Location: Taipei, La Copa Oscura (Deep Cup Shipti Concept Store), Wine Dot (Tianmu), Burgundy Wine Shop (Qilian)
Travel note: Spent the day wandering around Beitou and Shilin (Tianmu). La Copa Oscura, which focuses on Spanish wines, opens at 13:00. I entered right on time, and four different customers—all women—came in after me. They had a wine guessing event in February; guess correctly and get another glass. I took a sip, noticed a distinct plum flavor, guessed right, and got a free glass. Next, I went to a shop where the owner has a WSET3 wine certification. As a contact for Spanish wine suppliers, this place also mainly offers Spanish (and some South African) wines. Interestingly, the owner wasn't in the shop from 15:00 to 17:00, so the person minding the store was the owner's 72-year-old father, a retiree from IBM and Syscom. So instead of talking about wine, I chatted with the owner's dad about whether the recent drop in IBM stock was really related to COBOL, and we talked from DOS, Lotus 123, Little Professor all the way to Microsoft. He also shared his daily visits to Nung Chan Monastery. Compared to just drinking wine, sometimes meeting all sorts of people and being able t…
