hope, a vague connection to the vapid consolation of Pantone’s Color of the Year, a fresh and flora-driven yellow-green named “Greenery“.… read more

Life · Quaffing · Tasting

24 wines for turning 24

April 11, 2016June 24, 2016 by Josh

This post serves two purposes: a sincere smile-and-nod to the 23rd year of my life, and a spring cleaning wine dump of, coincidentally, a number of bottles that equals the number of anniversaries since I was pushed out of my mother. Alas. The past prime number of a year has been good to me, and I’m stoked for the next. Beyond this whole becoming-an-adult thing, I’ve done many things including completing the WSET Diploma (i hate to keep mentioning about it – but perhaps the youngest in BC to do so!), changing jobs, travelling to New York, travelling to France, travelling to Spain, and other things that would probably be best not to put on the internet. Heh.

And home. Oh God – connecting to your roots and family – sometimes I dig myself way too deep into wine culture and its countries that I forget where I come from.… read more

Quaffing · Tasting

The good, the bad, and the bubbly: 9 bottles to bathe in

April 8, 2016 by Josh

Okay – not literally, obviously, but I’m waiting for Gwyneth Paltrow’s new beauty regime that involves using a specific wines as exfoliants and face mask ingredients. Chardonnay from Puligny-Montrachet? Fuck that, she would say, with the flick of a finger. Chassagne-Montrachet is where it’s at. Or blanc de blancs Champagne, only from the 1996 vintage. And, of course, cucumber slices. Maybe an avocado.

Anyways, here’s a random collection of bub. I’ve finally tried a legit sparkling Nebbiolo after having joked about it for so long, and then there’s also a birth year bottle of Dom Pérignon, a stunningly electric sparkling British Columbian Riesling, and a collection of other cool and uncool bottles. It’s become suddenly warm in Vancouver, and I broke the summer hiking seal on the last day of March.… read more

Life · Quaffing

On Dim Sum, Champagne, and not drinking

January 27, 2016January 30, 2016 by Josh

To be more specific, my shitty New Year’s Resolution is to only allow myself to drink in the company of other people, having only broken this rule (before its inception) on January 1st: a seemingly un-celebratory bottle of Trebbiano d’Abruzzo. We’re only a month in, and yes – it’s been difficult. Of course, the temptation drifts in front of me like a horse and a carrot: I work in the industry, I’ve returned to work hours that demand refreshment, and I study wine frequently. But it’s always the third day of no alcohol that’s the worst, where a sour mood brews and where my perception of the quiet becomes even quieter. Ugh. I’m also catching up on the latter half of Breaking Bad; someone just opened a bottle of Pol Roger and I’m dying.… read more