Quaffing

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

Posted on 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

Tasting

Look I’m just going to post about these 11 Champagnes I tasted in August 2018 and forgot about because life is just going to get worse and the more I wait the more inappropriate it’ll get 

Posted on by Josh

Studying Champagne while your life is going through several circumstances for which Champagne is simply Not Acceptable is a weird moment. Or maybe it is acceptable. I haven’t decided yet. All I know is that it’s been a pendulum of anxiety and excitement, and suddenly every day seems simultaneously too slow and too fast.

Zoom presentations on 21 Champagne producers? Yes! All for it, but presenting Gaston Chiquet and telling a funny story about their blanc de blancs and your last birthday in Vancouver before moving to San Francisco while trying to budget finances at the corner of your eye is real. Falling asleep in a bathroom: real.

…actually, there may be a reason for Champagne, but I don’t wanna say what that is yet.… read more

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

Collio Me by Your Name

Posted on by Josh

Real talk: Call Me by Your Name was one of the only few new films I watched in 2017 and it was beautifully made and acted and needed in this world and deserved all its accolades, but I thought it was slightly overhyped? Bye! We can argue about this offline over an actual glass of Collio something. I mean, part of the film took place near Lake Garda so we could hypothetically sip Soave Classico or Lugana instead, but they also travel to Bergamo so I wouldn’t mind tossing out drunken thoughts over Franciacorta. Or all the above.

I can’t believe I already fly out to Japan in less than a week for a conference, and I’m severely underprepared in so many ways.… read more

Tasting

Amarone in the streets, Recioto in the sheets, Raboso if you cancel on me.

Posted on by Josh

I can now cross Utah off the list of places I’ve been, y’all. Apparently the aggressive snowfall stopped for the 24 hours a colleague and I went to Park City for a work thing, so the snowy mountains were a nice distraction from the frigid air I sometimes despise. Anyways, I got sick when I got back, because the elevations of Park City actually can allegedly fuck you up. I didn’t believe our driver from the airport, but there you go.

I always recall a particular Veneto 2014 wine sesh (damn, was it 2014?!) where we did the typical run of Veneto wines along with a wine made from the relatively obscure Raboso grape, which basically means “angry” – maybe due to its big tannic bite.… read more

Tasting

Gay wine culture is pairing Lagrein with La Grindr

Posted on by Josh

Y’all, I was doing so well with these blog posts and then suddenly I’m behind by like all of them. It’s possible that the wines this particular week foreshadowed this climb in terrifying to-do lists and feigned self-hair-pulls, whose bottles of detailed intensities and precise flavours were just as spirited as the flawed bottles of oxidized Müller-Thurgau and corked Schiava. Which – by the way – picking up even just the slightest bit of cork taint is a weird way to edge your confidence back up after insisting that your nose is broken in some way.

Do pray tell, who decided that a queer dance event lasting from 2PM until 8PM was a good idea? (This is me trying to project my own bad decisions on other people.)… read more

Tasting

My favourite position is Dogliani style

Posted on by Josh

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

Tasting

Valtellina, this is a lip sync for your life we need to see your lips

Posted on by Josh

As a west coast Canadian native, it slightly hurt to miss the GuildSomm seminar on Ontario wines after having snagged a ticket to slightly make up for missing last year’s Canada-themed Vancouver International Wine Festival. I also missed the first half of the Lombardia and Emilia-Romagna seminar for this week’s Italian Wine Scholar class because of things. I’m missing some marks, y’all. I didn’t get to cry my tears of Canadian Riesling, but I did get to cry tears of Lambrusco. I’m also not afraid of disrupting the middle of class to pour myself a glass of Franciacorta. Bitch, I paid for this course. Give me that fuckin’ yeast.

The week also involved a day of packing and moving to a new apartment.… read more

Tasting

Fumin Behaviour

Posted on by Josh

Friends who’ve taken the challenging WSET diploma have even told me to prepare for the difficult buffoonery of the two-part Italian Wine Scholar course. I was making flash cards on two of Italy’s smallest regions and my hand quickly cramped up in a painful taco-eating position. I’ve got the Valle d’Aosta and Liguria mostly down – two sub-regions which are mere footnotes in most wine reference books – and I fear for study time when it comes to Piedmont and the Veneto. I’m TREMBLING.

Speaking of shitty timing, the two-edged sword of moving homes is happening again! I’m moving closer to the city with, somehow, much cheaper rent and a better location. But that also probably means I have to study flashcards and take apart a bed at the same time?… read more