Recommendations for your sipping and tasting pleasure! 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.
Style of the Red Wines from the Veneto It’s a memory that never leaves me. It was after a celebratory meal at a legendary steakhouse in Calgary. A bottle of Masi Amarone was ordered. It has pre-2000 vintage. Along with the bottle, a cheese plate was served. It was love at first sip and deep passion at the first bite of a blue cheese (maybe Castesllo Blue or Cambozola) to pair with this sip. I was smitten and forever dreaming of this label and the flavour experience.
Give it up for Mark, Cynthia, Van Doren & Robert!
DimSomm? Four styles of wine to go with the best of Dim Sum presented by Vancouver's top Sommelier - Robert Stelmachuk. Tickets are $39 and on sale here for April 13th at 7:30 pm on Zoom. What is Dim Sum? 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. DimSomm Wine List
90+Wines Highlights the Best of BC Wine SommWine and Good Wine Gal in collaboration with Swirl Wine Store in Yaletown, Vancouver, Canada are highlighting top BC Wines for you! Who is 90+Wines? Barb Wild, DipWSET and Joanne DiGeso, DipWSET are passionate wine professionals here to help you find and enjoy BC wine. Thanks to Jeff Wong at Swirl Wine Store, these wine sleuths are uncovering hidden gems from BC's wine country. It's gotta score... 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.
Meet amazing Mairin - a passionate Irish wine woman! ![]() There are winelovers and then there is Mairin. She's the type of winelover who gets up at 2:30 am Irish time to show up to our 7:30 pm evening session in Vancouver. Her bottle would be breathing and glasses polished. No moss under this gal's feet. Not only is her Irish accent totally lovely, but her love of wine is second to none. We appreciate her spirit of community and can vouch for her of arriving a stranger and leaving a friend. We love you Mairin! Thanks for being a a part of the Good Wine Gal community and an inspiring winelover! We all look forward to seeing you again soon. Stay safe! Il Molino di Grace – Il Margone Chianti Classico Gran Selezione 2013 Tenuta Argicole Il Molino di Grace is a 62 hectare property is just south of Panzano half way between Florence and Sienna. Here grapes are carefully selected from organic vineyards that rise to elevations 350-400 metres on hilly slopes. Elevation and exposure ensure perfection for late ripening Sangiovese. In the winery, the wine is blended and aged for 16 months in new and used French barriques and tonneaux followed by three years of bottle age.
How to read the Chianti Classico wine label?
Rivera ‘Il Falcone’ Castel del Monte Rosso Riserva 2014 ![]() 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. ![]() Wine is her passion. If you ask Leanne, she’ll tell you she's over the moon to have found a second career - one she absolutely loves! The happiness shows. It never fails when I see Leanne in the wine crowd, she's wearing a big smile with her acknowledging warm eyes, swirling and sipping with focus and interest. She is loved by many for her ease, natural curiosity and passion for good wine. Thanks for being a part of our wine community Leanne. We appreciate the energy you bring. If you want to catch up with Leanne you can find her at West Coast Liquor in Kerrisdale. She'd love to help you shop! |
AUTHORI'm Good Wine Gal.
I blog about "good wine" and how to find it! Join me on my adventures of finding beautiful wine loving places, people and those special bottles we all get excited about. Archives
April 2025
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