PnP Ratings Database Update — March 2012

7 03 2012

This has nothing to do with the ratings DB...but it is cool.

I decided to hold off on this update until I had accumulated enough new reviews to make a revised spreadsheet worthwhile, and that time has come with PnP poised to reach a couple of major milestones.  First, I’m 4 wine reviews away from 100, a mark I should attain sometime this month.  Second, this Friday, March 9th, is the one-year anniversary of Pop & Pour (so yes, if you do the math, I’ve drunk almost a hundred bottles of wine in a calendar year…but at least my vinous consumption has made some contribution to online society).  Holy crap.  I’m excited (and amazed) about both events…but I need some filler material until they get here and can’t drink wine this week (lead-in to a new diet), so in the meantime I’ll aim to be equally excited about this routine ratings database update.  The March 2012 instalment of the ratings spreadsheet reveals a new member of my top ten QPR wines (my rendition of the Quality/Price Ratio score shows you how many dollars you have to spend on a bottle for every PnP ratings point about 75), the Beso de Vino Seleccion…a.k.a. the bull testicle wine.  This bottle makes the cut not because of its impressive score (84+), but because of its bargain-basement price ($12), though the argument can be made that generally-acceptable wine for $12 is still a bargain.  Download the updated ratings database here (new Excel file first, then old Excel file):

Pop & Pour Ratings Database Mar 2012

Pop & Pour Ratings DB Mar 2012 Old Excel

New wine reviews coming next week once I can drink again!


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WSET: Officially Advanced!!!

23 01 2012

Ten weeks and a day (but who’s counting) after I tasted and wrote my way through the Wine & Spirits Education Trust’s Advanced Exam, I officially got my results from WSET headquarters in London.  Thankfully, they were worth waiting for, on both the theory side and the tasting side:

Woooooooooo!!!!

I now have a fancy certificate (which I’m not allowed to reproduce in any form, hence the substitute pic of the boring accompanying letter above) to hang in my not-yet-built wine cellar, a somewhat-less-fancy green pin and a heck of a load off my mind…I think I was more nervous about this exam than I was when I wrote the LSAT.

An anticlimactic but hard-fought pin.

According to the WSET website, I can now work “in the drinks and hospitality industries in a supervisory capacity” (who’s hiring?  🙂 ) and, more importantly, apply to the WSET to use the “WSET Certified Advanced” logo on my letterhead and business cards!  I am totally doing this.  This has completely made my week.  I will crack and write about a suitable celebration bottle shortly, but for now I’m just going to sit back, savour the moment and thank my lucky stars that my tuition money didn’t go to waste.  Cheers!!

 

 


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PnP Joins The CIA

14 01 2012

calgaryisawesome.com -- now with wine content!

Well, sort of.  I’m happy to announce that I’ve been given the opportunity by the folks at local interest webpage extraordinaire Calgary Is Awesome (http://calgaryisawesome.com/) to write a monthly wine column for the site highlighting the various facets of Calgary’s vibrant wine scene.  The CIA column will be cross-posted here on Pop & Pour, so it won’t affect my regular PnP posting schedule, but it will be a way for me to maintain a local focus with some of my posts and do my part to spread the love of wine to a wider municipal audience.  Some of the topics that I hope to cover in this PnP/CIA collaboration are write-ups of local shops and personalities, thoughts about wine tastings and events held around town and wine service at various YYC restaurants, among other things.  If you have a killer idea for a topic that involves wine and Calgary in some capacity, or if you’re in the Calgary wine biz and would have any interest in some online exposure, drop me a line at let me know.  Keep an eye out for my first Calgary Is Awesome column around the end of the month!

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2012 Wine Resolutions

2 01 2012

Nothing says "New Year's celebration" like ClipArt!

Happy New Year!!  Long time no speak!

