I just returned home from the second class of a four-week wine course at the LCBO. It’s on old world wines. Last week, we tasted eight French wines, and this week we moved through Italy. Learning to appreciate wine and understanding the industry was one of my goals during this sabbatical, and so far, I’m really enjoying it! I did mean to take a longer-term course at Algonquin, but I’m finding the one-off courses and now this longer one is suiting me well. It’s piqued my interest and has taught me that I am definitely a wine-o 🙂 and definitely want to know as much as I can about anything wine related!!

I recently watched the documentary Somm on Netflix, and that also heightened my interest in learning about wine. It is about four guys going for their master sommelier test, something that only a handful of people pass each year. There is something like only 250 master sommeliers in the world—that’s since the 1970s or some crazy stat like that. From the documentary, I can see why there are so few. These guys studied for years and have to know everything about everything wine related! You see them smell a glass, and instantly, they know the grape variety, the wine region (even sometimes down to the winery!!) and the vintage! Then they discuss what aromas they smell, and what they taste. It’s creepily amazing to see them do this. I know I’ll likely never get to this point, but I feel like I’m starting to get a decent sense of how this works. It really just takes a lot of practice, which I will have to do very slowly because, well, wine is expensive. Haha. The last two classes, I came home with two bottles of wine each, at $20 to $25 a bottle. That’s my limit for now, but damn, I have tasted some really good (unfortunately expensive) wines!! One day… I will taste that $12,000 bottle Ian and I saw on the wine list at Café Martinique in the Bahamas last year on our honeymoon and see how it differs from a $25… A girl can dream, right? 😉

In any case, I wanted to share with you some of the wines that I have tasted since I started this part of the sabbatical. But it would’ve been too long for one post, and as Ian likes to say when I ask him if he’s read the latest blog post, “TLDR” (too long, didn’t read). If you’d like to read my tasting notes, click here or look under the “Bea’s Me Year” link in the main menu for the link. 🙂

I did also do another wine tasting on Spanish wines and tapas for which I cannot find the tasting notes for, but will update that page if I do find them! Luckily, there is a Spanish component to the old world wines course. Next week will be Germany! Looking forward to it!! What are some of your favourite wines!??!

–Bea