I’m completely obsessed with a blog. It’s called Wine Terroirs and it’s by a man named Bertrand Celce who is a French photographer and writer. I can browse through it for hours.
He basically shares his travels around the French wine world. Tastings, wine bars, vineyards, wineries… you name it, he includes it. The photos are enough to make me want to pack up and move to France to pursue a life of wine. The stories and the descriptions are enough that I can actually visualize myself living in France, pursuing a life of wine!
My absolute favourite posts are the wine bars. I love wine bars – I love the idea of wine bars, at least well done ones. I should actually start visiting the wine bars in Ottawa on a frequent basis – the only wine oriented establishment I have really visited is Divino’s. And it wasn’t really how I had imagined a wine bar to be. I desperately want to go to Paris and wander around wine bars, getting lost in tiny cobblestoned streets and alleys. I’ve never been to Paris, so I’m sure my desires are overly romanticized, but sometimes it takes everything I have to keep me from racking up a few thousand on my credit card and flying over there.
I still don’t know what I want to do with my wine education. I love my vinification class – that much I’ve decided – but I’m not sure if I want to pursue a career as a winemaker. It seems like a lot of responsibility and pressure, yet it also seems as though it could be immensely rewarding. The only problem would be the sheer amount of education required and the type of wines I would want to make. The winemaking programs here in Ontario are all cool climate oriented and I wouldn’t want to stay in Ontario to make wines. I would rather move to the Okanagan, if I were to stay in Canada, or head further south. Although I love pinot noir, I would like to make Bordeaux varietals and those just don’t work in the Ontario climate.
Anyway. That’s just more musings. I’m glad to report that Wednesday’s Grape Varieties class was a better. I’m looking forward to the Riedel tasting, done by Diane Paradis of the CA Paradis store here in Ottawa. There will be different grape varieties tasted in normal glasses and then the specific Riedel glasses. If we bring our chequebooks we can buy the glasses at a discounted price, too… which is tempting, because Riedel glasses are pretty.
None of us have had the guts (yet) to ask our Grape Varieties instructor about the timing of the final exam and the conflict with the California Wine Fair. I discovered, however, that a number of my classmates are equally concerned about the conflict. I’m glad I’m not alone!!!
