@sommeligay

(The night is dark and full of small spoilers. Tread carefully past the picture for the wines!)

I mention Beaujolais to people – in the same way that I might bring up Sansa Stark in a Game of Thrones discussion – and I watch as faces crinkle before I make my case for the dark horses.

Gamay is a red grape that hails from the Beaujolais region in France (and Sansa hails from Winterfell, but you knew that), and it’s fashionable to dislike Beaujolais. The ditzy Beaujolais Nouveau variations of the 1970s and 1980s – all laden with pear drops, banana, and bubble gum flavours from carbonic maceration – once represented half of all Beaujolais sold. It’s since dropped to around a third, but I find that a large fraction of consumers can’t seem to shake the image of what might be the essence of season 1 Sansa.… read more

Tasting

Rosé? For spring? Groundbreaking.

April 27, 2016April 27, 2016 by Josh

Seminar led by the Wine Diva, but I’m quoting diva Meryl Streep, obviously. If you didn’t get that reference then why are we even friends? But really: I would wholeheartedly pair The Devil Wears Prada with a Loire wine. You’d need something light – maybe aloof – yet cutting, and dry. Also, that movie turns 10 this year? What?

I’ve once again come a little too underdressed for such an event, but I can’t help it because it’s muggy, sunny, and I like mesh a little too much. Cool off with Loire wines? Probably one of the favourite French areas of from last year’s Europe trip. My wallet cried.

Anyways, I think my main point here is that people need to get excited about weird Chenin Blanc and elegant light reds. … read more

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

Tasting

8 Variations on Braida’s Barbera, the Arya Stark of Wine Grapes

March 24, 2016March 26, 2016 by Josh

(Spoiler alert, sort of! Seek refuge underneath the picture below to avoid such things.)

I always saw Barbera as the Arya Stark to Sansa Stark’s Gamay Noir. It’s neither the king nor the queen of Italy’s Piedmont, which, in effect, belongs to Nebbiolo’s Barolo and Barbaresco, but it’s also not the bourgeois Dolcetto. No: I see Barbera as a trick, a ninja often producing wines unfortunately crafted into expressions that are sour and thin and second or third-rate, when in fact, it can produce wines with such concentration and shrill acidity, you’d swear that your mouth was being deliciously pierced by castle-forged steel. It’s a grape that brings in cash for producers while Nebbiolo unfurls itself in the cellar.

And, when it’s oaked – a style that Giacomo Bologna of Braida pioneered in the 1970s with Bricco dell’Uccellone – you might lose a bit of Barbera’s vibrant mouth-puckering red fruit (read: its identity), but you get more spice, mystery, and complexity.… read more

Tasting

You can’t spell “Amarone” without “moan”: on 18 bottles at the 2016 VIWF

March 23, 2016March 26, 2016 by Josh

I don’t know what my point is. Amarone is great before sex? In lieu of it? During, as a suggested pairing that I’d secretly sneak into some conservative wine magazine one day? Maybe, if your sex consists of dark chocolate, Careless Whisper, and a comfy mattress. Which, let’s be real: Amarone is basically a liquid version of such.

The northeastern Italian wine, a style of Valpolicella, is famed for producing sumptuous Corvina-based wines from dried grapes. My tasting notes usually consist of some kind of full texture, a handful of dried fruit, some level of chocolate, a variety of spices, and present structure that never tears the mouth apart. I’m tasting (almost) all of them at the Vancouver International Wine Festival (like I did with Prosecco, Nebbiolo, and Brunello), in order to further understand the scope of the styles.… read more

Tasting

20 Prosecchi because Champagne is hella expensive and it’s only Tuesday

March 22, 2016March 22, 2016 by Josh

The thing is that Prosecco can be like a Top 40 pop star whose songs all start sounding the same, which isn’t a bad thing – because I will literally dance to 80s Madonna even if it starts to play during a formal speech by the Prime Minister – in the same way that I’d down Prosecco regardless of the occasion. But yes: like Champagne, Prosecco seems to be all in the branding, but unlike the French bubbly, I feel that the Italian counterpart lacks a depth of individualism within its style. Of course, there exists the distinction between the higher-quality Conegliano and Valdobbiadene regions, the former that yields fruitier wines with some bitterness, and the latter being a bit more floral and subtle.… read more

Tasting

“1000 Years in Tuscany”: Getting Sangio-crazy with Barone Francesco Ricasoli

March 10, 2016March 22, 2016 by Josh

I was never really a history buff in high school. What I did, though, was take all of the sciences and maths unnecessarily earlier than I needed to, during, which I hate to admit, the coinciding apogee of the Big Bang Theory. I once took pride in every comparison to Leonard Hofstadter I received in university – which was purely from a fashion standpoint, of course – because I realized how dull I found quantum mechanics. Cringeworthy half-stories aside, I really mean to say that I’ve totally reversed: I’ve started to appreciate history in general as I got deeper into wine, and sometimes it’s such a shame that having serious game plans to taste wines means I have to skip principals and their stories.… read more

Tasting

12 other white Italian grapes for when you’re over Pinot Grigio

March 1, 2016March 22, 2016 by Josh

It’s clear that we’ve taken a departure from the experimental seminars of 2015’s Australia to the tacit themes of longevity and traditionalism of 2016’s theme of Italy for the Vancouver International Wine Festival. It’s expected that the colossal tasting room is skewed towards the stars of Tuscany, Piedmont, and Veneto, so this leaves the underdogs few and far between. There is not one Dolcetto (yeah I know: who cares) nor one pearl-clutching Franciacorta being poured during the whole festival, nor are there enough Montepulciano for me to make a terrible d’Ab(ruzzo) joke, so last year’s boner for Australian Touriga Nacional would have to be partially satiated by a seminar on all things white and distinctively not Pinot Grigio. I often find the whites of Italy frustratingly subtle – which probably says more about my taste above anything else – but this’ll be a nice opportunity to break things down past this pigeonhole.… read more

Tasting

A bored ho tastes Bordeaux (2013)

February 18, 2016February 19, 2016 by Josh

Bordeaux is in a bit of a tough spot at the moment – which isn’t saying much – but it’s far from being an underdog: Eric Asimov discusses this in a New York Times article in May 2010. The region in question once simultaneously exuded both normalcy and the unattainable; a seemingly conventional gateway wine to all other wines, yet having this aura of hubris and higher social status. But now that so many more wines are available, and with a new generation seeking wines that are anything but normal, it seems that less people are raising their hands for the classic French region. But I mean hey: people still whore out special bottles of Bordeaux for likes on Instagram, and a blog post on the mass-produced Mouton Cadet 2012, for some reason, is quite statistically popular.… read more