If you ask me what my favourite wine is I will want to give you the name of some old world red, to demonstrate my appreciation for well-structured, complex, age-worthy and, well, let’s be honest, expensive wines. But eventually I will admit that it is Viognier.

A week-long writing workshop got me thinking not only about reading and writing, but also about the tools I have used to write over the years. Then I went out and bought some of them.

When I was 13, my uncle accidentally bought me the first issue of David Boswell’s Reid Fleming, World’s Toughest Milkman comic. The wisdom therein has stayed with me to this day.

Celebrities and wine are in the news recently, but is it a new thing? Is it even a thing, for that matter? In my first wine review I chat a bit about the non-issue and write a non-review of Brangelina’s new rosé, opting instead to put a Californian red blend on deck for a spin.

Toronto indie music and microbrew mainstay C’est What? celebrated 25 years of supporting local brewing and songwriting talent on Wednesday with an eclectic lineup of performers that represented the club’s history as a proving ground for both musicians and brewmasters.

There is a listlessness that comes over me in January as I am finally clear of all the best-of and worst-of lists that crowd my rss and social media feeds at the end of the year. One list did have a winning suggestion though – banishing the phrase “bucket list.”

If ginger beer is beer, why doesn’t it contain alcohol? The answer is that it does, if you brew it right. Plus: keeping the names of your Guinness-based bar concoctions straight, and how to invite ridicule (and possibly physical abuse) in an Irish pub.

A full generation of moviegoers now associates 2013 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee Randy Newman solely with the soundtracks and songs he has written for six Pixar films rather than the darkly sardonic ouvre he launched with a self-titled solo album in 1968.

We finally seized the opportunity to visit Prince Edward County on the occasion of the annual Wassail event coinciding with a gala in aid of the region’s Slow Food convivium. Our singing and tasting tour took us to seven wineries in one afternoon.

I was accosted by a huge sale bin of these attractively packaged cookie bars on the way in to the grocery store the other day. I was feeling a bit under the weather and they ended up in the bag with some jarred hot and sour soup and frozen garlic bread. I mustered the restraint necessary to wait until dessert before opening them.