2011 was a monumental, life-changing year for me.  On New Year’s Day, 366 days ago, my wife and I welcomed our first child, our son Felix, into the world, and the entire rest of the year was charted almost exclusively based on his development.  It was fitting to start a blank-slate new calendar year with a way of life and set of priorities that was previously totally foreign to us; turning the page on 2010 quite literally ushered in a whole new era for my family.  Felix celebrated his first birthday yesterday surrounded by family and friends, and watching him climb the stairs by himself and tell me “up!” when he was tired of sitting on the floor truly brought into focus just how much change a year can bring.  Last year was one of the most challenging years of my life, but I look back on it now and would immediately do it again if it meant I could have the little guy currently sleeping upstairs.

Much less momentous but still of import to me, 2011 marked the beginning of this online experiment that has blossomed into Pop & Pour.  I was hesitant to start a wine blog due to my other infant-related time commitments, my lack of formal expertise in wine, and the number of other high-quality sites out there on the same topic, but at the same time it felt like an avenue that would let me follow my passion, advance my own knowledge and hopefully bring some people along for the ride.  Since my first PnP post in March, I have taken two levels of the WSET wine & spirits course (passing one, still nervously awaiting results on the second), met dozens if not hundreds of incredible like-minded wine folk both online and in person, and started to become an active, present taster with every wine that I try; investing the time and energy in focusing on each bottle’s unique flavours and characteristics has only made me that much more head over heels for wine, but that’s what I wanted for this blog when I started it.  It was initially meant to help me document my own travels through the world of wine, and while its focus has expanded somewhat since then, it is still an intensely personal creation for me, which is something that I hope comes across in my writings.

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PnP Ratings Database Update — December 2011

21 12 2011

My plan is to find a different picture for the DB update post every month. On month 2, it's already hard.

Merry Christmas (or non-denominational secular equivalent) everyone!!  With the big day fast approaching, I hope this finds you gearing up for some well-deserved time off with friends and family.  That’s certainly the case for me:  after tonight I will be taking a brief blogging break for a week or so, if only to avoid annoying people by whipping out my tasting notepad in the middle of Christmas dinner (not to say that that won’t happen anyway…).  However, I thought I would leave you with December’s update to the Pop & Pour Ratings Database spreadsheet, which now includes all of the wines I’ve ever tasted and reviewed on this site up to this week.  If you’re looking for a last-minute XMas gift that delivers bang for the buck, just download the Excel spreadsheet by clicking on the links below and look for a wine with a high (0.65 and above) QPR rating, which is a rough guide to sniffing out bargains:  it tells you how many PnP ratings points above a baseline of 75 each wine-buying dollar gets you with respect to a particular bottle.  The top 10 highest-scoring QPR wines all cost $22 or less, so find them if you can!  Download the spreadsheets here (new Excel file first, then old Excel):

Pop & Pour Ratings Database Dec 2011

Pop & Pour Ratings DB Dec 2011 Old Excel

Have a safe a happy holiday season — may your glasses never be empty and your wine never be corked!


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(Foiled) Wine Review: 2008 M. Chapoutier Gigondas

19 12 2011

Cool thing about this bottle: there's Braille translation on the label! Less cool: it's probably corked. Jerk.

I’m not great at detecting cork taint.  I know what the telltale aromas of a corked wine are supposed to be (damp basement, wet newspaper, mildew), but I’ve only come across a couple of bottles in my life that were indisputably corked; who knows how many other bacteria-riddled bottles I’ve downed without knowing any better.  I’ve met people, including my WSET instructor, Marnie, who could instantly detect even the slightest whiff of taint, and I wish somebody like that was over at my house for dinner tonight, because I’m about 70% sure that I opened a corked bottle.  Due to this suspicion, I won’t be giving the Chapoutier Gigondas a score or saying bad things about it, but I figured I’d post the review regardless so that if you ever find yourself in my situation you’ll know what to look for…or at least you’ll be able to self-commiserate and know you’re not alone.

