An Afternoon Enjoying Unique Wines And Stories At VinExpo Singapore

Last week, I was lucky enough to get a pass for Vinexpo, an event for wine makers from around the world to come to Singapore to showcase their best tipple for media, distributors and competitors. Needless to say, it was an elegantly buzzy afternoon out at Marina Bay Sands. Just before I met a friend to traipse through the aisles of wine wonder, we received a tip from a mutual compadre and wine lover to start at the Chilean pavilion in the hopes of trying a unique pour fermented with sake yeast. And so we did. 

Vina Marty produces this said beautiful bottled creation. The nice gentleman featured poured us glasses of Sauvignon Blanc birthed from sake yeast, and explained this yeast handles well at colder temperatures with a decidedly lower interaction with alcohol. These conditions allows the vineyard to keep the wines fermenting for longer, allowing richer flavours to permeate out of the pressed juices (called must). The light gold result we tasted was quite amazing, a more full-bodied wine that tickled the palate longer with a more robust deliciousness. What clever oenologists! As a result of the acquiring the yeast and eventually churning such lovely wines, Vina Marty's Gouette D'Argent Sauvignon Blanc sells well in Japan. Read about Pascal Marty's esteemed career that spanned work for Baron Philippe de Rothschild S.A and Opus One in California. Vina Marty's Instagram.

This is Pam Turner, co-owner of Ambar Estate wines. I approached her because I had not heard of wines coming out of seemingly wintry Portland USA - we're so used to bottles from Napa Valley and other spots in warmer California. Pam is a hoot, one of those calm, collected persons you meet who tells stories well with a hint of panache. She elaborated on how the climate and soil in the Dundee Hills suited certain varietals, and the vineyard's organic approach to viticulture earned them a reputation for high quality, sustainable output. And my oh my, she poured a wine that redefines expectations of what a Chardonnay can aspire to be. The 2022 Lustral Chardonnay is unreal. Small batch with a Decanter score 97, this white had a clarity paired with a rare lovely depth of flavour that defied expectations. I think I went "Good God, this is stunning." and my wine aficionado friend concurred. What's also wonderful is that the Ambar Estate offers tours of their vineyard. Pam showed us pictures of their glass-walled tasting and dining rooms that surround a magnificent Japanese-inspired landscape and overlook the verdant grape crops. Oh, Pam's hubby used to work for Softbank and she had spent lots of time in Japan soaking in the vibe and culture. Hence, the gorgeous zen-esque aesthetic of welcome area. If you're ever in Portland, you know where to go. 

Ambar Estate - image from ambarestate.com

Also "Ambar" sounded Indian so I asked Pam why the name. She replied she was a fan of Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings and wanted a name from the epic story as a homage to its greatness. Ambar in the Elvish tongue means the fate of an individual or of worlds, or civilised world (it can get complicated in the LOTR universe). Ambar Estate's Instagram

This is Liu Hui from Palacios Vinos De Finca (Palacios Estate Wines) and she introduced us to white Rioja wine! Rioja is a region slightly northeast of Madrid, between the capital and Pamplona, and south of the Basque region. I'm familiar with Rioja reds, with bottles aplenty at the local supermarket and airport duty free but finding a white Rioja was like meeting an albino tiger. The whites are exclusively packaged under the Nivarius label. The bottle we tried was made with Tempranillo Blanco grapes, with others created from unique-to-terrior Maturana,Viura and Garnacha varieties. Pleasantly fruity, this Nivarius would make for an easy accompaniment to a delicately flavoured cuisines. Palacios Vinos De Finca's Instagram.

We skipped and hopped a skootch down the aisle and met with Margherita Forno who gladly introduced us to the Il Falchetto vintages from the Piedmont region in northwest Italy. The wines comes from six vineyards that are part of an area that is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. With a history of wine production since the 1940s, the brand also prides itself on not using any herbicides or insecticides to underscore their sustainable approach to winemaking. Margherita started us off with a white wine made with a lesser known grape, Arneis. The fruit is said to be unique to the Langhe region of Piedmont, and produces a pale beige tipple with subtle notes of pear. 

