Opinion: It’s time to show to a couple palate pick-me-uppers so as to add a bit of 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 nicely behind us, the resolutions are (probably) waning and, frankly, winter feels prefer it’s unending.
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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 of pizzazz to the dreary state of present affairs:
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Sunday Cider Acid Life Cider, B.C. ($20 for 750 mL, accessible by means of the cider and choose personal liquor shops).
What qualifies as a palate pick-me-upper? There’s no science or preset components. Extra like a “you-know-it-when-you-taste-it” form of factor. However, typically talking, there might be evident acidity and vivid fruit.
Enjoyable reality, 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+, recent and crisp.
Chateau Nekresi 2020 Kisi-Khikhvi Qvevri Amber Dry Wine, Georgia ($25.99, No. 362059).
Properly then, right here’s one thing totally different! We nonetheless don’t see many Georgian wines accessible 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 precise time for Chateau Nekresi’s Kisi-Khikhvi’s skin-contact, qvevri fermented and aged amber wine to search out its technique to our cabinets. A mix of Rkatsitell, Kisi and Khikhvi grapes — file this vivid white underneath “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.
Grey Monk 2020 Pinot Noir, B.C. ($23.99, No. 251835).
Depend on Pinot Noir to be a palate-pick-me-upping purple.
(Not all the time, 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 nicely, together with stalwart Grey Monk’s perennial Pinot Noir palate pleaser. Pouring an trustworthy ruby color verging on garnet, it brings vivid purple berry aromas complemented by a toasty oak edge. Lithe and vigorous, its fruit offers technique to herbs, scrub brush and oak earlier than a recent end.
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Backside line: B+, lithe and vigorous purple.
The swirl: Weathered Beer Celebration
Feeling the greys? Climate bought you down? Might as nicely embrace the season and switch issues constructive by attending this yr’s Weathered Beer Celebration.
Happening Feb. 17-18 at Heritage Corridor in Vancouver (3102 Essential 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 function.”
Tickets are $75 for Friday’s B.C. Night time 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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