In keeping with my current obsession with sparkling wines from Ontario, today I’m also going on a “natural” kick, with Trail Estate‘s red and white pétillants naturels, aka pét-nats.
Continue readingCategory: Educational (Page 2 of 3)
Happy Hour: Friday, February 12, 7:30 pm EST
For our next virtual happy hour, we’ll do a quick recap of wine tasting, and up our game with some food and wine pairing basics!
Continue reading
I’ve been getting this question a lot these past few months: when should you decant or aerate wine?
Great question! Let’s break it down into when, what and why to decant or aerate.
Continue reading
Have you ever tried something completely new, then been absolutely astounded you didn’t know about it beforehand? That was my experience discovering Moldovan wines this week. Heck, I honestly wasn’t even sure where Moldova was before writing this post. But trust me, it is now at the top of my list for Eastern European wine travel. Speaking of travel, this post is part of a new monthly wine blogger gathering precisely on the topic of #worldwinetravel. This month is generously sponsored by Wine of Moldova and VinConnexion in celebration of the country’s National Wine Day on October 3 and 4 (as always, opinions are my own). Keep reading to learn all about this well-established wine region and its amazing wines.
Continue reading
Did you know that Côtes du Rhône wines are some of the most popular blends in the world? And then there is Côtes du Rhône Villages. What’s the difference? Is one really better than the other? This month, as part of the French #winophiles meet-up, I set out to investigate Côtes du Rhône Villages. As in any legitimate experiment, this involves tasting some examples of the different classifications to see if the wines at the top of the “quality” pyramid really are tastier.
Continue reading
Adventures in Roussillon white wines #Winophiles
Today I am joining the French Winophiles, a group of wine bloggers from around the world who love fermented French grapes, in their monthly virtual meet-up. Saturday morning’s discussion over on Twitter will focus on white wines from Roussillon, France’s southernmost winemaking region. Read to the end for more details.
A personal connection – or not
Being a Canadian/French dual citizen, I often consider myself quite familiar with France and its geography. And when I first heard that this month’s Winophiles chat would be on Roussillon, I thought “Great! I know that region and I’ve been there quite a bit in the last few years.” Except that once I started doing some research, I realized that it might not be the case. Continue reading
To celebrate the upcoming weekend, I did a virtual food and wine pairing experiment with Novaripa‘s Agronika Terre di Chieti Passerina*. This lovely white wine from the Abruzzo region in Italy is dangerously drinkable, especially when paired with food!
*I capitalized the grape variety here because it is part of the wine’s title, as it appears on the label.
The video
A friend recently asked me why Canadian wines are so expensive. Shouldn’t they be cheaper since we’re not paying for shipping from halfway across the world? This question got me thinking about wine pricing. How do wineries come up with pricing for their wines? Why do some wines sell for $50 and others for only $8? Is the $50 wine necessarily better than the $8 one? These are the kinds of questions I plan to get to the bottom of by the end of this post.
Continue readingEvery now and then my professional life as a translator and my personal love of wine combine to make a blog-post baby en français. Last time, I did a comparative analysis of the English and French versions of the LCBO’s Food and Drink / À bon verre, bonne table magazine, but this time I thought I’d keep it simple and explore the world of wines, one French word at a time. Enjoy!
The best ways to take wine tasting notes
Do you have “a thing”? You know, that quirky activity that no one else in your social circle seems to do, so they always associate it with you? Maybe it’s yoga, or knitting, or perhaps something a little more trendy like axe-throwing or adult colouring books. They’re the sort of things that are incredibly helpful to your friends and family when they need to buy you gifts. For example, I have a friend who went through a gin phase. She became the ‘gin girl’ among her circles, and as a result received so many different bottles as gifts for various holidays and birthdays that she now has more gin than she will ever drink.
Obviously, my “thing” is wine tasting. But instead of receiving more wine than I could ever drink (a. is that possible? and b. I am open to this idea), I now have more wine journals than I know what to do with. Continue reading
MWWC Winner
Recent Comments