We moved on to the full-bodied reds made with the Barbera grape, a variety less familiar to us here in Singapore, with mostly Barolos, Chiantis and Siangoveses splashed about at our favourite Italian osterias. We tried a delicious, ruby red Pian Scorrone Barbera D'Asti to start, and immediately my reaction was that this wine would pair well with spicy food. I asked the Ms Forno what "D'Asti" meant and quite simply, it refers the wine is from the Asti district of Piedmont. (That just means all the Moscatos you've been imbibing aren't legit Piedmontese, haha) Our next taste test was a level up on the Barbera ladder and aptly labelled as "Superiore". The Lurei Barbera D'Asti was a bold, full-bodied envelope of wonderfully mellowed flavour. Incredible. To top off the Il Falchetto experience, Margherita perhaps left her family's next best secret to the last - the Ciombo Moscato D'Asti. It was another "Good God, what is this gift?" epiphany. There are Moscatos and then there's this amazing rapture of subtle sweetness with a lingering longan finish. What a fabulous lesson to Azzuri wine! Il Falchetto's Instagram

While taking our virgin VinExpo sips at Vina Marty, we had asked our host what unique wines he had tried at this gathering of vintners. He pointed out a South African winery that let the same batch of Sauv Blanc ferment in different places, and one of these places was the sea! (Jaw drop and pass me a glass!). We needed some help to locate Fryer's Cove's station but once i spotted the barnacle encrusted bottle on display we knew we hit clink clink. 

Fryer's Cove is a tiny verdant jewel in the middle of the mostly dry west coast of South Africa, 300 kilometers north of Cape Town. Located in the small town of Doringbaai that's famous for packing and exporting crayfish, this winery is the culmination of dream spawned in 1985, plagued by drought and sea-borne factors, resolved through co-operation with landowner neighbours, and winning a rare 5-star accolade from South Africa's Wine Magazine for its Sauvignon Blanc in 2005. What's cool and also our reason for savouring this wine is that vineyard is practically next to the Atlantic Ocean. Smothered by salty air in a unique terroir, the produce had to be special. We were not disappointed - the regular Sauvignon Blanc was a  crisp, grassy, mildly herby concoction, slightly balsamic even. Not a popular nod but it would most definitely pair well with mirin-marinated white fish or buttery crayfish. Next we had the same vintage that was tossed about at sea. The nice gentleman representing Fryer's Cove - I think he is Paul - explained that the different temperature profile and constant vibration from sea currents indeed produced a less than identical twin. This was less sharp, more mellow and evolved in its flavour, with a nose and tongue that would garner more mainstream appreciation. And we were lucky enough to try this bounty from the sea as they only brought along a few such bottles and did not sell them online, only at the winery some 9600 kilometers away. Fryer's Cove adopted the very apt tagline "Forged of the Earth, Tempered By The Sea" and we can appreciate perfectly. Fryer's Cove's Instagram 

The sun was still in the sky when my friend and I departed all abuzz. It was a lovely educational afternoon meeting people from all over the world who are instantly now my best friends because they let me try much wine. Thank you. May the respective Gods of Wine, Winemaking and Drunkenness be kind to your crops and provide for bountiful and predictable harvests. 

Till next year if luck and liver allow, 🥂

Ethan Hunt Can't Die, It's A Mission Impossible

I caught the latest and supposedly final instalment of Tom Cruise at his unbelievably agile best in Mission Impossible Final Reckoning last week. So essentially the whole movie is about how Ethan Hunt is firstly to blame for everything and secondly how he can’t die.

The crew from part 1 of the finale is all there including the French speaking Chinese lady who kicks ass. She has some of the most curt and cutting lines in the film, all in short, sharp Parisian tongue. And surprisingly the movie has a few jokey moments that had the audience laughing.

The bad guy Gabriel played by Esai Morales is wonderfully evil. I like how the directors Chris McQuarrie did close ups of Esai’s face at the opportune times to show to dastardly expressive he is. There’s one scene when the old planes dogfight that Esai elevates with a smile in the middle of the aerial madness. So nuts it's good.