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Introducing the PnP All-Time Ratings Archive Spreadsheet

25 11 2011

PnP's complied Ratings Database spreadsheet: like this, but for wine.

Now that I’ve pounded out nearly 80 reviews over 9 months on this site, I thought it was about time to try and make the content on Pop & Pour a little more accessible.  The Search box at the top right of the page can help you if you’re looking for something specific, but until now there was no easy way to find out at a glance which wines have had the (mis)fortune of being featured on PnP over the course of the year.  Thankfully, my friend Microsoft Excel has helped me solve that problem; I have now compiled all of the names, vintages, scores, prices and review links for each of the wines I’ve written up and put them into a sortable spreadsheet that’s available for download by clicking on one these links (new Excel first, then older Excel):

Pop & Pour Ratings Database Nov 2011

Pop & Pour Ratings DB Nov 2011 Old Excel

My plan is to update this Ratings Archive spreadsheet once a month so that you will always have a fairly current list of PnP’s wines, and so that any particular review that interests you will only be a click away.  The spreadsheet also has one new piece of info for each reviewed wine that isn’t found anywhere on the blog:  a (very) rudimentary calculation of QPR (Quality Price Ratio) that gives you a general idea at a glance how much bang you get for your buck with every bottle. Read the rest of this entry »


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WSET Advanced Complete!

14 11 2011

This logo and I have had a good 2011 together.

So how many different wines did you drink over the last three weekends?  I had about 100.  From White Zinfandel to Barolo, Tokaji to Pinotage, Sherry to Port — if it was from a recognizable world wine region, I probably tasted it over 50ish classroom hours in WSET Advanced class.  The wines we tasted in the course retailed for anywhere from $10 to $100, came from 15 different countries and ran the gamut of styles, preparations and flavours.  To top it off, the WSET threw in some spirits for good measure:  in the span of an afternoon this past Saturday, I had Cognac, Armagnac, Calvados (apple-based spirit), Irish Whiskey, Single Malt Scotch, Bourbon, Dark Rum and Tequila (it would have been like a Vegas weekend were it not for the spit cups).

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Goals & Milestones

27 10 2011

Once more into the breach!

One of the things I wanted to do in 2011 (other than making sure I muddled through figuring out how to keep our first child alive — so far so good!) is get some formal wine education.  I had read a ton of books and articles, gone to tastings, talked to shop owners and, of course, drank a lot of vino, but I wanted to take things a step farther and actually get into the classroom, which prompted me to enrol in the WSET Intermediate program a few months ago.  Thankfully, I successfully completed and passed the course, coming out of the summer with my Intermediate Certificate, and I enjoyed the experience so much that I immediately signed up for the WSET Advanced class later in the year.  Well, “later in the year” is now two days away — for the next three weekends I will be shut away in a conference room downtown with other like-minded wine die-hards, trying desperately to absorb reams of technical and geographical information while simultaneously tasting 20-30 wines a day.  If my course materials are any indication, the Advanced course will be WAY more, well, advanced than the Intermediate, so if you don’t see as many PnP posts as normal until mid-November, you can assume it’s because I’m studying.  The blog will be back up to full throttle once my exam (which includes a blind tasting this time) is blissfully behind me.

Thankfully, this blog continues to get amazing support even when I’m a bit lax about regular posting.  Sometime in the next two days Pop & Pour will clock over the 10,000 (!!!) hit mark, which is both gratifying and astonishing to me.  In each month of its operation, PnP has attracted more views than the month before, and I have all of you to thank for your interest in this site.  Once the WSET is done I’ll crack and review a suitable tribute bottle to celebrate both this latest round-number hit target and the fact that school’s officially out for winter.  Cheers!


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Happy Thanksgiving!!

