Amado Sur Malbec Blend, 2012 Vintage

It's officially Valentine's Day, and if you're an attached human male, there's a good chance that you haven't thought it out as well as you gave yourself credit. Which is a perfect note to begin this Tasting Notes review on! This time, we'll be looking at an Argentinian wine which I quite enjoy, the 2012 vintage Amado Sur Malbec Blend.

Firstly, the three grape varietals - malbec, bonarda and syrah - are fermented separately in stainless steel tanks. When fermentation is complete, the varietals are then aged separately in French oak barrels for 8 months, before being blended and aged again in stainless steel barrels for 6 more months, and finally being bottled and aged for another 5 months before hitting the shelves.

The results of this process are a fruity wine blend, tasting of blackberries, cherries, cranberries and apple. It has a light crisp acidity, accompanied by a velvety feel on the tongue. Like many reds, it's flavor shines most when you enjoy it with a meal, or let it air out for a short time. Decanting the glass briefly reveals spice notes of clove, coriander and black pepper, along with hints of dried fruit, such as craisins and black currants.

While it's a wine I enjoy, making it an easy review for me, it's also easy as it happens to be quite versatile in it's ability to pair with food. It's an ideal wine for red meat meals, preferably the more rich and tender options such as prime rib, tenderloin, or lamb. It also pairs well with spicy Mediterranean, Indian or far eastern dishes. On a lighter note, I'd recommend it with a diverse cheese plate, or simply with pizza and wings; the first way my girlfriend and I enjoyed it.

I won't be rating this wine, as wine tastings aren't really my niche, I don't think I can give it a fair rating. Nevertheless, I would highly recommend this as a good meal value wine.

Andy's fundraiser, at Milestones Denman Street

Normally I make it a practice not to write anything about work, or other restaurants in the business. In the past, I'd written a handful of articles where I'd review restaurants, but have taken the approach that this isn't really what my blog was meant to be about, and that it's also a conflict of interest with my employer, future employers, or competitors. I don't want to be that guy who writes reviews, or either promotes or bashes business ventures. That's just not my thing. My thing is talking about products, and passions which I thoroughly enjoy, and that said, I don't talk about anything on here that I don't love.

So with all that said... sometimes there's an exception. In my personal life, I'm interested in a few things other than bartending, such as humanitarianism. As such, I almost feel obligated to write an article describing the awesome contribution from so many people to my friend and co-worker Andy, who has been battling cancer for several months now. This Wednesday, the management and staff at Milestones Denman Street threw a fundraiser to help raise money for Andy, and the results were inspiring.

A lot of people came out, and donated thousands of dollars to help Andy. There were door prizes and silent auction items put up from many sources, such as StarBucks and Howe Sound Brewing to name a few. Even our direct competition, Cactus Club Cafe, provided an awesome and sizable donation for the auction. Personally, I find this sort of willingness for business competitors to work together to be incredibly inspiring, and the fact that such great contributions were made for Andy, is even more inspiring for me.

I had the benefit of talking to Andy just a few moments ago, and asked him if he wanted me to say anything on his behalf in my blog. And of course, he has asked me to extend his thanks to anyone who came out to help support the fundraiser, and that the turn out was more than he could have hoped for. As for me, I'd like to thank every inspiring contribution, right down to each dollar donated, tweet made, or hour spent in honor of Andy.

Osake Craft Sake, a flight on Granville Island

(Japanese 101 lesson of the day: Junmai-shu is a variety of sake, which is
considered pure rice wine without any added distillates.)

On Tuesday I had the pleasure to visit the Osake tasting room on Granville Island. I'd wandered past the tasting room several months earlier, on a visit to The Liberty Distillery, just around the corner on Railspur Alley, and had been meaning to visit ever since my first walk past. In short, the idea of an award winning, small batch sake right here in Vancouver was just too compelling for me not to be addicted to at first discovery; especially considering products of the far east have been on my to-do list for some time now.

