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Weeknight Wine Drinking—Wine Not?

I think that sometimes we get a little too precious about our wine pairings. Too focused on the ‘perfect’ pairing. Too fussed on which days are ‘ok’ to have a glass of wine (or two!) with dinner. Blah blah blah. Now I’m not saying I drink every night—sometimes one wants a break; sometimes one wants to drink something not wine (*gasp*) and that’s all a-ok too. But I recently cleaned out my wine cellar and dedicated one whole section to ‘weeknight drinking.’ Meaning, any day of the week either I or the man should be able to walk in and choose something and it should be fine. Choose something based on the food, the mood, the weather. Close your eyes point and say ‘ok.’ (Um…maybe not that last one…).

The following is a list of some of our weeknight pairings. These are not reviews of specific wines/wine brands per se. More my/our comments on styles of wines that, for us, seem to par well with classic Briscoe mid-week meals. The perfect pairings? Probably not? But, isn’t the perfect pairing the pairing you’re enjoying at the moment anyway? (Answer: yes.)

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Hey Briscoe, What Else You Drinking?

It’s time for another fun episode of Hey Briscoe, What Else you Drinking? Yes, believe it or not I do find time to taste wines not associated with my exam preparations. I do several virtual wine tastings, belong to my own set of wine clubs and *gasp* purchase wine for the pure random pleasure of it. Here’s a list of a few recommendations from recent sips…

No tasting grid necessary, these are off the cuff tasting notes, so please don’t mind the slam poetry and leave wine-snobbery at the door. You’ve been warned.

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Hey Briscoe: What Else Are You Drinking?

While I’m rigorously working on all my WSET study materials and gathering my accompanying tasting notes encompassing the quality standards of the WSET grid, you should know…I still drink wine for fun.

Not every bottle I enjoy is as meticulously examined as others. (Although, admittedly, most are just so I can keep practicing my tasting/tasting note-taking.) In fact, probably like many of you, there are a few bottles in my cellar that are household staples—wines we’ve enjoyed in the past and continue to enjoy on a quasi-regular basis.

So, I thought it would be fun to show a few bottles I’ve been enjoying lately that aren’t associated with any work event or school study. Cheers!

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Wine Region Overview: Northern Italy

For those of you following along on my WSET wine tour around the world, we recently did a brief stop in Northern Italy for a pop quiz about some of the wines produced. Indeed, that did cover a lot of ground, but not nearly the whole region. So I want to take time to look at Northern Italy in its entirety and explore the different regions and wine styles produced.

[Information based on WSET Level 3 material]

OVERVIEW

When we look at Northern Italy, we are looking at the area closest to the foothills of the Alps as well as the plains of the River Po. In general, Northern Italy has a moderate climate with dry, short summers. The Alps, which you may be able to tell from the map above, span the length of the Northern Italian border, thus shielding the area from rain. Like the River Po, other bodies of water that provide climatic moderation to the more inland areas include lakes such as Lake Garda. As you can see, there are also portions that are close to the sea—these areas can have higher levels of rainfall, so the major vineyard concern there will be fungal diseases.

Traditionally, vineyards were trained on the pergola system, as this provides air flow as well as keeps the grapevines off of the moist vineyard floor. Furthermore, with the vine canopy drooping over the fruit clusters, the training system also helps minimize excessive sun exposure. This system is still utilized today for grapes that require a high amount of acidity and low sugar (such as for sparkling wine) and for those wines that require grapes to be sun-dried (as in the passito method, which requires grapes to be fully developed and free of fungal disease so they can dry-out off the vine, post-harvest—we covered last time, but will touch on it again here). However, it’s noted that higher density plantings utilizing a VSP training system is now more widely used overall.

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