(enough) About me
Welcome to Sip & Savour
A curious, slightly whimsical journey through wine, food, culture and the stories that connect them.
Some of my earliest food memories involve my younger sister and me dismantling my mother's carefully arranged plates. We sat in our little children's seats, faced with the usual meat, potatoes and vegetables, and promptly divided the meal between us: I ate the protein, she got the carbs. Mum had clearly put some thought into a balanced dinner. We had other ideas.
Hungary was where I learned that food began long before it reached the table. There were gardens to tend, vegetables to preserve, pigs to butcher and wine to make. I didn't think much of it at the time. It was simply how things were done.
Curiosity eventually took me elsewhere. I lived and studied in Switzerland, for almost a decade, France for a period of time and travelled enough to develop a lasting fascination with the art, architecture and history tucked into the corners of Europe.
I also collected a few degrees along the way. Not all of them particularly practical, perhaps, but they do come in handy when I disappear into a medieval church or spend far too long examining something in a museum.
Canada is home now, but those years abroad still shape how I look at food and wine. I'm interested in where things come from, how traditions develop and why a particular dish or bottle belongs to one place rather than another.
That's what Sip & Savour is about. Wine, certainly, but also the food we eat with it, the places we travel to, the art we stumble across and the history we sometimes have to dig a little to uncover.
I believe wine belongs at the table, not on an exam paper. My approach to pairing is somewhere between Swiss-watchmaker precision and a Hungarian grandmother's kitchen wisdom: part technique, part instinct. I enjoy the details, from grape varieties and regional traditions to the occasional obscure historical footnote, but I'm also happy to trust my palate. Sometimes the theory works beautifully. Sometimes dinner proves otherwise.
I may still be somewhere near the bottom of the sommelier food chain, but I'm endlessly curious. After years of studying, tasting and talking about wine, the bottles that stay with me are rarely memorable for their tasting notes alone. There's usually a meal, a place or a person involved.
I also work at one of Canada's best independent fine wine stores, which is a rather convenient arrangement for someone with a wine obsession.
When I'm not tasting, drinking or selling wine, I'm working as a graphic designer. The maps, illustrations, infographics and other graphics you see here are my own work. My husband usually takes the travel photographs. A wine expert in his own right, an excellent travel companion and a patient man who has learned that when I point at a church, a painting or a piece of cheese and say, “No, no, trust me. This one's essential”, it's probably best to let me have a look.
You'll find recipes, regional food, wine recommendations, travel notes, art and cultural history here, along with the occasional rabbit hole that turns out to be much deeper than expected. I can't promise every detour will be necessary. That's half the fun.
Wine has a way of leading somewhere else: to a vineyard, a kitchen, a painting, a forgotten tradition or a conversation that lasts longer than planned.
And if there's a good glass involved, so much the better.