Category: Travel

Life · Tasting · Travel

Flash Forward Two Vintages

Posted on by Josh

I’m doing my best to imagine – in a TV drama-like scenario – how viewers would try and piece together the events that happened if my last post was the season finale and this was the premiere of the next. Writing book summaries in grade school prepared me for this moment, y’all. Insert a moment to crack my knuckles and stretch my muscles here. Because my fingers typing up all these words is the only exercise my quarantined ass is getting up here on this day.

Anyways, a conscious decision to pause writing was all intentional rather than accidental – the last 2 years have been an exercise in focussing less on wine and more on other parts of myself: a deep-dive into all things queer, Filipino, gastronomic, and cultural, with some splashes of cocktails and wine in between.… read more

Life · Tasting · Travel

On Tokyo, Central Italy, and Miss Vanjie

Posted on by Josh

I wish I could insert a montage of video clips here, combining all the clusterfucks and thrills of the past few months, but written description will have to do. Also, apologizing for a lack of posts is a tired cliché of the peak LiveJournal era, so I won’t do it. Oh, to be 13 again.

Imagine leading a tasting on Japanese whiskies – in Tokyo!

But also, imagine being so disorganized that you plan your Tokyo activities while waiting to board the plane, get lost from hopping on the wrong train from the airport, and have the police yell at your conference’s group in Japanese as we wrestled and tackled each other in Ginza. At some point in the week, you meet up with a Frenchman who tells you a story about the Japanese boyfriend that he keeps secret from his wife and kids, but is still lonely enough to crave your company: he doesn’t say it, but even as we overlook the city, he feels a claustrophobia about Tokyo that’s temporarily soothed by our sashimi and Bordeaux barrel-aged Japanese whisky.… read more

Tasting · Travel

Souzãoberry Fields Forever: hang time with Portuguese grapes in Lodi

Posted on by Josh

Of the mad scientist-viticulturist laboratory that is Lodi, California, we’ve touched upon southern French varieties; grapes classically grown in cooler areas of Europe like Germany and Austria; and Lodian odes to Spanish wines. We reached the part of the conference where we would end up on one of twenty-or-so different excursions – and to complete the circle of a trip, or at least extend the semi-circle or whatever – I eventually decided to go on the excursion that hinted at a visit to a winery with a heavy lean towards Portuguese grape varieties.

What the fuck is Souzão, anyways? Let’s whip out a tome and read the following paragraph in our Jancis voices. (She is, by the way, in the running for being my Snatch Game impression if I’m ever on RuPaul’s Drag Race.)… read more

Tasting · Travel

I’ll be your Zin-ner in secret

Posted on by Josh

First of all, Carly Slay Jepsen’s Emotion: Side B. Better than the original album? Is this reference still relevant? How long will it take my roommate to notice I’m drinking all of his gin? Should I pair these wines with a pathetic recollection of that time I actually met Carly Rae Jepsen at a Marianas Trench concert while interning for their record company? These are the questions I want answered vaguely by fortune cookies and clairvoyant wine pairings.

(Also, thanks to this post, the beginning of Run Away With Me starts playing every time I sip Zinfandel, which… honestly should help in blind tastings anyways?)

The idiotic association: Zinfandel is a chancy variety whose grape bunches ripen at different speeds, such that you might have a bunch containing all of unripe, ripe, and dried berries.… read more

Tasting · Travel

Getting drunk-ish with Bokisch

Posted on by Josh

Upon a first visit to the area, I’m not surprised that Lodi’s land is as flat as my love life oft is, because, perhaps unfairly, I expected the mainstream homeland of Zinfandel to be just that. Zing.

For real, though: we arrive at Bokisch, which from what I remember at the time, had more slopes than I remember in all of Lodi – and then a big oak tree located in the middle of some vineyards that was so prominent that “giant oak” was literally listed in our prepared itinerary, under which we would have a lunch, themed northeastern Spain. Barcelona flashbacks. There may have been a flying wine camera drone but anything could’ve happened at this point.

