On a number of occasions at the winery tasting bar, I am asked about matching wines with chocolate. It’s not my intent to make blanket statements when it comes to the principles of matching these enticing components in life. Suffice to say, the underlying rule remains: the wine must be sweeter that the dessert, otherwise ...
By: Brian Hanna (Sommelier, ACSP) Why can’t you buy a loaf of bread and tell where the wheat was grown, or savour a lemon and say instantly whether it comes from Spain, Mexico or Florida. The ANSWER: This is what marks wine from almost any other agricultural product known to us. I suppose if you ...
Submitted by Brian Hanna Today’s blog appears to be taking a decidedly culinary twist. Let’s call them kitchen considerations. *** A sprinkling of toasted nuts will help draw out many dishes to the oak-accented flavours of barrel-aged Chardonnays. *** If your wine is more acidic than the dish you’re having with it, consider a couple ...
by Brian Hanna Tasting wine with words can range from mechanical word descriptors, drained of vitality, such as: fruit-forward, buttery and lest we forget, ‘yummy!’; to something delivered from on high, say a papal encyclical, laden with lofty abstractions. Language is how we make sense of the worldly. Each subject needs its own language. The ...
by Brian Hanna Are you a synesthete? Do you feel vibrations, sense shapes, see colours, or hear sounds when tasting a wine? By definition, it’s the stimulation of one sensory pathway that leads or triggers automatic responses in a second sensory pathway. Can we experience wine by using a black ink pen and draw what ...
By: Brian Hanna For Jeremy, it’s stargazing and for Ronald, it’s backgammon. Often, borne of necessity, we cultivate enticing, engrossing nuggets of passion. In my case, it’s musing over restaurant wine lists culled from myriad websites around the globe. Wine lists are inventories of taste, authored by a few and well-intended for the measure and ...
