Over the last ten months as my freelance career has fleshed itself out, I’ve had a lot more experience than in previous permanent gigs to do staff wine training and educational seminars. Coupled with various events and tastings I produce and/or host, I end up talking about wine in general, more than past management/wine-program-directing roles, [...]

The 2010 El Petit Bonhomme is a blend of Monastrell, Garnacha and Syrah and it comes from the value-driven Spanish hotbed of Jumilla. Jumilla is in the southeast of Spain and it’s pronounced differently than most English speakers would attempt (much more along the lines of who-mee-ya). The wine is made by Montreal-born Nathalie Bonhomme [...]

Terry David Mulligan in the Calgary Herald. Changes coming to British Columbians next? Ontario has just begun to allow consumers to carry in wine from other parts of the country. A policy change with the LCBO states that individuals can now bring in “three litres of spirits, nine litres of wine and 24.6 litres of [...]

We’ve talked in the past of our Sean Thackrey admiration here at Cherries And Clay, an enigmatic man making incredibly unique wines out of California. Staying away from anything resembling modern technology (like his website), the guy forges his own path- bizarre blends of grape varieties, fermenting them under the stars, that sort of thing. [...]

In my recent article on the trials of opening a wine store in BC (Planning the Implausible), I mentioned how I didn’t think the BCLDB wanted grocery stores to stock alcohol because of the buying power that it would grant to private businesses. I used Pattison as an example; the Jim Pattison Group is Canada’s [...]

Two delicious and very different Beaujolais from 2009. I’ve been one of many to get on the critics’ bandwagons and champion the 2009 vintage in Beaujolais. The ripeness levels across the board is obvious – these are deeper and more concentrated wines. I also think it’s been a great vintage for turning people on to [...]

After a few false starts, Summer may finally be here in Vancouver. I tend to spend a little less time drinking thought provoking wines as I do delicious and refreshing ones out of things like jars and plastic cups. While a bottle of Muscadet was chilling in my freezer, I coincidentally came across this Wall [...]

Because, yes, you may enjoy the political dialogue we offer here at Cherries And Clay, or run-downs of tastings, profiles of wineries and even perhaps advance notice of events going on around Vancouver, but what we hear most often is “What’s a good, cheap wine?” So here you go, delicious, juicy, summer-in-a-bottle fare: Domaine de [...]

Marc Ollivier of Domaine de la Pépière pouring his delicious Muscadet at Chamber Street. (Photo from ijamming.net) Today on Slate, Mike Steinberger gives us a rad write-up on a legendary New York wine shop entitled Chamber Street Wines: the Greatest Wine Retailer in America. A shop I’ll be spending a lot of time at during [...]

…from his Twitter feed:  

Paul Grieco is the charismatic ‘overlord’ of New York’s Terroir Wine Bar (the TriBeCa location is one of my favourite places to saddle up when in town.) He was on NPR’s Weekend Edition yesterday waxing poetic on the wonderful world of Riesling, something many of us are keen to do on occasion. Knowing that he always [...]

Marché St. George (Flickr image courtesy of Scout Magazine). This begins as inspiration and sentimentalism sparked by a visit to a humble coffee shop and follows with the difficult planning stages. Marché Saint George is nestled in residential East Van between Main and Fraser Street at 28th Avenue. It is the perfect neighbourhood cafe, artisanal [...]

I had a meeting with Jason from Crush Imports the other day, and while he brought a pretty full bag of tricks, there was one bottle I simply can’t stop thinking about. Wanting to encourage you to dash out and grab a bottle of the stuff, I was ecstatic when finding out it’s quite widely [...]

Saturday July 23, from 4:00pm to 6:00pm, the folks at Marquis Wine Cellars will be pouring samples from one of my favourite Spanish estates (and, interestingly, one I’ve blogged about a total of 10 times) – the very traditional Rioja estate R. Lopez de Heredia. Taste the wines and pick up a bottle or two [...]

Admittedly, I’ve been spending more time on bikes and beaches recently than I have been ruminating over wine. Vancouver summers are as glorious as they are short and every day of sun needs to be taken full advantage of. With that in mind, a very short introduction to a few wines I’ve fallen in love [...]

The always-engaging Mike Steinberger of Slate.com takes to his personal blog, shedding light on the supposed battle against the natural wine movement being waged by Bordeaux’s heavy-hitters, and calls it for what it is — a tempest in a teapot: Fun excerpt: It is highly unlikely that the “fine wine establishment” is going be upended by [...]

It finally sunk in at some point this week that my adolescent hockey heroes were but one win away from winning the Stanley Cup (my boyhood heroes, oddly enough, were actually the Pittsburgh Penguins, but that’s a whole other story). A pretty remarkable feat when you consider they played 107 games before getting to that [...]

I realized recently that I haven’t had much experience with aged New-World Pinot Noirs. A while back, Robert Stelmachuk from Chambar blind tasted me on a bottle of Williams Selyem, a Sonoma Pinot from 2000. It was very delicious with a softened strawberry fruitiness that actually made me think of something like Trousseau from Jura [...]

I’m not one to endorse consumption of the overly-greased and sodium-jacked food substitutes that the big fast food chains pump out, but, the reality is, we don’t all solely accompany our wine with foie gras and steak frites. A group recently sat down with a smorgasbord of McDonald’s cuisine and a flight of some accessible, [...]

While the Canucks wrap up running for the Stanley Cup, resulting in us being a tad distracted and not updating C & C as much as usual — we’re using this, uh, ‘down-time’ to do a major revamp to the site and plan on launching Cherries And Clay 2.0 within the next couple weeks. Please [...]

Welcome to Vancouver, #TBEX (Travel Blogger Exchange) members who are keen to explore, enjoy and write about our fair city while here for their annual conference! Make sure you drink your share of BC Wine! Here are a handful of names that you can be on the lookout for. They’re all independent producers who do many [...]

I shared the Domaine de Roally Macon-Villages from Thevenet last week with my mom over dinner at Cafeteria. ‘Shared’ may not be the best word, but she had some too. This wine made me do something I haven’t done in a long time: I cleaned the stack of assorted bills, papers and piles of junk [...]

I’ve added an extra-fun component to my next edition of the East Van Wine Academy, and since it took me WAY too long to cobble together a press release for it (there’s a lot of info I had to jam in there), I’m just gonna let the thing speak for itself!  Happy reading, and hope [...]

This post comes after hearing the news that the winery members of the BC Wine Institute have recently held a plebiscite vote and with the results, the BC Wine Authority is recommending a change to the Minister of Agriculture to Section 34 of The Wines of Marked Quality Regulation. Section 34 of The Wines of [...]