Knowing pretty much nothing about sake, other than that it's made from rice and often compared to wine, I tried a five dollar sampling trio of three of their products. Not only is the flight considerably low price, they also let you choose the three products you'd like to sample - a very nice touch. As such, I chose their two Fraser Valley products, made from rice harvested in Abbotsford; the Fraser Valley Junmai, and Fraser Valley Junmai Nigori.

I noted from the first sample that the products were served chilled; a surprise as I am used to ordered house sake which has been warmed, much like tea. On tasting my first sample, the Fraser Valley Junmai, I immediately noticed that it was much more fruity than the house sakes I've tried at various sushi restaurants, or Guu. The Nigori, as well, which was my last of the trio was notably more citric, but rather fruity compared to the sake I'd tasted previously. The Nigori also appeared surprisingly cloudy, almost like a wheat beer.

(The translation of Nigori is cloudy, which refers to the unfiltered and cloudy appearance of
Nigori Sake. Nigori is sweeter than standard sake.)

In between the two Fraser Valley sakes, I also sampled the Junmai Nama Genshu - which caught my interest as an award-winning wine. Again, it was quite fruity, but noticeably drier than the other two samples, and with a creamy, smooth texture.

In short, the experience was enjoyable, and pleasurable. I don't know much about sake, or what kind of variety is available, but these three products were all great. The Nigori was my favorite; being somewhat tangy and refreshing. I could easily imagine myself enjoying it as a substitute for a sipping one on a nice spring day. Twenty five dollars will fetch you a 375 mL bottle of the Nigori, while the Junmai Nama Genshu is available in both 750 and 375 mL bottles, for thirty five and twenty two respectively.

Next in wine knowledge for the beginner

(Want real, first-hand knowledge about wine? Try a few glasses.)

In my previous article about wine knowledge for new servers, I went over a lot of strategies for helping you start off on your journey as a server with absolutely no wine knowledge. If you're anything like me, you might be asking, "what comes next?"

Well my friends, there's quite a bit more to know about wine. There's no substitute for tasting the wines yourself; you can often get a lot of products in one go by visiting an organized tasting event. But again, that's all fine and dandy, but it still doesn't help us out as much as we'd like, does it? Personally, I sometimes have trouble finding the details of flavors, as I'm an asthma and allergy case and I always get stuffed up once I start smelling things a lot, or having drinks that are bitter. I often have to read the palette of aromas on the back of the bottle, or on the internet before I can actually sense the full flavor of the wine. So even though the best way to get knowledge is through personal experience, as is the case with me, there can be various problems with that.

(Knowing the aromas, and tasting notes of wines can be a huge advantage.)

One of the more obvious problems to come with the experience method is that it takes a long time to get said experience. This can cause some problems if you're trying to learn a lot of things in a short period of time, so much akin to my first article on the subject I'm going to give you the advice to take a step back, have a breather, and see the bigger picture. Have patience, and realize that the experience will come over time, and that the more you taste, the more you'll see patterns in certain varieties of grapes, and regions.

If you've gotten this far, you may be asking "What gives Thomas. You gave me a lot of ideas in your first article on this subject!" Okay folks, I'm holding out on you in a sort of way. But there's a good reason for that! I really, truly believe that along with the basics I suggested in my first article, you can strive as long as you are patient and diligent.

But as it happens, I do have something of more substance for you, too.

Wines are grouped into two main categories, which are based on firstly the species of grape, and secondly the region that the wine is produced in. These two things are the primary source of the wine's flavor. I'm going to go a bit deeper into this information about grapes and regions for you, but first we're going to touch a bit briefly on flavor - which should not be confused with taste.

(Taking blurry photos of wine isn't necessarily a good way to learn. But at least it shows that you're trying!)

