Tag: Tannat

Tasting

Swiping left and right on flavour profiles, 2017 edition

Posted on by Josh

Fourth year at the Wine Bloggers Conference and I still haven’t tapped out of the speed blogging portion, you guys! The chaos was unbeknownst to me during my first year in 2014 and I was confused why people chose to skip the session and eat fries at the neighbouring restaurant instead.

The rules to this WBC mainstay are simple: the wine representative has five minutes to pour you wine and talk about it. At the same time – and if you’re playing the game to its fullest – one takes notes, snaps photos, and maybe thinks of something witty about the wine to tweet in that moment. There are ten rounds in total. Speed dating! If this is Tinder for wines, is there a Grindr for wines?… read more

Tasting

New York with Age; Brazil on the Page; Tuscany Backstage

Posted on by Josh

There was another set of seminars: I had to choose between a study on South American wines, the range of Riesling grown in Alsace, or the aging potential of New York wines. When Brandon Seager – the Chair of the Winemaking Department at Tompkins College, Winemaker, and Finger Lakes Wine Country LGBT Ambassador (cool, I didn’t even know that was a thing!) – used Brad Pitt analogies and pictures to explain the nuances of wine aging, I knew that I had chosen the right seminar. Huzzah.

The wines were what I was mostly looking forward to, especially the aged ice wine, which can be quite a divisive topic when it comes to cellaring wine. Opponents of the idea believe that ice wine is best drunk as fresh as possible, as fresh as newly-fallen snow to emphasize the bright and concentrated sweet flavours that bounce in the mouth with flashes of glitter and brightness.… read more

Tasting

Josh tastes 118 wines at Top Drop

Posted on by Josh

If there was one unforgettable takeaway uttered by a wine god during this year’s Wine Bloggers Conference, it was the keynote speaker Karen MacNeil (author of the Wine Bible) who opined – and I’m paraphrasing, here – that people should pay more attention to tasting the wines during such events. Of course, I was thrilled, because that gave me even more validation to ignore people. Ha! Key advice when the militant goal is to taste every wine during a well-curated tasting, but it’s harder than it sounds because I guess I like to wave and flail at people.

A regretful ode to the few tables I did not get to visit: Anthonij Rupert, Badia a Coltibuono, Elio Altare, Giusti, Latta, Montenidoli, Orofino, Scribe, Spottswoode Estate, and that miscellaneous Australia Table.… read more

Life · Tasting

2014 Vancouver International Wine Festival – Wine Tour de France Seminar

Posted on by Josh

This year’s wine fest kicked off with me doing the blind tasting challenge on the Wednesday – the rest of my day consisted of lunch with colleagues, errands involving heavy lifting, and then seeing the new Lego movie. I didn’t get as much sleep as I wanted, which is an obvious call for trouble: the next day started off with a France-themed tasting at 9:30AM; the big, busy, and irritating trade tasting at 2:30PM; and an exciting Bourgogne-themed tasting at 5PM. A day full of constant mouth stimuli.

Since this was one of the trade tastings (opposed to a consumer one), there were lots of familiar faces. But I shamelessly admit that any human interaction is personally difficult and gruelling before 11AM (or maybe I’m just a naturally horrible human being), and so I sat down on one of the seats, smiled at the 12 glasses in front of me, got my notebook ready, and did my best not to spill anything.… read more