halfaglass.com

…was featured in this week’s Province column.

SuperBowl Sunday is here! Wine recommendation: Cava.

Funny piece in the Vancouver Sun over the weekend where Kenji and I were forced to consider what type of wine each other would be.

Had a Glass 2009 has cracked the Top 10!

Upcoming events:

-Undercover Fundraiser - 7:30PM, Thursday, Nov 27
-Barbara Jo’s Books to Cooks - 6PM, Friday, Nov 28
-Everything Wine (North Van location) - 2PM, Saturday, Nov 29

Hot off the presses. The latest edition has hit shelves. Kenji is quite fond of the back cover photo. Me, I’m not so certain.

Thanks to all the continued support with the Had a Glass series, events and such forthcoming…

OK, time to come clean. This site is lame. Sure, HALFAGLASS is not itself square, but the lack of active posting is nothing but pathetic. It’s not for lack of care, I mean we’re still in the thick of thinking and drinking wine. And it’s not for lack of effort, our column still appears weekly in The Province and Had a Glass 2009 has gone off to the printers to (hopefully) hit shelves late October.

We just weren’t cut out for this Web 2.0 thing (OK, we do have Facebook accounts). Yes, everyone has to have a blog, but maintaining a good blog takes a “blogger” like personality. It’s true, (for those that logged on early enough to remember) the HALFAGLASS site comprised a “blog” before there was such a word, thanks really to a compatriot who always seems to be ahead of the curve.

We posted then and loved it, for the novelty — and the place it represented in our lives. Textism (though you have to get screenshots from 2001 to really appreciate) was a serious influence, blogging was so real and now that we poured hours into the hobby. It was fun.

But then. But then, we entered new eras of our lives and, well and we realized that we’re best living in the now. Not that cyberspace doesn’t represent an interesting, relevant dimension. It’s just that we can’t smell wine in cyberspace. And there’s never enough hours in a day… and well, I prefer talking to a real teller at the bank rather than the ATM.

Anyways, tonight as I marinated a leg of lamb for some festivities (and serious ping-pong) tomorrow, I was swept away in a bout of nostalgia*. HALAFGLASS remains very much about promoting the Good Life, but the Good Life is hard to appreciate in binary.

Live it.

Grab a bottle. Grab some friends. Embark on fun. In the real world (then report on it on your blogs, and link back to HALFAGLASS).

*And if we’re truly treading down the nostalgia path, it should be noted that the marinade for the lamb (a deadly simple, fool-proof procedure of rosemary, lemon juice, studded garlic, dijon, and S+P) was first introduced to me by my dear friend Rhys, proprietor and wine-maestro extraordinaire of Wine Plus.

Another year older, not feeling much wiser, but more wines to taste. This week’s column.

Though the calendar says summer is here, more often then not the days this year are trying hard just to feel like spring. Ah well, our glasses are always half full anyways, in this column we look at wines to pair with summer.

Bring on the Chardonnay, Ugni Blanc, and Cabernet Sauvignon too…

This week’s column.

Last week’s Province column focused on wines of the Souther Hemisphere:

“Time to take a wine trip down south — the southern hemisphere to be exact, where the year’s harvests have all come in and the vineyards are getting ready for winter.”

Continue.

Wine guy goes beer covert in Belgium. Behind every good wine there’s a (lot of) beer, just ask a winemaker. At the end of the day most vintners, with grapes weighing heavily on the mind, opt for a cleansing ale.

It’s the end of my day in Brussels and I find myself savouring a Waterloo Dubbel at Monk Bar off Place Ste Catherine. Pubs like this abound in Bruxelles, cool pubs that still whiff of Art Nouveau with their opulent woodwork and exquisite tile floors (I only have to question the music. I mean, one Suzanne Vega song for nostalgia’s sake is fine, but I do believe this is the first time I’ve heard the album run in its entirety. Ever).

They say there’s some 800 beers in Belgium, this pub has give-or-take 40 and I’m only sitting in for one. So needless to say I could drink myself around the city and still have a ways to go to get through the beer list.

Not that I’d get very far even if I pushed hard. Back to the beer in hand, at plus 8% ABV the Waterloo is a serious sipper. It’s even served in an old ceramic tankard, giving it a real Medieval, don’t mess appeal.

Beer culture in Belgium can go bottle-to-bottle for intellectual potable with the wines of any country. The care, passion, rituals, etc. involved with these brews bring brewskis to a higher form. I’d talk more but there’s a another bar to hit.

Can’t talk, must sip, the 30th Annual Vancouver Playhouse International Wine Festival has begun…

If you missed our primer in The Province last week, go catch up. If you haven’t bought your tickets yet, you can see if any are left.  One wine down, 1599 to go!