Flavor is an interesting concept, and generally speaking, you most likely picture it as being synonymous with taste.  It isn't though. There are only five basic tastes, and every other taste is a combination of those five; sweet, sour, bitter, salty and savory. These five tastes don't make up for really complex flavors though. In fact, the combinations of the five tastes don't have much more depth than the basic tastes to begin with. Flavor is a combination of all of the senses. The most important ones are taste and scent, but touch is rather important too, and let us not forget sight and hearing, which are more important in your psychological perception of flavor. Taste and scent make up the primary palette of flavor in all things - not just wine. Taste is what you would describe as the initial flavor, and scent is the lingering aroma that follows. You have only five types of taste receptors but scent receptors (rather, olfactory receptors) number in the hundreds. In fact, 3% of your entire genome is devoted to scent receptors. As mentioned above, touch is quite important too. Touch provides texture, and spice (which is not a taste, but rather, a form of pain that reacts with chemical and temperature sensitive pain receptors). The remaining two senses play a pivotal role with perception of flavor, but this is merely a psychological effect, and not necessarily the classical meaning of flavor.

So friends, if you're still with me, note that the jargon above is important. It's important, because it describes ALL flavor, and not just wine, but it's particularly important for wine (or alcohol in general). There's a huge number of wine products out there, so it's impossible to know about all of them. However, as I mentioned above, there are a couple of keys to help you out. Grape species, and region.

And I think I have the perfect anecdote to help you understand.

Pinot Gris. Pinot Gris is a common species of wine grape, whose Latin name is Vitis vinifera. It's used in the production of Pinot Gris white wine, but a lot of confusion is caused in the fact that it's also used in the production of Pinot Grigio. Which isn't, the same wine. Now don't get all up in arms! The two wines are produced from the same species, but they aren't the same, and there's a very good reason for that. You see, Pinot Gris is from France, while Pinot Grigio is from Italy. But it's more than that, too. The climate, water, and soil quality make a huge difference in the flavor of the wine from those regions. But moreover, you should realize that the fermentation and aging process are also going to be different because of environmental differences between France and Italy. Even more confusion can come from the fact that a lot of Pinot Gris and Pinot Grigio aren't from France or Italy! So what gives?!

(Sake is often referred to as 'rice wine'.  Now that's some grade-C wine knowledge!)

Well, wine regions aren't only limited to the old world, but sometimes they carry over to new world wines as well. New world wines are essentially wines produced anywhere but Europe, and in the case of wines produced using the Pinot Gris grape, they can take whichever name the producer of wine chooses.

If you were wondering what the point of the anecdote is, allow me to clarify. Different regions and species produce different flavors. Simple as that. The trick to finding out about them all is by tasting them for yourself, and seeing the patterns, but never forget the lesson I tried to teach with my first article about wine knowledge: keep it simple.

Update: I stand corrected on my statement than vitis vinifera is the species name for the Pinot Gris grape. I've incorrectly understood varietals as being interchangeable with species, in this case. Varietals can be understood as a large pool of domesticated grapes of the same species.

Tasting Notes - Taylor Fladgate First Estate Reserve Port

(I tried this sweet Port with my home made Skor cake...
While it wasn't bad, it was sort of like a sweetness overload.)

I've started a new short video series I'm starting called ''Tasting Notes", where I taste some products and give them short reviews.



In this episode, I review Taylor Fladgate's First Estate Reserve Port. It's a lower end Port that you can buy at 750 mL for less than 20 Canadian dollars. As far as these lower end ports go, I would recommend it as a good starting point for people wanting to give port a go. It's sweeter than your average port, as well, and has a heavy berry flavor.

The Vancouver International Wine Festival

(This is what it looks like when you pour a glass of wine.)

It may come as no shocker that I'm no expert in wine. However, in the past I've put a lot of effort out to try to put together some good blog articles for your reading pleasure, about the various wine tastings I go to. A lot of the time, I'm simply just too overwhelmed by all of the products, so I take a step back to tell you my personal highlights.

This time, is no different!

...

See Also: Sonoma vintners wine tasting - the whites

See Also: Sonoma wine tasting - the reds

I have it on good authority that the Vancouver International Wine Festival, is the largest wine festival in North America; sadly though, I don't seem to be encouraged enough to fact check that claim. I'm just going to roll with it. I was pretty excited to bag a free ticket to go this last Thursday. And boy, was I glad to go!

(This is what we people in the real world call "schmoozing".)