Like our lunch, the wines of Bokisch focus on Spanish grape varieties – another spellbinding sector of Lodi’s experimental temperament, like the German grape varieties grown in Lodi that we had tried earlier.… read more

Tasting · Travel

My neck, my Bacchus

Posted on by Josh

Most of the wine people I know got into its magical world after tasting some kind of superlative bottle that made them orgasm right into the industry. Like, we get it: you had a teaspoon of 1982 Bordeaux and wept. I literally had canned cranberry sauce with a corner store sandwich just a few weeks ago that was so good that it made me re-evaluate my life, so I guess I understand you.

myneckmyback

As much as I say that Marechal Foch is better as a drag name than it is a wine grape, and that most Canadian Cabernet Sauvignon is best used to remove dead skin off the soles of your feet, I absolutely live for the weird unorthodox shit. After waking up at 4AM to pick Viognier at Michael David winery, we arrive at the Mokelumne Glen vineyard, where 48 different German and Austrian wine grape varieties (clones included in this number) are grown. … read more

Tasting · Travel

Getting Harney in Lodi

Posted on by Josh

After the magic that was Acquiesce (everything’s magic after ingesting wine but the wines were good), our pre-excursion group meandered to the Lizzy James vineyard, sipped some Zin, and then went to Harney Lane winery. I remember how distracted I get in vineyards, simultaneously trying to soak in all the personal stories and vineyard information while trying to find refuge for my naked round head. Sunscreen’s a no-no since it fucks with everyone’s nasal cavity, and so is eucalypt-scented shaving cream, where in specific cases I’ve made people sniff my fresh head at tastings just to make sure I’ve done no sin. I attempted to kneel behind someone’s outrageously large clown hat.

My “I’m actually here!” montage lasted longer during my first year at the WBC, and gets cut off more brusquely every year, but thankfully our welcoming visit at Harney Lane extends the honeymoon phase and we all share some rosé, some unfermented Albariño juice, and then lovely dinner where I catch up with old friends and make some new ones.… read more

Tasting · Travel

The time has come for you to lip-sting for… your… life.

Posted on by Josh

I imagine that the Venn diagram representing the overlapping sets of people who are familiar with Picpoul and people who watch RuPaul’s Drag Race is smaller than those who drink Prosecco and watch the Bachelor, but if you happen to find yourself in the middle of this precious diagram, we need to be best friends immediately. One half of said diagram would be able to tell you that Picpoul is the southern French grape that can release lemony power and body, and therefore purportedly translates to “lip-stinger”; the other half of the diagram would be able to tell you that the premiere to RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars season 2 was amazing.

I did not drink Picpoul that night but instead watched the episode at a bar in the Castro hosted by season 5’s Honey Mahogany.… read more

Life · Tasting · Travel

Brun-hello? It’s me. San Francisco and a throwback to 12 bottles

Posted on by Josh

You guys! It’s been around three weeks since I’ve arrived in San Francisco for what I’ve been telling everyone are secret wine projects. Which they are. It hasn’t really kicked in that I’m here yet, to be honest, and the whole city just seems like a stretched-out Vancouver with Inception-like shifting of buildings. And much less green. It’s like Vancouver and San Francisco were made from the same grape – but clearly have different expressions – like Chianti and Brunello, or something.

And it’s fucking tech central, you guys. I mean – yes, obviously – but have you seen HBO’s Silicon Valley? I’m convinced that it’s not satire. Attempting to suavely grab a baby carrot while maintaining eye contact during someone’s pitch during a Stanford mixer, and then accidentally dipping your hand in a bowl of ranch dressing?… read more

Life · Quaffing · Tasting · Travel

Barcelona: Cava to end the Saga

Posted on by Josh

Spoiler alert: my few days in Spain were better than my two and a half weeks in France. Sorry, France. I was rooting for you, we were all rooting for you. #BeQuietTiffany

Our hostel was superior to the one in Paris: Erin and I helped cook dinner one night, we met a Canadian from Edmonton, and we made a cab driver go through McDonalds after a hostel-hosted bar-hopping session that eventually ended on a club next to a beach. And then drinking on said beach, which was a reaaaaal big blur. Have you ever drunkenly told someone they look like Ygritte from Game of Thrones way too many times?

There’s a story later that night involving myself ejecting the Devil’s Liquids from my soul, but let’s just summarize here and say that I fucking covered that up better than all of the Desperate Housewives would have, combined.… read more