The flashbacks from past films are lovely, spliced in as Ethan gets lectured on his shortcomings. Yes they tell a complete story where Final Reckoning is concerned but they remind us how good we’ve had with the Mission Impossible series. Tom Cruise has been phenomenal with all the daredevil stunt work. But one thing for sure - there’s no way he did the underwater outside submarine stunts of course, because no mortal can survive the pressure and temperature of the Arctic Ocean at such depths.

I found the other cool bit of this instalment was the re-introduction of a side actor from the very first Mission Impossible film. He didn't quite have a big role in no1 except for going to the toilet and finding a knife vertically embedded on his work desk (the knife also reappears in Final Reckoning!), but William Donloe (played by Rolf Saxon) is surely important in this one. Well done scriptwriters. Loop back and tie a beautiful bow.

Three hours of great fun. And of course the ending isn't cast in cold hard stone. I expect someone to steal something glowy and have this whole rigmarole of epic adventure start again some years from now. Rinse, repeat, recycle Hollywood.

What was a tad annoying from the start of the film which I caught at GV Plaza cinema 2 was the perpetual red dot on the screen, like a dead pixel that caught my eye each time the brightness dimmed. (It's in Tom's lovely long locks of hair below his left ear) And a lot of the movie is dark. I have written to GV about this glitch. 

One Weekend Of Ill-fated Optimism In Singapore

So this weekend happened in lah-lah-land, one where the winds of political change blew through with semi-wild expectations, but left quickly on Sunday midnight with a foul whiff of conventional tastes, when it coalesced from hopeful whimsy to the a firm, dull block of mediocre expectations of the seemingly change-averse majority. 

I spoke with friends in the couple of weeks leading up this election. My friends are mostly polytechnic or university educated with middle-to-high income jobs. One or two are not working, either by choice or were retrenched. Some were very keen on the rally goings-on and others were quietly feeding off the barrage of information, links and other content coming through Whatsapp, TikTok, Instagram and other social media sources. 

Almost all of them felt that change was coming, in a good way. Seriously. Almost no one believed the fearmongering over the loss of Ministers, doubt over the best party to lead the country through a global economic crisis and that change was dangerous. No one expected anything less than a few more seats taken by the opposition.

When I met some friends on election day itself, they ranted over the way they lost jobs to lower wage foreigners, how the civil service was rife with politics and grandstanding, and how arrogant some political higher ups seems to have become. They felt these sentiments echoed through their network of family, friends and neighbours. No one thought these feelings would not find reflection in electoral results. 

When the sample counts started coming in on Saturday night, our prognoses were proved wrong. 

What happened is also a matter of gazillion opinions, now that the proverbial dust has settled. Here’s my two-long winded-cents worth:

1. The WP did fabulously. Folks who attended their rallies and watched the hustings online felt the genuine conviction they had in serving the people. The opposition party in fact grew their Yes count in Hougang SMC by 1 % and in Sengkang GRC by 4%. Here’s the even bigger kicker - if one averaged out the PAP win percentage across the constituencies where the WP ran as well, the PAP average comes to 49.4% versus a WP average of 50.5%. There is a true, palpable swing towards alternative voices in the east. 

2. It’s incredible that unknown Andre Low almost knocked out much-in-the-news Ng Chee Meng for the Jalan Kayu seat. It’s also unfortunate the leaked Whatsapp message with his less-than-parliamentary rant against a member of public came out to perhaps hurt his image, against someone who, from conjecture is a really disliked individual. One friend told me her relative hates him because removed the discount for kopi-o at fairprice kopitiams, haha. The larger dark cloud was his involvement in the botched Income Insurance Allianz buyout. 

New news has come to light too, after the election - Photo with Su Haijin and Poor form at MOE meeting with teachers. What Lawrence Wong wishes to do with these juicy tidbits will be a test for the whiter-than-white sheen of the victors. 

Given his track record, I might go see my MP and tell him I don't like him. Just for my MP for take note of a citizen's opinion. Hopefully more citizens come forth the same way and eventually some degree of redress takes shape beyond public apologies. Because whiter than white. 

