I've always enjoyed wine, along with beer, whisky, vodka, shochu, various liqueurs, saké, and pretty much whatever else was available. But in the past year, I've developed a more professional interest in wine, leading to some formal wine education (woohoo!) and a lot of tastings (woohoo double!!).
Life changed - a lot - when Caroline and I created our new business, ZenKitchen. You can get all the details about how that happened from Caroline's blog, but here are the Cole's notes: Caroline wanted a change of careers, went to chef school in NYC, graduated, and ZenKitchen was born. We do small function catering, monthly gourmet vegan dinners and cooking classes, all focused on vegetarian, local and healthy foods.
It didn't take long to realize that with good food goes good wine, and we needed to learn how to provide good options for our patrons, including wines that would go with our unique foods.
A good friend of ours, Marc, introduced us to the National Capital Sommelier Guild, an amazing group of people with wine expertise varying from highly sophisticated to, well, me. Getting to know Guild folk, in turn, led us to the Algonquin College Sommelier Program. That's where I am now, midway through a two year, part-time course toward a Sommelier Certificate. We sit in a college classroom with our glasses lined up in front of us, do a little learning, a little tasting, a little learning, a little tasting. Life is good.
In the mean time, I attend a lot of blind tastings, go to wine fairs, read wine books (there are a LOT of wine books!) and visit wineries. I've learned to love some varieties I had never tried before, I've learned to trust my palate, and I've learned that there's one wine company in the world hated, and I mean hated, by oenophiles everywhere. But I'm saving that story for later...
Cheers,
Dave
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