December is a busy month for dinner party planning for a lot of us. This is the time of the year a lot of us are starting to think about our Christmas dinner and the wine to pair with what we are going to celebrate the season. This piece is by no means exhaustive, but I am hoping to help you start thinking about the wine and food pairing, whether it will be a traditional pairing or are you going to venture a bit outside the ordinary. Turkey Turkey is probably the most common

Tasting Chablis at the top of a vineyard overlooking Chablis Grand Crus. My wife, Goretti, and I spent a three-week vacation in France in October 2025.  Two of those weeks were with the Vinfluence Group for a wine tour of Burgundy and Rhone.  Then we spent an extra four days in Provence on our own in a small historical town named Arles.  We finished off in Paris for another two days before returning home to Calgary. My regular readers would have noticed that this is my fourth

PROLOGUE I was born and raised in Hong Kong when it was under British rule.  Wine is not part of our culture nor in my family upbringing....

Albania may not be the first country that comes to mind when thinking about wine, but that’s changing—and fast. Nestled in the heart of...

Last Friday night we hosted a very special dinner at our place with some very special wines from our cellar and those of our guests. That...

In my almost 5 decade of wine exploration journey, I have come across a few confusions. But none took more time than the three below to...

Last weekend was Mother’s Day.  Since both daughters-in-law are now mothers and their husbands want to celebrate with them on the actual...

I just realized that I have not written any Wine Ramblings since November of last year.  I have been busy with the renovation of our home.  This is probably my last renovation of this house and perhaps the last renovation in my lifetime.  Part of the renovation is the building of a proper wine cellar for myself and my wine collection.  The wine cellar was not the main intention of the renovation, but rather the accidental consequence of having to rebuild the basement and to m

I recently returned from a wine tour in Argentina. I am very excited to report a new age of wines is dawning in Argentina. But let me...

For many of us who were around in the seventies and early eighties, you would likely remember the Italian restaurants back then and the...

Bordeaux, being the benchmark the world uses to measure all things related to wines, has been doing “En Primeur” every year since the...

A few nights ago, I was sitting at a dinner with a couple of FOV directors. Someone asked me how to tell what wines would age and which...

THE IDEAL WINE GLASS FOR TASTING To me the ideal wine glass for tasting has to have a bowl at least 6 to 8 oz in volume with a stem and...

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but we will try to cover some of the more commonn labels you may come across.

There are two common ways to make sparkling wines. Almost all better quality sparkling wines are made with the so-call Traditional...

In October, Goretti and I went on a tour in Spain. We first spent three days in San Sebastian in the Basque country of Spain by...

There are two basic approaches for pairing wine with food. One is to pair them such that the wine and food complement each other in a...

I am sure most of the members of FOV know or think they know how to taste wine. Here, I am to summarize and remind people of some obvious...

In this piece I am going to talk about issues of why, where, what, how, and budget of building your wine cellar. I hope I can give...

I am sure you have come across 90-points, 94-, 96-point wines advertised in wine stores, in wine magazines and newspapers. You may even...