3. I have no idea why Paul Tambyah of the SDP saw a massive drop in support. Perhaps it was as a simple as the PAP candidate working the ground well and hard these past 5 years. 

4. “The smartest man in politics” Chee Soon Juan also almost pulled a rabbit out of the political hat - 46.8% in a tiny square of land in Sembawang. Quite a jarring result for the PAP given that the rest of the GRC supported the incumbents by almost 68%. Do all the dissenters up north live in that tiny enclave of 80 or so HDB blocks on 1 square kilometre of land? 

5. Gigene Wong delivered her Hokkien speech to voters with two incredibly, unreal errors in judgement. Some believe as I do that she cost the SDP a good chunk of votes. Here’s why. The Malay and Indian populations where SDP was canvassing are higher than the national average. See table below. 

When she called her colleague ‘elephant’ versus ‘Ariffin’ and described with a racial slur, it hit home and heart with non-Chinese everywhere. It’s a common enough refrain from Malays and Indians who know of Chinese persons in school, the army, and at work who can’t be bothered to properly remember and pronounce their names, to point where truncations and nicknames are adopted. This even made news in Malaysia. Her apologies were naturally insufficient to undo the harm to the line-up’s credibility, despite how eloquent and clever Arrifin presented himself. The SDP should abide by the slogan Competent, Constructive, Compassionate and seek her withdrawal from the organization for the better. 

6. It perhaps turn out that the date of the election was a small strategic coup for the PAP. The 3rd of May was separated by one day from the May Day holiday, a long weekend for the proper planners of their own annual leave from work. Hence, some Singaporeans were out of the country and did not vote. Let’s take this one step further. Who can afford to take a holiday in May? I postulate someone a tad more affluent, someone perhaps from my gang of friends who have slight tendency for change in the status quo? One friend who was in KL over the weekend communicated disappointment over the choice Punggolians made to a Whatsapp chat group. 

7. Voting is compulsory in Singapore, one of the few democracies in the world that has this rule for its citizens (A good idea overall I feel. One should be required to ensure democracy prevails versus allowing others to make life-changing decisions for you. Well at least a semblance of control.) After each election the Elections Department issues a media statement on the number of voters who cast their ballots. In 2020, this statistic was 95.63% of eligible voters and in 2025, this number declined to 92.47%. It was the lowest turnout since 1968! 

What could it mean? Related to point 6, perhaps it was a bit of coup for the ruling party to have so many people away, given that 3 of the WP contested constituencies had absenteeism percentages above 8%. See table below.

Are some voters also fed up with politics in general, unimpressed with the quality of opposition candidates so they decided that their vote wouldn't matter? Or are they just apathetic to the point of 'it doesn't matter, the PAP wins anyway', a refrain we've all heard time and time again? Or perhaps like some persons, just uninterested in politics in general. The optimist in me likes to imagine that the absent votes would have been cast for the WP in the wards where they lost by a close call. It will be interesting for the Elections Department to provide some demographic data for this set of voters. Are they young or old? What's their economic situation? 

This situation also begs a question about minimum numbers to make an election viable. A quorum so to speak. If it is compulsory for citizens to vote here, then should there be a minimum number of votes required? 90% to ensure opinions measured are kosher? What if one day only 60% of voters show up? 

8. Often commentators observe the turnout at election rallies to perhaps surmise outcomes. Some things I've noticed about election rallies in Singapore are:
- is that they filled with supporters, a given. 
- they are also attended by curious onlookers who just to be seen to have done something interesting or heard for 30 minutes what candidates have said.
- some persons are there because they like to hear people complaining in a public forum. Our democracy is unique in one way because protests are not encouraged or condoned. We have a rarely-occupied Speakers' Corner and the PAP laughed off the SDP's suggestion of having public town halls (as is done in some western countries) to gauge sentiment and hear problems. (Why doesn't the SDP do this at Speakers' Corner anyway to keep their momentum going? I'm sure they will have a healthy supply of people with issues to crow about.) So rallies become a form of entertainment for Singaporeans because it's a rare free show.

