Wine Man: Palate pick-me-uppers

Opinion: It’s time to show to a couple palate pick-me-uppers so as to add a bit pizazz to the dreary state of present affairs.

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The doldrums have arrived. It’s late-January and the skies appear to forecast everlasting gray. The vacation season is properly behind us, the resolutions are (presumably) waning and, frankly, winter feels prefer it’s endless.

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All proper, maybe a tad dramatic. However is it actually? Whereas we patiently await extra solar — and, frankly, daylight generally — it’s time to show to a couple palate pick-me-uppers so as to add a bit pizzazz to the dreary state of present affairs:

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Sunday Cider Acid Life Cider.
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Sunday Cider Acid Life Cider, B.C. ($20 for 750 mL, out there by the cider and choose non-public liquor shops).

What qualifies as a palate pick-me-upper? There’s no science or preset method. Extra like a “you-know-it-when-you-taste-it” form of factor. However, typically talking, there shall be evident acidity and shiny fruit.

Enjoyable truth, these traits can actually come from apples, and for a cider named Acid Life it’s not altogether stunning that the label proclaims that is “a jamboree of acids: magic, lactic, acetic.”

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It’s true and, moreover, there’s ample apple and tropical fruit aromas main right into a juicy entry and a lighter-bodied cider. It’s actually crisp, with lingering acidity on a prolonged end.

Backside line: B+, contemporary and crisp.

Chateau Nekresi 2020 Kisi-Khikhvi Qvevri Amber Dry Wine.
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Chateau Nekresi 2020 Kisi-Khikhvi Qvevri Amber Dry Wine, Georgia ($25.99, No. 362059).

Effectively then, right here’s one thing totally different! We nonetheless don’t see many Georgian wines out there domestically, although the nation has millennia of winemaking historical past.

A part of this distinct historical past are qvevri, massive clay fermentation and storage vessels. Earthenware is having fun with considerably of a renaissance in winemaking circles, so it’s the suitable time for Chateau Nekresi’s Kisi-Khikhvi’s skin-contact, qvevri fermented and aged amber wine to seek out its technique to our cabinets. A mix of Rkatsitell, Kisi and Khikhvi grapes — file this shiny white beneath “intriguing.”

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Floral, citrus pith and honeyed aromas result in nuances of tea leaves and dry fruit, with evident liveliness constructing earlier than a tannic however crisp end.

Backside line: A-, a zesty wine curve ball.

Gray Monk 2020 Pinot Noir.
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Grey Monk 2020 Pinot Noir, B.C. ($23.99, No. 251835).

Depend on Pinot Noir to be a palate-pick-me-upping pink.

(Not at all times, to make sure — there are unlucky examples of overtly fruity, massaged Pinot Noirs.)

However in its correct kind Pinot Noir is a wine providing utmost engagement: for tastebuds, thoughts and soul.

On this sense native Pinot Noirs typically fare properly, together with stalwart Grey Monk’s perennial Pinot Noir palate pleaser. Pouring an trustworthy ruby color verging on garnet, it brings shiny pink berry aromas complemented by a toasty oak edge. Lithe and full of life, its fruit offers technique to herbs, scrub brush and oak earlier than a contemporary end.

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Backside line: B+, lithe and full of life pink.

The swirl: Weathered Beer Celebration

Feeling the greys? Climate received you down? Could as properly embrace the season and switch issues constructive by attending this 12 months’s Weathered Beer Celebration.

Going down Feb. 17-18 at Heritage Corridor in Vancouver (3102 Foremost St.), Weathered payments itself as “a one-of-a-kind craft-beer tasting expertise someplace in-between a beer competition, a pop-up bar and a bottle-share multi functional.”

Tickets are $75 for Friday’s B.C. Evening and $105 for every of the 2, four-hour Saturday classes (plus charges and taxes).

For full particulars and to buy, head to weatheredbeer.com.

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Originally posted 2023-01-25 19:00:16.