Looking at a timeline of top Billboard hits is such an absolute trip because the journey back to seemingly vapid bops aligns perfectly with particular stages of my life, bringing back such vivid memories. Rihanna’s Only Girl in the World always sends a jolt down my spine as I recall how it woke me up on the radio alarm during my first year of university; the rise of Lady Gaga’s Poker Face brings back that mandatory intro to info tech course we took in high school, where a classmate introduced me to the song as we did our dreadfully easy typing assignments; and Rihanna’s Work immediately became my theme song during that first month in San Francisco when I co-founded a company.… read more
Tag: Grenache
Gay wine culture: the uncontrollable urge to pair Arroyo Grande wines with Ariana Grande
The stroke of December leads to the dawn of pregnant holiday plans which I’ve decided to not spend in Vancouver for the first time. Christmas, the first of my big two, has passed – and I planned for the Eve to be a quiet one, and it was legitimately fantastic. Why don’t I roast vegetables more often, while listening to Ariana Grande’s Christmas music, and then watch episodes of Grand Hotel while sipping Crémant? I spent the 25th at a friend’s, a polar opposite yang to the previous night’s yin. Ever watch someone combine your Premier Cru Champagne with Korbel, but then have your cringe melt into a shrug because it’s Christmas? Yeah.
And then the other holiday evenings. Y’all. One night involved all of attending the opening of a new exhibit at the GLBT Museum, attending a fantastic art exhibit at Strut, and then drunken shenanigans for a friend’s birthday.… read more
Bay/Bae Wines for Bay/Bae Moments
This city is doing things to me. I willingly and happily went to a networking event, you guys! I mean, it was themed which made it as enticing as free booze at straight equivalents of such events: it was hosted at Oasis by Out in Tech, a company which focusses on LGBTQ+ folks in the tech world. I’ve attended the venue before, in the form of drag shows and fuzzy evenings, but upon a night of networking, it got packed real quickly, the drink lines as straight as the room’s sexualities.
I’m exclaiming my excitement for a queer tech networking event, yet weeks later I’m stoked about a regular one. 20-year-old me is grimacing at 25-year-old me. Also, you know you’ve reached peak queer tech when someone’s name tag says that they work at “U-bear”.… read more
Napa’s 2017
Napa. Its seemingly daunting wine is made up of relatively simply shaped sub-regions. The clean-cut sixteen seem well-fit into a geographical puzzle compared to the overlapping Russian nesting doll appellations of every other region in California, and I am 100% here for that.
I finally ended last week’s mental tug-of-war on whether or not to attend the Wine Bloggers Conference in neighbouring Santa Rosa, and I’ve decided to go but with as much cost-cutting as possible. Though it was super fun, one of the most interesting sessions was the discussion on the recent wine country fires: the panel included George Rose, photographer; Patsy McGaughy, of Napa Valley Vintners; and Pierre Bierbent, winemaker of Signorello Estates.
The descriptions and statistics of the damage were heartbreaking, including 75,000 total acres burned and 652 homes lost. … read more
“Backroads of California”
I can’t believe I even made it to this masterclass, because tickets to these GuildSomm events usually sell out quicker than it takes today’s somm to name their favourite natural wine producer. Then again, I guess it’s a California-themed one held in, well, California, so perhaps everyone else in this city is just more familiar with these tipples. I’ve lived here for around a year, so a masterclass titled “Backroads of California” implies that the theme is the vinous road less travelled – but considering this state was a quasi-neglected region during my WSET diploma studies, you could imagine how badly this information stuck.
That being said, our presenter, Kelli White – author of Napa Valley Then & Now – was a fantastic guide who eventually tipped the scale in my mind in favour of taking the California Wine Appellation Specialist course.… read more
Sissy That Wine: Trixie Mattel and Katya
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
On Vinebox and vials
What entices me about wine startup Vinebox is their potential solution to my half-concerns on purchasing full bottles of wine.
(I get that you might be scoffing – not at the their idea, but at the notion that I have genuine concerns about sipping every last drop out of a bottle like a greedy sink drain.)
The concept is simple: Vinebox sends you a flight of three wines they’ve sourced from different producers, catered to the wine colour of your preference and the kind of wine drinker you are – “adventurous”, “classic”, or “newcomer” – that way, you can have your own alcoholic Dating Game experience and possibly re-order the ones that tickled your fancy in all of their tubular glory, since the leading facet appears in the form of a patented bottling system that re-packages the wines in 100mL glass cylinders.… read more
Getting drunk-ish with Bokisch
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
The time has come for you to lip-sting for… your… life.
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
24 wines for turning 24
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