Hence it's hard to judge how results will form from such events themselves. I went to see WP twice, at Anchorvale and at ASRJC, and SDP once in Sembawang. 

9. It's Singapore's 60th birthday this year and perhaps two generations of citizens have lived through these formative years of nation building. What's curious to me is how the fearmongering still worked. Perhaps Trump's madness was enough to stoke the fears of job losses and economic turmoil across the Pacific, so that the incumbents could use it to their advantage from a "been there done that" angle to "save" Singaporeans from blunt force trauma of recession and hardship. It worked, alongside the message around the loss of ministers would be akin to disaster, that CDC vouchers are enough to cushion a badly-timed GST increase, and all else is noise. Most of us are not ready to take a leap of faith, close but not yet.

10. I like how the WP said they don't wish to take over the government but provide enough opposition, one-third representation, to not allow the PAP carte blanche when pushing policies across. I feel this a fair target, something all Singaporeans should support. 

That's about it for now. This feeling of coming-in-a-close-second will fade away with time as life goes on. But for now, let me end with a long, wail of a sigh. 

5 Things Over CNY

1. Catholic High Toilets Suck 

Apparently, the toilets in the school are in such a sad state that kids are afraid to use them. There are apparently creepy crawlies about and the kids not used to objectionable live insectoid or arachnid content have to hold it in till they get home or find a bush outside. Parents have apparently complained about the situation to the folks in charge at the highest levels. Does alumnus Lee Hsien Loong know? 

 2. A Rhyme For Bear Mitigation

I was relating to one friend about another mutual friend’s acquisition of a cabin of sorts in the woods in a relatively nearby destination. A charming set up one might say, not quite without the inconveniences of rustic life like a portable heater, wood burning stove, and also bears in winter time. Lovely. Friend A was slightly aghast and remarked there’s a rhyme about what to do when encountering the cuddly things. She later forwarded me this little colour-centric ditty: “If it’s brown, lay down. If it’s black, fight back. If it’s white, good night.” (The “good night” means you’re done for. Also you’d be in the Arctic and best have the right means of weather and other protection.) No word on meeting a Yogi Bear. Namaste perhaps?

 3. Router TTL 

I've jumped ISPs, from ViewQwest whom I’ve been with for about 3 years to Whizcomms. The only reason for jumping is budget. I am now getting the same service output for half the price. When the Whizcomms guy came around to give me the network terminal, he told me that my Nighthawk Mesh would take a 5-10 minutes to latch on to the new service. Guess what? It took hours. I was in the middle of an episode of Law & Order SVU when the break in transmission had to happen. I tried restarting and resetting the routers, upgrading their firmware, trying a direct wired feed - nothing would get the base station working, it’s angry orange light projecting its disdain of uselessness at me. I gave up and went for yoga in the evening, and met a pair of friends for dinner. Upon understanding my tale of telecommunication woe, the more technically inclined part of the duo told about something called router Time To Leave. This is when the main router requests a new IP address from the ISP to keep everything running kosher. Apparently, this could be happening every 4 hours. When i got home that night, all was good. Blue light indicators for peak connectivity. 

 4. Mahjong Noises 

After a bit of cajoling, I ended up playing mahjong on the first Saturday of the Snake Year. ("Wah wah wah Gurmit, you can play mahjong ah?!) At this event, it got cute. One player who needed the Cat tile made meowing noises to elicit the said tile at her next pick up. And it worked! All of us had a good chuckle. Then another player asked “Then Centipede how?” and Cat Tile Diviner replied with a snippy kind of noise a beaver might make. I replied “No, the only noise you can get is when the Centipede bites someone, and the victim goes “Ow!””. So said second player went “Ow!” and immediately drew up the Centipede tile. OMG. We all went berserk and nearly woke up the sleeping baby in the other room. 

 5. Cedele Chocolate Cherry Loaf 

OMG it’s da bomb. Rich and delicious, perfect with coffee. https://cedele.com/products/chocolate-cherry-loaf