10 10 2011

To everyone out there in the PnP universe who has followed and supported this blog, whether or not you’re from north of the 49th parallel, I just wanted to take a quick minute tonight to wish you all a very happy Canadian Thanksgiving.  Apologies for the lack of posts this weekend, but we hosted this year’s family Turkey Day feast, which meant that most of the past three days has been spent either in the grocery store or the kitchen.  I’m happy to report that the meal turned out great — and if you’re wondering, I paired our brined, spice-rubbed and BBQ-rotisseried turkey with both a Ridge Geyserville Zinfandel from California and a Tantalus Old Vines Riesling from the Okanagan…both were top-notch wines, but I think the Zin was a surprise winner of the top pairing prize.  Pop & Pour should be back churning out content in a couple of days:  tomorrow night is the great wine & chocolate taste-off, where we will try to answer the question posed last week about what wines pair best with chocolate, so look for that write-up mid-week.  Cheers!


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New Search Feature & Other Additions

15 09 2011

Now that I have enough content on this site to make it worthwhile, I have added a Search box to popandpour.ca — if you look in the upper right corner of the page, you’ll see it waiting for you.  If you want to see if I’ve reviewed a particular wine or producer, have discussed a specific topic or have done a full write-up of your favourite obscure grape Malvar (yes I have!), type in the search and all relevant posts will instantly be at your fingertips.  I have tested this out a few times this afternoon and it’s freaking awesome; as always, WordPress, you rule.  Hopefully this will be easier than scrolling through dozens of wine reviews trying to find out just how much I hated the Fiole du Pape CNDP.

I’ve made a couple other tweaks to the site as well, adding an explanation of the PnP wine Scoring System as a separate page on the main header bar and truncating each post on the homepage to make things easier to navigate.  Thanks to those who have submitted comments and suggestions about how to improve this site — if anyone has any other thoughts on what PnP can do to be a better reading experience, please leave a comment and let me know.  Cheers!


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Vacation

31 08 2011

You’re all officially free of me for a couple weeks:  I’m hitting the road tomorrow on a family vacation and won’t have computer access while away.  I’m heading to BC, where I’ll have a brief chance to visit some of my favourite wineries in the Okanagan, so rest assured that I’ll be coming back armed with many local bottles to write about.

My vacation timing is almost perfect in that this is Pop & Pour’s 99th overall post, which means that my first post upon my return will be the PnP 100th post extravaganza that has been hinted at previously.  If you haven’t done so yet (or even if you have), visit the poll and vote on PnP’s 100th post wine here.  See you in mid-September!!


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Coming Tomorrow: Tasting In Stereo!

29 08 2011

It’s been one of those gruelling, soul-crushing Mondays, and yet I remain upbeat and excited about the week.  There are two reasons for this:  (1) I’m going on vacation in three days, and (2) tomorrow I get the honour of being co-host to a pan-Canadian wine tasting adventure of the kind that only the Internet makes possible.  If you’ve ever read a PnP wine review and immediately wished you had an expert second opinion (and don’t lie — I’m sure there are those times), tomorrow your voice of sober second thought will come in the form of Tyler Philp, an Ontario-based wine blogger and tasting group leader who owns and operates North of 9 Fine Wine just beyond the clutches of Toronto.  Tyler has written on a number of vinous topics and has a clear passion for the world of wine, so he’s an ideal counterpart for this tasting experiment.

My Tasting In Stereo counterpart -- check him out at northof9finewine.blogspot.com.

Tomorrow night Tyler and I will each crack the same bottle, taste it independently, and then simultaneously post our notes, thoughts and impressions on our respective sites at a set time.  You’ll find out at the same time as us whether we felt the same way about the wine or whether we’ll need to have a few words offscreen about it…  🙂  You get two perspectives for the price of one (or, I guess, for the price of a million, since it’s all free), and I get a chance to compare tasting notes with a writer whose thoughts and palate I respect quite a bit.  We’ve picked a bottle that’s easy to find and under $20, so if one or both of us like it, you’ll be able to track it down.  Tasting In Stereo debuts tomorrow — see you then!


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Poll: Help Choose PnP’s 100th Post Wine!

