John Taylor's Blog: The Pairs With Life Podcast, page 6

Pairs With Thanksgiving Wine On A $50 Budget

Its been hard to give thanks during 2020, especially with virtual Thanksgivings and empty bank accounts. To help you through this unprecedented Holiday, I've picked out four, readily-available wines for your table with a total cost under fifty bucks...with tax! These are four wines you should be able to find at any major grocery store, with a wide enough compatibility to please you, Uncle Bob and even Aunt Marge. So, unroll that 'fitty, pop some corks and show some gratitude: we're alive, there's hope, and now you've got four wines for under fifty bucks.

Pairs With Geeking Out On New Jersey Wine With Kathleen Willcox

New Jersey wine? Yup, it's an actual thing, as my guest Kathleen Willcox attests to. A freelance wine writer for Wine Enthusiast, Wine Searcher and Spirited Biz, Kathleen has become quite the expert on wineries of the northeast U.S. and, having recently returned from a exploratory trip, now sings the praises of New Jersey wine. Being California born and bred (and a Certified Napa Valley Wine Snob), I was fascinated at the opportunity to sit down with Kathleen, taste through a few NJ wines (including what turned out to be an extraordinary 2016 Brut Reserve Sparkling Wine from William Heritage)and learn all about it. So, grab a glass from The Garden State and wonk out with us!

Pairs With Donnachiara "Empatia" and the Top Three Breakup Lines

Breakups. They suck. No matter which side of the hammer you're on, when it drops, it hurts. On this episode, I break into the Donnachiara Empatia white wine - a delicious 100% Fiano from Italy (duh) - and count down the Top Three Breakup Lines people use. Through the miracle of modern Technology, I also run these lines through Google's new Emotional Translator to find out the real meaning of these lines. So get yourself ready, because honey, we need to talk...

The Halloween Special: The Four Best Goth Songs and The Wines That Pair With Them

Dim the lights, don the leather and pour the wine! For our first Halloween show, I'm joined by special guest Ellen Clifford of the The Wine Situation - perhaps the world's only Goth Wine Podcast -  to talk about the Top Four Goth songs and the wines that pairs with them. So, what will it be? The Cure with Apothic Red? All I can tell you is that there won't be any Rosés. Unless they're Blood Roses...

Pairs With Double Standards For Wine Influencers: The Men Tell All

Following an insightful and somewhat controversial discussion with six women wine influencers (I know, I know, they hate being called that) about double standards on social media, it's time to turn to the men and hear what they have to say. And this wasn't an easy task: of the 20 influencers I contacted in total, only 4 agreed to be on the podcast. But that they have to say is as broad in scope and perhaps as controversial as what the women had to say. Are there double standards? If so, who created them? And does the pressure to sexualize posts for Likes and Follows come from within or without?

Pairs With An Untriumphant Return To BevMo

A year and a half ago, Christine and I merrily ventured to our local BevMo for the annual wine-purchasing Bacchanalia that is the "Five Cent Sale." Last week, with similar excitement, I journeyed back to BevMo to reap my haul of amazing wine bargains...only to be as disappointed as a 10-year-old girl opening a dead puppy for Christmas. Why? What's gone wrong? Have I just become a cynical wine snob, or are there bigger issues at play here?

Pairs With Val d'Oca Prosecco & Double Standards for Wine Influencers

Are female wine influencers subject to a double standard? Is there a pressure on women to create suggestive and provocative social media content in order to generate more Likes, Follows and comments? Do we, as an audience of wine lovers and appreciators, willingly create an environment that rewards sexualized posts over informational posts? With no less than four bottles of Val d'Oca Prosecco in hand, I talk to six women in wine who've had tremendous success on Instagram about their personal experiences with online sexism: is the pressure real, is it internal or external, and does it affect how they create content?

Pairs With A Trip To Clarksburg, Part 2

In the second part of my trip to Clarksburg, Maria Ramirez (@Uncorked_Notes) and I explore the Julietta Winery, a gorgeous property on the edge of the Clarksburg AVA. Tastings in hand, we take stock of our trip as well as a little personal inventory. Unfortunately, my inventory consisted of a Blanket of Existential Dread, while Maria's contained a small Comfort Zone. What does it take to shed that blanket and to exit that zone? About ten wine tastings, or is it something more?

Pairs With A Trip To Clarksburg, Part 1

With existential dread creeping up on me like an internet stalker, a nice trip to wine country seemed just like the ticket to clear my head and refresh my soul. With area expert and wine influencer Maria Ramirez @uncorked_notes) as my guide, I spent the day visiting Heringer Estates, the Clarksburg Wine Company and Julietta Winery, sampling all kinds of amazing Chenin Blancs and learning all about this small but thriving AVA just south of Sacramento, CA. But no cure to existential dread comes without a few side effects...like the constant questioning of why we do what we do. And when that question turns to sexism in the world of social media influencers, it just may be that another bottle of Viognier will need to be uncorked...

Pairs With Mer Soleil Silver Chardonnay and My Cat's Interview Of Me

With the release of my debut novel, Pairs With Life, just around the corner, my publisher requested that I do an interview on my podcast. The problem is, I'm not exactly famous yet, so it's not like Edward R. Murrow is willing to rise from the grave and give me an interview (and if he did, it'd be pretty gross and terrifying anyway). So, with no one else to turn to, I got my cat, Jazzy, to involuntarily volunteer to interview me about my book's release. Through the miracle of Google Translate, and a glass or three of Mer Soleil Silver 2017 Monterey County Unoaked Chardonnay, Jazzy digs past 300 million years of feline predatory evolution to talk about the motivation behind my book.