The following is a list of the wines, cheeses and dishes that suit our upcoming live Zoom session with Mark Shipway on the red wines of North East Italy. You will find some useful links to further your enjoyment food and wine of the regions. All of the wines mentioned are available in the BC market either at the BC Liquor stores, or Marquis Wine Cellars. Private wine stores may have additional offerings. If you have any questions, please let us know.

Is there a better long lunch than DimSum? Influenced by "nouvelle cuisine"  in the 70s, trends in Hong Kong quickly crossed the Pacific arriving in Vancouver. Succulent petite portions of super fresh prawn, scallop, and pork dumplings in a variety of shapes and sizes with fillings that could transport you places that you'd never been. Flavours that you'd never tasted before exploded onto your palate and all you wanted was more texture, flavour and slurpy goodness. Then there were sauces - smooth spicy red chili, yellow mustard, oily hot chili flakes, salty soy, sweet umami hoisin and sweet vinaigrette that could shift sweet succulent Sui Mai into a fiery salty mouthfilling explosions.  Pass me a glass of water, green tea or Coca-cola.

Now add Robert Stelmachuk and voila -  mind blowing! It's DimSomm - four styles of wine paired with the main styles of Dim Sum and the celebration just moved to a whole new level. Who would have thought? Yet imagine champange with Har Gow? Pinot Noir with steam rice in tea leaf with minced meat? But don't listen to me - find out what Robert recommends.

All wines are evaluated on a 100 point scale. The tasting notes are converted to word clouds that reference the key highlights of each wine. The top scoring BC Wines then go into wine packs of 2, 3, 4 and 6 bottles. These packs are posted on 90+Wines and can be ordered online for pick up or delivery.

Puglia (or Apulia in anglicised form) is one of southern Italy’s lesser known but up-and-coming viticultural regions and one that every wine lover should have on their radar. Geographically speaking, Puglia is the high heel on the boot of Italy, jutting out into the Mediterranean, the Adriatic sea to the east and Ionian to the south. However, the region is somewhat unique within the typical mountainous terrain of the south, as it boasts a very sizeable proportion of flat agricultural land; a fact that has enabled a recent surge in the total acreage under vine which has catapulted Puglia to become Italy’s second largest wine producing region. Historically less fortunate, the region was characterized for a large part of the 20th century by anonymous bulk wine; a stigma which has confined Puglia until recently to the cheap and cheerful category. However, now is the time to view Puglia’s vinous output through another lens; a lens that focuses on quality rather than quantity with an increasing number of wineries creating authentic wines from a vast variety of native Puglian grapes.