The main theme of the festival were French wines. French wines have taken on a legacy all of their own. France is well known as the place to go for great wines, and I'm happy to announce that I couldn't agree with the stereotype, any more. The truth is,  I haven't had all that much exposure to French wines, so this tasting opportunity was a real treat.

See Also: The basics of wine knowledge for new servers

Where to begin? Well, first of all, let's talk regions. I found a new friend in the Alsace region of France. Previously, all I knew about Alsace was that it was a disputed territory between France and Germany for over one hundred years. Today, I know that they have some pretty darned good Gewurztraminer, Muscat, Pinot Gris, and Sparkling Wines, among other varietals. As with most men (an assumption, granted), I normally prefer to go with red wines, and can find at times that whites simply don't have what I'm looking for. After tasting wines from Alsace, I can totally say that I've found my niche in white wines. Like me, you may have noticed a lot of the varietals from the Alsace region have German influence - such as Riesling and Gewurztraminer. With my limited wine knowledge, I've figured out that this translates to a much different wine region than the other regions of France.

(I'm guessing the region shown above is Loire. Truth be told I was somewhat inebriated, but judging from the "L" and "e", unless the planet, Lahsbane, from Star Wars is a wine region, then Loire is a good guess.)

This isn't to say, the other regions aren't great either.

I was pleased to taste many a Champagne, Loire or Southwestern France product, but I'll stick to the claim that Alsace was the highlight for me. I of course got the opportunity to see a lot of the local sommeliers partake, who are normally behind the counter themselves. I was also pleased to chat about some French fortified wines, that were comparable to Port (pictured below). The ABV was less than Port, which was also of interest. Being somewhat of a lightweight, I can't finish a bottle of Port in one night, and that leads to the question of it going off. Some of these French fortified wines seem to have fixed that problem for me, being much lower than the 20% ABV of some Ports.

(This is not Port, but I'm fairly certain it's the fortified wine I was talking about, above.)

Unfortunately, I didn't have nearly enough time at the event, and as I saw my timer counting down, I ran off to try a few of the other international wines I was interested in. In the process I got to listen to some cheesy non-truths by a perhaps, too intoxicated Sommelier manning the Israeli table - unfortunate, as I would have liked to know more about the wine, and less about 'True Blood' (that's a joke referring to the TV show of the same name, that probably won't make sense to anyone other than me... let's just say the guy had a very strong sense of imagination).

Goofy assessments aside, the Israeli wines I tasted were quite delightful. Even while I was waiting to get into the event, and flipping through the brochure, my attention was piqued with the realization that there are wines from Israel at the event. Unfortunately, as these things are, I didn't get to try a lot of the other foreign wines I was interested in, but of the ones I did, this was the table that I wanted to share.

Sonoma wine tasting - the reds

(A Cabernet flight done right.)

It's been nearly a week folks, since the Sonoma vintners tasting at Terminal City Club. You may wonder what a self professed wine ignoramus such as myself could remember about a tasting six days ago. Well to be honest I was already somewhat buzzed by the time we hit the reds, so I don't remember that much of what I tasted. Luckily there was a lot to think about, so I do have a recollection of some things.

Sonoma vintners wine tasting - the whites

Firstly - and I mentioned this in my previous article about the whites - it needs to be said that the flights were the highlight. Flights are in, and samples done right with a mind for aesthetic and quality are right up my alley. Our first venture was to a Zinfandel flight, where a lady with a ridiculous hairstyle gave us her practiced schtick about trying the whites first - for a second time.

(ZINFANDEL!? OVER 9000!?)

At this point in time, my coworkers began chit chatting with coworkers from another store. I didn't know them and couldn't take part in the conversation, so I did the only reasonable thing. I moved on to the Cabernet flight. This one was quite interesting, though, there were only three samples, the flight attendant (pun intended) poured them in a nice progression. To my tongue, the Cabs got better as she poured down the line of three. And that's saying a lot, as the first was already quite good to begin with. The bottles this time were accompanied with tasting notes of cinnamon, chocolate, black berries and what looked to me to be ground coffee (I should have investigated further). Indeed, I did notice more mature, yet playful flavours this time.