17 08 2011

This is the 92nd post that I’ve made on Pop & Pour.  Being the milestone-sensitive person that I am, I’m already looking ahead to the triple digits and wondering how best to mark the momentous occasion of PnP’s 100th post, which should be coming up in a couple weeks or so.  The obvious answer to this question is “with wine”, but which one?  I’ve been drinking a lot of $20ish value wines recently, but when it comes to the 1-0-0, I’m reaching for the big guns.  I have some options in mind, but need your help to choose a winner — cue the poll!  Blurbs of the potential candidates to follow below.

Here’s what you’re voting for:

  1. 2004 Alion:  Possibly the most famous and well-regarded producer in Spain is Vega Sicilia in Ribera del Duero.  It focuses primarily on one wine, Unico, which is ludicrously expensive, can be aged for decades at the winery before release and is a historically great bottle.  Needless to say, I can’t afford it.  But in 1991 Vega Sicilia started Bodegas Alion, which makes the Alion wines from grapes either in or right beside Vega Sicilia’s vineyards.  Basically, Alion is the closest I’m going to get to Unico for a long, long time.  One of Spain’s classics.
  2. 2007 K Vintners Morrison Lane Syrah:  K Syrah…get it?  (That is actually how this winery was named.)  From Charles Smith, the same guy who makes Kung Fu Girl Riesling, the K Vintners brand focuses exclusively on high-end Syrah from Washington State, otherwise known as my recent man-crush varietal and region.  I had another K Syrah a couple weekends ago (the K Millbrandt Syrah) and it was huge, intense and fruity; this one is slightly higher up on the price/quality scale so I expect that it will be a little more layered and complex but still totally bombastic.
  3. 2006 Gaja Brunello:  The proper name of the producer is Pieve Santa Restituta, but this Tuscan winery is primarily interesting because it is owned by the legendary Angelo Gaja, the iconic winemaker who helped put Piedmont, and especially Barbaresco, on the pedestal where sits today.  Gaja’s focus is almost exclusively on northwest Italy, but he bought this winery in Brunello di Montalcino in the central part of the country a few years ago and has begun to put his stamp on its production line.  I got this wine for my first ever Father’s Day this past June, so it has both personal and professional (OK, amateur) significance for me.
  4. 2008 Caymus Cabernet Sauvignon:  Caymus is one of the best-known producers of textbook Napa Valley Cabernet, and this bottle of Cab in particular is interesting because I got it (1) at the winery itself and (2) before the ’08 vintage of Caymus Cab was actually released to market!  We went there for a tasting, and they were sold out of their ’07 Cabs, so they were pulling the ’08s out of their storage cellars so that people had something to buy.  I don’t have many bottles purchased directly from producers, and I’ve already tried this wine on site, so I know it’s good.
So help me out — vote early and often, and leave me a comment if you have a particular reason behind your choice.  Thanks!

 


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WSET: Officially Intermediate!!

2 08 2011

I’m back from a long weekend trip to the splendours of northern Alberta (note to all those who live in Grande Prairie:  buy your wine from the Costco there, and only from Costco…some crazy good deals even beyond the big labels!) and I’m ready to make up for lost blogging time.  I had planned to dive right into a new wine review tonight, but that all changed when I got a special delivery in the mail this afternoon from the Wine & Spirits Education Trust — my Intermediate exam results!  I am pleased to report that my registration for the Advanced course this October was not in vain…for some reason I’m officially forbidden from posting any image of my actual WSET certificate on the Internet, but I can post this:

Booya! Tuition money not wasted!

Admittedly, the Intermediate exam was just a multiple-choice test without a tasting component, but still, I’m pretty psyched about this.  Now all future reviews will be backed by that sliver of moral authority you get when you’re moderately qualified at something!

Actual wine talk will return tomorrow, when Oregon will have its PnP debut…I’m amazed I haven’t written it up yet, but that will soon be remedied.  Until then!


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