The Wine Situation hosts everyone from winemakers to writers to find out what a person’s situation is…with wine. At the end of each episode, host Ellen Clifford wants to know the basics of her guests’ final thoughts on wine, drink and food. This month, Ellen talks with Fahara Zamorano of NiteThyme Wine! (This was edited for length.) Ellen: Question number one, whatcha drinking? What are you into these days? Fahara: I drink a lot of Champagne. Grower Champagne, I love drinking grower Champagne. I try to go to Champagne as much as I can. A great time to go for grower Champagne is what they call ‘Le Printemps des Champagnes,’ the spring of Champagne, and that’s when the new vintage is released. There’s a big party, and all of the growers do tastings. It’s cool because with growers you get really nerdy Champagnes. Ellen: Question number two is, do you have a favorite or unusual pairing? Fahara: I do a lot of pairing dinners, and I did a series of high-brow/low-brow pairings with Kat Turner, the chef/owner of Highly Likely in LA. One thing that came out of that, one of my favorite pairings in years—she did this beautiful wedge salad with a handmade ranch dressing, and the dressing had togarashi in it. And she did artisanal bacon bits. She doesn’t do blue cheese but the dressing is made with labneh. We paired that with dirty blue cheese olive soju martinis. It just went so well. Ellen: Question number three: if you were to make a wine, what would you make, and what would you call your winery? Fahara: I think I would like to make wine in the Bío Bío region in the south of Chile. What’s interesting to me: the País, but also Cinsault, and really old old-vine Sémillon that’s planted there too. That would be interesting because some of those vineyards are at least 200, 300 years old. And the plants are so established, though the centuries have tried to do anything they could to get rid of them. The plants are so resilient that you’ll see them pulling up pine trees and eucalyptus trees. So I think that would be cool, restoring one of those historic vineyards. I may name it after my dog, or, I love the moon, so maybe something lunar. Ellen: Question number four is, what’s your favorite snack? Fahara: Seaweed. The little nori packs. I think they’re easy. The Costco ones are pretty good. And then I eat a lot of raw almonds. Ellen: Question number five: what’s bringing you joy these days? Fahara: Honestly doing this. Connecting with like-minded people. I feel like we’re still kind of in that post-pandemic place where we’re finally getting back to things being somewhat normal. And one of the things I realized I really, really missed, and that really affected me emotionally and psychologically, was that we had such a great little wine community in LA and then…so many people moved, connections were lost. So just reconnecting with people. You can find Fahara on Instagram at @fahara and @nitethymewine, or at NiteThyme wine in Koreatown! Click here to check out the previous Wine Situation podcast with Karen MacNeil.