One of my biggest fears has come to fruition last week: I got really bored with wine. See, I’m a firm believer that passion (coupled with hard work) fuels a person’s drive to achieve great things.
My line of work involves vast amounts of information and requires some understanding of multiple disciplines such as geography, culture, history, and languages. That said, passion (and again, hard work) is indispensable.
Maybe it was a fit of burnout (my assistant told me that my schedule hasn’t let up since September 2017), the move (still one of the best decisions we’ve made, but adjusting to a new environment does take effort), the heat (because who wants to drink red wine, my preferred style, in this heat?), or a lot of unnecessary drama that needed a major reevaluation of the people I choose to spend time with, but I found myself so bored with the mere idea of wine.
This was clearly not good.
I would normally travel to a vineyard or a wine expo to reignite my drive, but as my assistant pointed out… I needed a break.
(I’m coming to a positive, upbeat point soon, I promise)
So, I took advantage of my husband’s three-week sabbatical and did just that: Spend time with him and our dog (and our new cat… Mental note: Update my blog profile to include him), and just chill.
Chilling in our house means a little libation (duh), and when I looked through my cellar for something that matched my mood, I found something: A blue sparkling wine named Chamfleur Bleu Demi-Sec.
I first heard about blue wine when a video of the Spanish startup Gik’s blue still wine went viral. The wine geek in me got immensely intrigued and I went around the metro to look for one.
Alas, it was unavailable in Manila (if anyone has leads on this, please let me know), but our friends from Planet Grapes managed to hook us up with a blue sparkling wine.
Feeling as blue as my wine, I opened the bottle and found the wine to be an easy drinking beverage. It has a strong ripe apple smell, and no yeast on the nose (wine geek alert: The presence of yeast or bread on the nose indicates that the wine has undergone a secondary fermentation. If the smells are not present, it had most likely gone through a different, less expensive process … Which makes sense, because each bottle of Chamfleur is about PHP950).
How does one make blue wine? From what I’ve read, scientists have extracted the blue pigment from the skin of red grapes, which makes it 100% natural (I’m keen to believe this, because it doesn’t leave a stain on your mouth the way artificially coloured drinks tend to do). However, winos and wine critics are currently on the fence about it. Personally, I can imagine serving this very well chilled in a themed party, a conversation piece, or to match the pool.
Or on my desk, because it looks so cute.
Did it cure my blues? A little. I mean, there’s nothing like a little geek fest to get my mind out of my funk. 😉
Will be back with a more upbeat article next week. Cheers!
Special thanks to our friends from Planet Grapes. Chamfleur is available in all their branches.
