The Analyst

I live outside of Toronto, not too far from Niagara, which is Ontario's premier wine region. My wife and I (well, mostly me) have become progressively more into wine over the last six or seven years, to the point where I now not only enjoy drinking wine, but also take pleasure in visiting wineries, going to tastings and reading about it too.

A fair restaurant corkage fee is:

$10

A tell-tale sign of a wine snob is:

Someone who says they refuse to drink any wine from X region or x country

The wine region I most want to visit:

I'd love to visit Sonoma, but Bordeaux would be amazing (I just need to work on my Francais)

My "wish list" of wines I want to acquire soon:

I'd like to find a reasonably priced Chateauneuf-du-Pape, Cote-Rotie, Barolo, Stags Leap Cab and Haut-Medoc Red

My biggest wine pet peeve:

Bad wine lists in restaurants (either limited selection or over-priced)

My favorite wine quote:

"No wood, no good" - not that I entirely agree, but it's catchy!

My dream wine to one day taste or own:

A first-growth Bordeaux

The best wines I have ever tasted:

The best wines I've ever tasted have been a 2000 Haut-Medoc Red, a 2002 Russian River Pinot, a 2005 Niagara Meritage and a 2000 Okanagan Valley Pinot.

The people with whom I most often enjoy wine:

My wife, family and friends

The last wine I had that I absolutely loved:

The last wine was the 2005 Niagara Meritage. It is made by Hidden Bench Winery (Terroir Cache series) and I had it at Barberian's Steak House in Toronto.

What I think of the movie Sideways:

One of my favourites of all time - and not just because it about wine

My thoughts on the 100 point rating scale made famous by Robert Parker and emulated by seemingly everyone:

It's a great idea, but it seems to operate more like a 20-point scale with mosts wines scoring between 80 and 100. It's also one-dimensional, so there's no way to identify whether the wine's strengths or weaknesses line up with your own taste preferences.

My wine travels have taken me to the following wine regions:

Mostly just Niagara, but my wife and I did visit a winery near Jerome, AZ that sold Caduceus wine (owned by the lead singer of Tool).