From there I tried many reds, but few stuck out; not for lack of quality, but for lack of sobriety. I'm somewhat o a lightweight, so even this swish-and-spit method hits me before long.

The basics of wine knowledge for new servers

Paul Hobbs 2012 vintage Pinot Noir left an impression, though. Seemingly, it left an impression on everyone. It was constantly featuring long lines for samples, even before the room became crowded and stuffy. It left a good impression on me, and my coworkers, and before long the coworkers from another location returned to express their delight for Paul Hobbs as well.

(Paul Hobbs Pinot Noir)

At this juncture the conversation about personal lives continued, and that was my queue to duck out and have some snacks before continuing on with the tasting alone.

Everyone else in the group had gotten tired of the tasting it seems, so I tasted a few more wines that I had been meaning to try, but alas. Nothing stuck out. There were a lot of pleasant Cabernets, and Pinot Noirs, but almost too many to begin listing. My best recommendation would be to pick out Sonoma reds at your local wine store.

Sonoma vintners wine tasting - the whites

(Ferrari-Carano Chardonnay is good! Ha! How's that for descriptive?!)

Wine tastings are always a fun event. It gives me an opportunity to broaden my horizons in the 'vino-sphere'; an area where I don't nearly often enough get much exposure. I love wine, like any other self respecting bartender, but since its behind my first and second loves (spirits and beer) I sometimes give it the shaft.

The basics of wine knowledge for new servers

Terminal City Club played host to a Sonoma vintners wine tasting this past Wednesday, and so I attended with two coworkers. I recognized many a familiar Somm face, and began gathering brochures, pamphlets, business cards and photo ops at points of interest.

(The man behind the counter at Kendall-Jackson gave a nice story about his own experience with their Chard, in Portland.)

The first round about the room gave me the chance to taste most of the whites. The first table was Davis Bynum, whose attendee I recognizes from the Four Seasons tasting last fall. I tasted their crisp and lightly acidic Chard with great pleasure; always a good sign when the first sample is a hit.

Moving on to Ferrari-Carano, I tasted yet another winner - and snapped a bad resolution photo, to boot. Their 2012 Chardonnay sported more acidic flavors, including apples and citrus, with the familiar oak notes that are all too common among Chardonnays.

Industry wine tasting at Four Seasons

Four Seasons wine tasting continued

We towed over to Kendall-Jackson, where the sales rep explained that the 2011 Chard was a common sight on menus in the states, and he himself had gone for walks recently in Portland, taking note of it's appearance on wine lists. He recommended it be drank as a warming wine, meant to distract you from winter's chilling atmosphere. The 2012 vintage provided tropical flavors, and was pleasant to the palette. The 2011 Grand Reserve vintage, on the other hand, was even better; featuring the flavors of perhaps more mature fruit. A fair blend of sweetness, acidity and spice.

(Flights are back, and not just at school's of cuisine!)

Wine flights were on the menu tonight, and it didn't take long before I was riding a four sample flight of Chardonnay. The wine bottles were tilted with bases facing a steamed, dried, and stained slab of oak, featuring four stemless glasses each filled with their own tasting notes; pleasant aromas that you could find in your samples above.

Flights are all the rage, again. Perhaps a side-effect or revitalization caused by the craft revolution - whatever it is, the event coordinators capitalized to great effect by providing several grape specific flights with the rustic aesthetic of aromatics on wood.

Stay tuned in the coming days for the "reds" portion of the wine tasting.

The basics of wine knowledge for new servers

Having a decent understanding of wine can be a big deal for those of us in hospitality. Oftentimes, people applying for jobs in hospitality don't have any experience, or aren't old enough to have been exposed to wine. While beer is the Everyman drink for every occasion, wine is often heralded by a different demographic, or with the intentions of eating a meal. In the case of beer you usually won't have to answer questions beyond 'what do you have for IPA' or 'what's your lightest beer'? Now, those questions can have some intricacies, but generally speaking, knowing a little bit about your beer products can go a long way. With wine, on the other hand, a lot of the time new servers and bartenders have no wine knowledge at all. This article is geared toward equipping those people with the knowledge they need to succeed and make good tips, as well as to the people who are applying for jobs and going into interviews with no knowledge.

