MyWinePal

I hazard to guess how many wines I tasted over the past year, but every year I find several gems that I pass along to you as I taste them.  Getting ready for the holiday season, you may be considering buying wines to take to parties, or serving wines at your parties.  What to buy? [...]

By day you would think coffee shop, but by night a wine bar. The new Take Five Cafe on 62 W. Cordoba, in Gastown offers both to their customers.  I was invited to attend their grand opening this past week to see what they have to offer, and there is quite a range for you.  [...]

This was my first wine maker dinner with the Australian Wine Appreciation Society.  Held at the Fish House in Stanley Park, Mr. Bruce Tyrrell from Tyrrell’s Wines regaled us with stories of his family’s past and about the wines we were about to enjoy that evening. Although the Tyrrell family established themselves in Australia in [...]

From the Fall through Spring, the Import Vintners & Spirits Association (IVSA) hosts a regular tasting of importers latest wines, beer and spirits.  The kick-off for the fall was last week, and it was very busy.  Again too many wines to try, so I went table by table trying to find wines of interest, or [...]

January 23, 2012 is a New Chinese New Year.  This new year will be the Year of the Black Water Dragon. It begins on the first day of the first lunar month (usually in late January or early February) and ends on the 15th day of the first lunar month (Lantern Festival). A Dragon is [...]

November is always a special time for tasting new wines at the Import Vintners and Spirits Association (IVSA).  It’s just one month away from the Christmas and New Years holidays.  And that means lots of sparkling wines to taste.  So with this in mind, I spent almost all my time at the IVSA tasting bubbles.  [...]

In my previous article about preparing for your Summer Wine Trip in the Southern Hemisphere, I outlined most of the wine producing countries and some airline ticket prices from Canada to those countries.  This is Part 2 of this article, where you will get to know a bit about the signature grapes of Chile and [...]

This week I attended the IVSA‘s latest tastings of new wine and spirits in the Vancouver area. There was at least 70 different tables from my quick count, with each table offering 5-10 different wines. As such, I was not able to try everything offered, but hopefully I was able to find a few gems, [...]

For the past 5 years, Vancouver’s South World Wine Society has been having a tasting in January called the “5 Nations Cup“. This January was the 5th competition. The premise of the event is that 5 white and 5 red wines are selected by the cellar master and the speaker at the event. The wines [...]

In the first part of my notes on the 31st Vancouver Playhouse International Wine Festival I talked about BC wines as this was the featured region. But there was more than just BC wines at the festival. I will spend some time talking about the International wines that I was able to try. Some of [...]