Wine Not?
When it comes to wine, folks who appreciate the grape have never had so many options and opportunities to learn more about it than ever before.
As an aficionado, I’m actually shocked about the amount of information available about a bottle of vino.
Within a few minutes of searching online, you can most likely find the origin of the grapes used to make it, the fermenting process, the story behind it, winemakers notes and pairing advice.
I think that’s pretty cool.
But reading about wine isn’t the same as tasting wine and that’s really the only way to find a bottle of the stuff that you’ll really enjoy.
Sure, background about the aging process or what it was aged in does help you navigate through the throngs on bottles on store shelves, but until you crack the cork and taste it yourself, you’ll never know for sure.
In Manitoba, we get the opportunity to try hundreds and hundreds of wines at the Winnipeg Wine Festival in May.
But, if you’re in BC, you get to do the same thing this week.
From now until March 4, the 2012 Vancouver Playhouse International Wine Festival throws open its doors and invites you to come down and explore the wide world of wine with them.
From winery dinners to seminars and vertical tastings, there are a ton of options to explore, not to mention the Festival Tastings on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
While the smaller events cater to a specific theme, the public tastings offers more than 790 wines to sample from 180 wineries originating from 15 different countries.
That should let you sample some of the wines you’d really like to try but haven’t yet as well as many others that may just become your new favourite.
As always, if you plan on attending one or more of these events, make sure you’ve plotted out a safe ride home because small samples of a lot of wine can add up quite quickly.
If you’d like more information, check out http://playhousewinefest.com/
Cheers!