Sticking to the very basics, you must realize that wine knowledge at its core is not important to surviving on the job. The first thing to focus on, is which wines the establishment carries. Unfortunately, this can be difficult when dealing with huge wine lists. If you're in a restaurant with thirty, or maybe even fifty... or perhaps they have a whole cellar dedicated to wine, you'd never be expected to know about all of them. A good practice when starting out is to look at the wine list, and pick out a couple of the cheapest wines for the reds and whites. Wines on the cheaper end of the spectrum are what get ordered the most, so knowing these wines is important. As for those people going into interviews, do whatever you can to dig up a wine list. If its not on their website try to get a look at it when you're dropping off your résumé.

Continuing to study the wine list can reveal a lot of different things. Firstly, it can give you information overload. To avoid that, take a step back and consider some other things. Is the wine list separated into flavour categories, such as spicy, bold, or oak? Is it separated by sweet and dry? Are there a lot of say, Cabernet Sauvignons and Chardonnays, but only one or two of the other types of wine? Usually these things are pointers for gathering more information. If there are flavour categories, it could be a good practice to pick one wine out of each category, and the same can be said for wine lists divided by a sweetness scale. And of course, having a lot of cabs on the menu might tell you that a lot of people order cabs.

So now that you've picked out which wines you're going to learn about, how do you learn about them? Well my friend, every wine has its own story, and its own unique character, luckily for you, it's written on the bottles of most wines, and for those it isn't there's Wikipedia. That's right! You don't have to take advanced wine tasting classes to learn all of this information, because wine knowledge has to start off with the basics of product knowledge. And of course, that information can be found on the bottle!

But now there's another problem. If you've accumulated a list of eight to twelve wines, remembering their names can be hard enough. How can you memorize all of the information on the bottle? I understand that the majority of you don't have a freakishly good memory. It seems I was blessed with a photographic memory, but even still I had difficulty remembering everything about my store's products when I first started. I'll urge you again to take a step back and look at the 'smaller' picture. For starters. If eight to twelve wines are too difficult to remember then start with four, and make a pledge to add one more wine to that list of products you know, until you find that you can suggest a wine for every meal and occasion. You don't have to be the most knowledgeable on your first day, but aim to progress gradually.

As for what to remember, just note that memorization should not be done verbatim.  The four things you should know without question are what the brand name are, what type of wine it is, whether its white or red, and where its from. These are all easy questions, and the first three should be known just from reading the wine list. Where its from, may or may not be on the wine list, but is easy enough to learn by looking at the bottle. Furthermore, you might notice that a lot of old world wines are categorized by what country they're from; id est you find most Rieslings in Germany, most Chiantis come from Italy. New world wines can be more tricky to make this sort of breakthrough with, but nevertheless you'll find that California is known for its Chardonnay, while Argentina is a country of Malbec. This is a good discovery to make when you're trying to transition to that place of having strong wine knowledge.

You can learn a lot more from reading the bottle though. You can learn the story behind the name; always a favourite for guests, which shows you know your stuff. You can also learn the flavours and aromas. With concern to your tasting palette, you may find that all you have to do is know one or two flavours found in the wine in order to sell it. You'll also find pairing suggestions. This is another easy area, as you can often divide things by whether they should be paired with red meat and desert, or everything else. You CAN go the extra step and find more specific pairings, and in fact that's suggested, but if you have trouble, try to stick to either pairing heavy or light wines with heavy or light meals.

What you should try to remember is that its easier to memorize things when you're starting off with a simple foundation. Wine knowledge is an overwhelming concept for a newbie to tackle. The secret to doing well - as with many things - is to simplify.

(A playlist with pronunciation of French, Italian, and German wines.)

Four Seasons wine tasting continued

The highlights of my wine tasting this Tuesday were only touched on in my last entry. Truth be told, I wanted to save the highlights for one post. And this happens to be just that!

