Tag: Veneto

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

Verdicchi-oh no she betta don’t

Posted on by Josh

Two of my goals for this week were to type up the following tasting notes on the Lugana DOC tasting from the 2017 Wine Bloggers Conference and to also prepare for the first portion of the Italian Wine Scholar course next week. It’s dawned on me that the first month of 2018 hasn’t even ended yet and I’ve become that cliché of a bright-eyed person entering the New Year, biting off more than he could chew. Bitch, or not: I’ve got a bottle of wine and an empty Sunday. Let’s do this.

I’m still going solidly on my book-reading goals for this year though, and for some reason I decided book #3 was literally going to be a fucking textbook on whisky.… read more

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

Gambero Rosso Tre Bicchieri 2017: On Prosecco, Italy’s power bottom

Posted on by Josh

I have no real desire to flesh out this (very real) analogy to fruition, but should it end up inadvertently educating you, my job here is done!

I have even less desire to write another several paragraphs about how much I think people should ditch the tank method Italian sparkling for something yeastier and Maillard-esque. Sorry, guys: sometimes Prosecco is exactly what you need when you’re recording a drag podcast at 11AM on a Monday with your friend who’s in Barcelona (his clock: 8PM). Stop telling me to ditch pears for dough, and soft padding for the sting of overinflated volleyballs. Which were never passed to me in high school gym class, anyways.

It’s obvious that the suited sommeliers don’t flock to bottles of Prosecco at events like San Francisco’s Gambero Rosso Tre Bicchieri tasting, and instead, place all focus on Italy’s rightly famed reds.… read more

Life · Quaffing · Tasting

24 wines for turning 24

Posted on 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

Posted on 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

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

Posted on 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

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

Posted on 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

Life · Quaffing · Tasting

2015 ends and 2016 trends

Posted on by Josh

I’m a bit late to this #bye2015hello2016 stuff! Anyways, I’ve said it way too many times than you care to read: I’m not big on New Year’s resolutions. But this is the first year where reflecting and looking forward to the next year has felt the least forced. Despite my abrupt and perhaps ephemeral positivity, I won’t be superimposing any fortune cookie pieces of advice onto filtered landscapes anytime soon – March seems to be my I-fucking-hate-everything downfall month anyway, so we’ll see how much my outlook relapses.

joshlikeswine2015

At the beginning of 2015, I made the tongue-in-cheek resolution to be a bit more selfish: to not to be guilt-ridden about having a balanced serving of things that make me happy and to give less of a shit about what other people think.… read more

Quaffing · Tasting

Odd Italy

Posted on by Josh

The Vancouver International Wine Fest of 2016 is creeping up slowly – already? I distantly remember my tongue-related worries about trying Shiraz after Shiraz after Shiraz, so a duplicate worry replaced with the acidic Sangiovese grape was the first thing that came to mind when I found out that the theme for 2016 was Italy. And originally I wasn’t super stoked to find out Italy was the featured region, but recent bottles of inspiration have reminded me of grapes and regions I, for some reason, forgot to consider. I’m secretly hoping there will be a seminar on something fucked like a long flight of artisanal Pinot Grigio or “You Won’t Believe These 8 Pinot Grigios That Pair Well With Shitty Buzzfeed Videos”.… read more