The first thing I wanted to mention was Gin Mare. A Mediterranean gin from Spain. The display was original, featuring empty bottles filled with, olives, basil, rosemary and thyme; the infused herbal ingredients that complement the natural juniper flavouring of the spirit.

After doing a but of research on this product, I've learned that its taking off in the gin market of Spain - an area in the Mediterranean that's seeing an explosion of new gin products. Gin Mare is different from a lot of the other products in that its offering a strong alternative flavour - yet still undeniably gin. I agreed with my coworkers that it would make an excellent dry martini, as it needs almost no flavouring at all. And even then, I'm using the word 'need' simply in the context of cocktails. It would be perfectly fine sipping on its own, or on the rocks.

The next big things were holiday inspired flavoured spirits, and liqueurs. Of these I would mention Jack Daniels egg nog and whiskey liqueur as being in the top end of quality. I don't need to do much explanation here; its another product which can be sipped as an aperitif. Chocolate flavoured liqueurs were a thing as well, but one stood out over the rest.

Criollo was supposedly made by women for women. However, knowing this, I would not hesitate to ask for more, despite being a man. It's flavoured with criollo cocoa bean. I'm not sure what this means for the flavour, but having tastes it, if say it must mean a lot. Additionally it's flavoured with sea salt, which balances off the chocolatey goodness quite well.

Worth mentioning, at the same table there was also a gingerbread flavoured Khalua. Not my thing, really, but I can definitely see the possibilities in the match-up of flavours. If I were a little bit more adventurous, I might buy a bottle to mix with different coffees and hot chocolates.

The last of the highlights was a table of Korean products. Now, unfortunately did not take photos and had trouble with a lot of the names, but this table opened my eyes to the possibility of Korean beverages. The table featured sake, blackberry wine, shochu and of course the beloved beer: Cass. Needless to say, I was blown away by the table, and I'm going to have to do more research into what I drank at that table. It was all delicious, and well... Worth a blog article for another day.

Industry wine tasting at Four Seasons

As it so happens, I'd never been to a wine tasting before. That is, before today. A couple of colleagues and I attended a wine tasting at the Four Seasons in downtown Vancouver today, and I found the event to be somewhat educational.

I didn't take notes nearly as diligently as a blogger might be expected to - and that was perhaps a mistake. I didn't remember to start taking photos until quite late in the tasting, but not all was lost! I did get to taste several different products, for one, and had the opportunity to wrap my brain around these types of events, as well.

What I mean by that last comment, is that I realized these types of events are mainly intended for people with purchasing power. BUT, there are some other sides to it. By going, I received the chance to try several higher price point wines that we carry at Milestones, which I can now compare to our other products with confidence. The best example of this that I can give was our tasting of the Oyster Bay Chardonnay. None in our group had ever tried it despite it being on the menu - but only by the bottle. I was taken aback to find that the New Zealand Chardonnay was not oaky in the least. Much less dry than some of our other Chardonnays that I'm more familiar with. Now, in the future if I'm asked about our less oaky products, I can give a more complete answer. And that wasn't the only product which I had the chance to educate myself on either...

But stepping away from work related education, I've also been taking it upon myself to learn about all other types of libations that I'm unfamiliar with. I've been putting it on my to-do-list to explore the world of tequila and mescal. Okay okay, I know what you're thinking, and I want to dispel those thoughts. We all know how great tequila can be in a margarita, and some of us have had tequila sunrises as well. But there's so much more to it than that. Tequila and its less popular cousin can be comparable to rums or whiskers in their diversity, and that's something I want to learn more about.

So the skinny of that last mini-quest is that I tried mescal for the first time. I found it more bearable in taste than tequila, but the strong after taste made it clear that it was no aperitif. As a sipping spirit, I would compare it to scotch, but in my mind, I'm trying to imagine how one could turn it into a classic-inspired cocktail, taking notes from the Manhattan, Martini, or Old-Fashioned.

Mescal was not the end of it, though... And unfortunately I will not be getting into further details into what things were tasted until....

Next time! 

But here's a spoiler: