Wine: The Gateway Drug to Honey

I find it fascinating how, since I’ve become more involved in the wine industry, how wine has influenced other aspects of my life. Perhaps I am alone in this, but somehow I suspect not. What I mean is that the appreciation for wine seems to lead into interests (or at least awareness) of other things in life to which you may have never payed that much attention.

Could whatever it is about wine that makes people want to leave the city and spend their weekends and vacations traveling through scenic vineyards influence the way you think about other things? People go wine touring, not potato touring. Nobody ponders their tater-tot and makes comments like, “It has a certain minerality that suggests central PEI, perhaps closer to Summerside, which would account for the lovely color due to the iron-rich red soils there…”

Perhaps potatoes can’t reflect their terroir quite as well (or maybe they do?) but there are other things that can. Fruit growers here in the Okanagan valley all know that tree fruits taste different depending on where they are grown. Cherries grown in Osoyoos taste different than those grown in Oliver, Penticton, or Kelowna. So do peaches and apples. But fruit products are always sold by variety regardless of their provenance and so most consumers, including myself, don’t know that the 3 apples in the shopping cart could all come from 3 wildly different orchards.

There are other products that do come from a ‘place’ the same way that wine does. Honey is one of them as can be a fascinating and as healthy for you as wine.

The farm I grew up on had a neighbor who had bees and made honey. We bought honey from him by the bucket until he closed up shop and moved. We didn’t eat much honey after that because I remember the store-bought honey did not taste the same and gradually it left our diet.

Living on the coast, I was treated to my first honey-tasting at a farm in Port Coquitlam that also sold pumpkins. We were taking my son to the pumpkin patch before halloween and the farm also had a few different kinds of honey. “What’s the different between all those honeys?” I remember asking. That’s when the toothpicks came out and I was taken through a tasting of all of their honeys with explanations about each one.

Whatever kinds of flowers are most common near the hives will determine the flavours in the resultant honey. There was a huge difference in viscosity, color, intensity and complexity of flavours. I remember being particularly enamored with the wild flower honey and bought a jar of that to bring home. But the experience of tasting the different honeys stayed with me from then on.

Though this was early on in my wine industry career, I’d been learning about and appreciating wine for some years before that day. Not long after that, I attended a wine tasting at Douglas College that also featured a table of different single-malt Scotch whiskies and another table that featured an assortment of balsamic vinegars. There was a world out there to be tasted and it all started for me because of wine, which until that time had been the only thing that I’d really tasted as an adult that had so many different variations in flavours, intensities, and complexities. The highly processed and homogenized foods products that I’d been eating since I was a teenager were suddenly less interesting and, as I’ve more recently discovered, completely unhealthy for me. Wine became the gateway for a whole new world of taste and ultimately health.

Perhaps it is this connection that wine has been providing for me: the last un-frayed thread on a rope that attaches me to the natural world. If it breaks, it will let me fall completely into a world where all foods are processed, genetically modified and/or synthesized beyond recognition. It’s the awareness of the natural world inherent in wine production that has lead me to further seek out and appreciate other foods that are equally as natural and beneficial which I may have otherwise taken for granted or ignored completely.

Whatever it is in wine that has made me more aware of other foods that I eat, I’m glad for it.

Emma

This is why wine people are awesome.

My family went on a weekend vacation to Wenatchee, WA where we were planning on doing a little wine tasting while spending a little time away from home together as a family. We tried to mix up what we did so that the kids would not get bored with the wine touring part of the trip. On Saturday afternoon, I found a little wine store called The Wine Thief where I figured there might be a good collection of quality wines from around the state. That turned to be true about the wine as well as the people who work there.

The store had a tasting bar, sofas around a fireplace, and two main sections of wine display shelves. I zeroed in on the wines from Washington State and started to browse. There was one particular wine I was interested in, but I didn’t find it on my own. I was also open to any suggestions from the staff since they are usually aware of all the best wines and deals in the store. My family had joined me at this point and my four year old daughter had brought in her little stuffed dog, Emma. They played on the sofas while my wife and I continued to browse the wines.

We found one we liked and added some cheese and crackers to the bill and off we went to dinner before heading back to the hotel. There was only one problem.

Emma, the adventurous little stuffed doggie, got left behind at The Wine Thief. We were all unaware of this fact until later that evening when my daughter wanted Emma at bedtime.

Let me tell you a little bit about Emma. Emma was purchased by my son at Montreal’s Trudeau airport as a gift for his sister when he and I were visiting my parents. He brought her on the plane all the way back to the Okanagan himself and gave it to her when we got back. That was almost a year ago and in that short time, Emma has been lost and left behind in the most amazing places that I sometimes think this little stuffed doggie loves adventures more than the little girl that carries her around.

She first went missing in the spring. My daughter couldn’t find her anywhere. We looked all over the house for a good couple of weeks, but no Emma. Turned out she had fallen down behind her bed and was out of sight. Not the first time things had fallen down there.

The next time Emma went missing was a little more dangerous. I was walking home after dropping my car off for servicing and walked through a pathway that connected with a little cul-de-sac. I walked through the middle of the large turnaround area for cars and looked down. There was a little stuffed dog that I thought looked kind of familiar. I picked it up, dusted it off and put it in my pocket. I found out later that my daughter had put Emma in the little side pocket of her back pack before walking to day care with my wife. It must have fallen out right without their noticing and left in the middle of the road for a good 3 hours before I found it. If I hadn’t had to walk home from dropping off my car…

Back in Wenatchee, we were pretty sure that Emma was at The Wine Thief but they weren’t going to be open until after we were due to leave town. I phoned and left a message that morning and then phoned again that evening once we were back home. That’s when Tracy, who happened to be working that day, answered the phone. She’d found Emma right on the sofa where my daughter was playing and put it in a little bag for safe keeping. I gave her my address so that Emma could be put in the mail.

“Oliver? Is that near Osoyoos?” asked Tracy.

“Yes,” I said. “It’s about 15 minutes away.”

“My son is playing in a hockey tournament there this weekend,” said Tracy. “Maybe I could just bring it up for you.”

What were the odds of that happening? After exchanging cell phone numbers, we connected again that day and I picked up Emma from the front desk at their hotel. Emma was packed inside a suspiciously large pink gift bag.

When we got home, my daughter was thrilled to see Emma again. Happy kids are the best. That’s when she looked into the pink gift bag where she found a card and 6 other little stuff puppies that Tracy had included as a little gift. Her face lit up like a 1000 watt bulb and she jumped up and down with excitement. It was amazing.

Just getting Emma back was exciting enough but this really put it over the top. It was a truly amazing afternoon. Since then, she has carried her puppies around in a little basket and they don’t leave the house anymore. It’s nice to know that when they do somehow get left outside, there are great people out there that can help them find their way home. When I first got into the wine industry, I noticed that the people that love wine also love to share it. That attitude carries through in other aspects of our lives as well.

Thank you, Tracy and all the good folks at The Wine Thief. Cheers from wine country in BC.

What Makes Wines Taste Different?

Or put another way – Why is this Merlot $45 and this other Merlot $13?

I get asked this a lot. There’s a lot of reasons for different prices relating to production techniques and costs of equipment, labour, and land but there is also something unique about having a plot of land that is just, well, special. And because there is only one plot of land like it, then the wine is that much more special because of it.

I saw this driving home one day last year and I hoped I’d be able to see it again. This is the vineyards of See Ya Later Ranch. It is a special vineyard for a number of reasons. It is high up there. Is is properly sloped for good air drainage. It is entirely planted on glacial till for excellent water drainage. It is the largest Gewurztraminer vineyard in North America. And is has a stunning view when you’re having lunch on the deck.

But at this time of day, when Hawthorn Mountain to the right of the photo casts a shadow over the other vineyards in the valley below, these vineyards at See Ya Later Ranch are still getting direct sunlight. That is a huge advantage for the grapes that get that direct sunlight. That’s where the sugar comes from. More sunlight, more sugar, riper grapes, better and more consistent wine.

Next time to have some SYL Gew, say thanks for that extra bit of sun.

Podcast #70 – Free My Grapes

I used to live in the last town in New Brunswick before the Nova Scotia border and the RCMP used to set up road blocks to check people’s trunks for booze. Nova Scotians would drive to our liquor store in New Brunswick to get their beer cheaper because the taxes were lower and then drive home. Little did they know that they did not really live in a free country and that taking things from one province to another was illegal.

So what? Border towns always have that problem if there is an imbalance between prices. It used to be (and still is sometimes) that gas was cheaper in the USA and so people would go and fill up across the border and buy a stash of Hershey bars and a bag of Combos. And if you were there for longer than 48 hours, you could bring back a couple of bottles of wine or liquor duty-free.

Fine. Each country has its own rules and I agree with that. The last things we need in Canada are slow speed limits and discount ammo. At least there is a way for us to legally bring home the wines and booze when we want to. However, there is no such way of legally bringing  alcohol from another province in our own country. Why is that? I thought we lived in a free country?

Money is the main reason for most of the world’s stupidity and of course that’s the main reason here too. The taxes on your bottle of wine won’t go to your own province and that is apparently a big deal for the income of your provincial government. They think that they are missing out on the zillions of dollars that tourists from out of the province spend on wine in other provinces.

Wineries, especially small wineries, are the ones who would really like to be able to send you those cases of wines that you ordered. But they can’t legally do that! There are some brave wineries who will quietly send out cases. They brave the frigid air of extra-provincial trade with the knowledge that they may be punished with… A LETTER. (Thanks to Brad Cooper for posting his copy of “The Letter” on his blog.) Quite a few wineries received this letter from the Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission and most wineries obeyed and ceased shipments in response. So that still begs the questions, how is it that our country makes criminals out of tourists, who buy wine on their vacation in the Okanagan, and some winery owners who live in Alberta and can’t take wine home with them? Something is wrong with this picture.

That’s where you, the loyal and stalwart wine consumer come it. There’s a new movement growing called Free My Grapes.ca and it is one of the first nation-wide organized movements to get the laws reformed for wine and spirits in Canada. The laws we have now were written a long time ago (83 year, but who’s counting?) and were written as a response to that bizarre social experiment known as Prohibition. Perhaps at time when the movement of goods beyond one’s own region was more difficult, it may have made more sense. But today, with the global markets from around the world getting a first crack at other markets within our own country, small and medium wineries are going to be left out. According to Shirley-Ann George in this special podcast interview, entire wine regions (such as Nova Scotia) might be left behind if they continue to be coralled in their own region.

Even in a time when we are trying to consume more locally, giving a legal edge to foreign companies for access to markets in our own country is wrong and makes the problem even worse. Let’s do something about it.

Click here to listen to the podcast, or download it at iTunes.

Check out the Free My Grapes website and follow them on Twitter.

Don’t forget, we are currently in the middle of the federal election! This is the perfect time to ask your local candidates for their views on this subject. Check out Know Your Vote.ca or follow them on Twitter.

To the moon…

Let me just preface all this by saying that I’m not averse to change. I’m not someone who dislikes change of any kind and prefers things to be routine and predictable. Some people need that and I can understand that but I’m not one of those people.

Ok, there’s this winery. They have built their reputation with their original name and have won awards for their wine and sold out most of the shop each year. Their wine has been improving from the start and they’ve reached a level of acclaim and notoriety that other wineries might never reach. I’ve been following them since I first heard about them because they wanted to grow all of these odd varieties of grapes that hadn’t (at the time) been tried in the Okanagan. They were true trail blazing pioneers at a time when most wineries to taking the safe road with varieties that are easy to sell no matter how badly they were made.

And now they are changing their name and their whole brand. It’s been the talk of the industry for the last few months and thought though there is nothing officially released yet (that I know of), the most common question that I’ve had in my discussions is – WHY? It just doesn’t make any sense and it gets me a little annoyed mostly because I’ve followed this winery for a while. It’s (literally) not my business so what’s the big deal?

Well, I want to see the wine industry here thrive and prosper. It’s something that I’m quite passionate about and I want to support it in any way that I can. I live in wine country and I see the potential in the land and people that I see all around me every day. This is really just the beginning of not only an industry, but a way of life in a place that 100 years ago was a remote outpost for only the toughest citizens. Imagine living centuries ago near Beaune in France’s Burgundy when the first vineyards were being planted and people were trying out different varieties to see what worked best. That’s what it feels like here, now, and it’s utterly fascinating to witness. That’s one reason why I started this blog.

My hope is that perhaps there is a serious reason for the name change. Maybe they are being legally required to change it because it infringes on some other business’s name elsewhere and they’ve agreed to change it. Or maybe there has been an ownership change and want to change direction in winemaking style.

The worst thing would be that some marketing company has convinced them that they need to change it for no other reason than to acquire a new re-branding contract. To me that means that money is the only reason for changing the name and for me, money is never a real reason to do anything. Beethoven never wrote a symphony purely for money, there were other more artistic reasons. Money was a means to creation but it wasn’t the desired end result.  

There have been a few historically significant name changes in the BC wine industry in the last 20 years. Usually they have been difficult-to-pronounce family names that have been changed to make it easier for people to remember. Prpich Hills Winery,  Slamka Cellars, and Scherzinger Vineyards are now better known by their newer names Blasted Church, Little Straw, and Dirty Laundry.

The winery in question however, does not suffer from the unpronounceable family name. They have a very easy to remember name with an image and label that stands out and has lots of potential for new colour schemes and alternative stylings.  Again, I just don’t understand why they would want to let all of that go.

I wish them well and hope they can make it work. I’m sure I will try their wine at some point but at this point it might take a little convincing.

Love this wine…

I know, it’s a little bit of a broken record for me. I’ve already mentioned this wine before but it still stands out and it did again recently.

Why aren’t there more wines like this in the Okanagan? It has a little spice. It has tons of fruit. It is beautifully balanced – vibrant acidity, moderate alcohol, and wonderful fruit (did I mention that already?) It goes with everything - burgers, pork, turkey, grilled beast-of-choice, chicken and really shines well with spaghetti and Italian food (which is a tough draw for most BC reds). Most recently I tried it with an Italian hot-pot and it totally outshone a big, alcoholic, woody meritage that was also going around the table.

It also has that purity and clarity-of-fruit thing that I’ve been noticing lately among the organic wineries around the Okanagan lately. They’ve won international awards for this and past vintages of their Zweigelt and they probably will for future vintages.  This is the 2nd (or 3rd?) vintage of their Zweigelt that I have tried and this one isn’t just a happy-accident vintage.

Learn about Zweigelt here.

Kalala Organic Estate Winery.

Podcast #40 featuring Kalala Zweigelt.

As most of you already know, I seldom do wine reviews here on Wine Country BC. We include tastings for opinions on our podcasts because it’s fun but beyond that, who really cares what we think? No one knows your palate like you do, so trust it and don’t let anyone tell you that your palate is wrong. So when a wine stands out in a crowd like this one has done (a few times now) I thought it might be interesting to share that experience.

(For the more cynical people out there (like myself), I am not being paid by anyone to push any particular wine or winery as part of some grand covert social-media marketing strategy. If that were really the case, I am clearly a failing at it and having to save my pennies for every single bottle of wine for the podcasts.)

Here We Go Again

The stretch of time between early October and the end of November is a busy time for any winery. For wine consumers, there seems to be an endless stream of editorial dedicated to the latest results of some wine competition. Intervin, the Canadian Wine Awards, the International Wine and Spirits Competition, the Okanagan Spring and Fall Wine Festival Awards, the Northwest Wine Summit, the Lieutenant Governor’s Award, and the All Canadian Wine Awards are all part of the deluge of wine awards that we see here in BC. It is only really in the early new year when all those awards can really be digested and considered.

The first two competitions are presented and published by to competing national wine publications (Wine Access and Vines Magazine) and are a study in contrasts. One competition’s hero (Tawse Winery in this year’s Canadian Wine Awards) is another’s 5th place finisher. Likewise, Intervin’s second place Cassini Cellars is eighth at the CWA. While the methodologies and scope of each competition might differ, the end result is still conflicting for the consumer. Who makes the best wine?

For me, that brings up the ultimate question: Why do we care? Could I show my face at a wine party by declaring my love for a 79 point wine? Do people rate books that way? How about music? Movies get rated low and people still flock to see them. Likewise, great rated movies can be completely ignored. Why do we clamour to the follow the points and awards for wine so closely? (Check out this video from one of my favourite wine blogs, who gave James Suckling 78 points for his website’s promo video.)

And who are all these wine experts anyway? Are they always right? Wine Spectator’s restaurant awards got punked recently by Robin Goldstein to demonstrate the fallibility of their reviewing process. Robert Parker, perhaps because of the scope of his influence, is subjected to almost microscopic analysis which, though entertaining at times, is not constructive for either his believers or detractors.

Some wineries love the attention that awards and competitions can get for them as they market their wines and build their brand, especially if their wines do well. And if they don’t, there isn’t really much of a backlash to speak of. Most bad reviews are never published and nobody ever mentions wines that don’t win awards. Township 7′s Chardonnay won the best white wine at an early CWA and was not even mentioned in the competition the next year (perhaps they didn’t enter any wines). They are still on the map and are now one of Naramata’s most consistent producers.  This year, Thornhaven in Summerland slipped from the top 10 to #19. Will anyone notice or care? Their Gewurz and Pinot Noir are still good sellers. I myself have seen wines that sit ignored on the store shelf for months only to disappear completely the day after it wins a medal at a festival or takes a high-profile award.

Bottom line (blatant rip-off from pop commercials): Image is nothing, thirst is everything, obey your thirst. Drink what you like and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. All wine is good to somebody.

At 17: Ode to a Lang Icewine

In light of the recent activities at Holman-Lang, my thoughts turned to the past when I was recently treated to a taste of the golden age of Naramata’s Lang Vineyards. And let me tell you, it was absolutely golden in every way.

I don’t usually do tasting notes here because I find them pretty boring to read. But this one merits a little note because it was a 1993 Riesling Icewine and it was unbelievable. It looked like amber and tasted like gold. Almonds, hazelnuts, honey, earthy minerals and dried apricots on the nose with Granny-Smith apple pie, peaches and more apricots on the palate. It still had a vibrant acidity and was expertly balanced – not too sweet, not too tangy – it was just right.

To be honest, icewine is something that I rarely take time to enjoy. The huge volume of sugar just overloads me and I just don’t feel very good after drinking icewine. There are a few recently that I’ve found that I enjoy but I’ll mostly bring them out at parties, have a tiny sip for myself and watch everyone else enjoy themselves. But this one was different. At 17 years old, this Riesling icewine had entered the prime of its life and it was the perfect time to taste it and reflect on one of BC’s pioneering wineries. I couldn’t let that opportunity pass me by.

Whatever the future holds for Lang and the rest of the wineries in the Holman-Lang group, I’m glad I had the chance to enjoy a truly great wine from a time when BC wine was just starting to build its reputation into what it is today. Cheers to the pioneers of BC wine!

Sometimes a wine is just a wine.

Every now and then I start to question things, just to take stock of what’s really going on. I find that it helps me maintain perspective on things. The other day I started to wonder what it was about wine that made people, like me, want to write about it, learn about it, talk about its nuances, taste and provenance in a way that far exceeds what normal people would normally do for any other food product.

The Onion had an ‘article’ about a guy who was a potato chip connoisseur. His quotes were take-offs on all kinds of phrases that wine lovers typically use; things about aromas, flavors, and the fact that 2004 was a particularly good year for Doritos. Why does wine get elevated to such an artistic degree that it just sounds silly when the same things are said of other foods? Isn’t wine just a drink with dinner? Sometimes a wine is just a wine. Wine is what European peasants and nobility alike drank with their meals. It was safer than water and helped with digestion.

Working at a wine store, I get to see a good cross section of people as they make their purchases. There are people who are confident about wine and those that are not so sure. There are those that need help (some of them ask, some don’t) and those that don’t want to be disturbed. Others are ‘on a mission’ and spend less than a minute finding what they want. Whatever the purchase, I always hope that they enjoy whatever wine they buy. One day I thought, “what if we were selling chocolate bars instead of wine?” Would people still be apprehensive about coming into the store? Would there be people that were too shy to ask for help and were intimidated by the weird names on the labels? What is it about wine?

It comes down to personal preference. Some people like dark chocolate, others don’t. The people that don’t like dark chocolate know that and don’t buy dark chocolate. This is why I find it humbling sometimes to think about that when I get to over-opinionated about wines that I like or don’t like. Sometimes a wine is just a wine.

However, flipping through the ads in any wine magazine will tell you that wine is not just wine – it’s a lifestyle choice, and a darn good one. Drinking wine will bring you together with your friends as you prepare a feast in your enormous kitchen or outdoor barbeque on the sun deck. Wine means romantic meals outside in the vineyards, being close to the land, and tasting the land in our bottle of wine. Each winery has ads that ensure you each bottle represents the truest ‘expression’ of the land and that their wine will help you attain a state of oneness with that romantic ideal life that wine can provide.

Sometimes a wine is just a wine.

The fact is that most of the biggest wine growing regions are located in beautiful places. There is beauty in the rugged land where nothing else will grow other than grape vines. There’s a reason why no one has coined the phrase “ugly as a vineyard.” Especially in BC, wine country is a desirable (and therefore expensive) place to live. And while it’s the ‘get back to nature’ and vineyard lifestyle that might pull people here even for a vacation, the fact is that wine is the most natural beverage other than water and perhaps it becomes a connection to something natural that we might lack in our everyday lives. Having wine often might give us that needed little connection with nature with every sip.

Is something that natural supposed to cost $100 a bottle? That’s where things get out of hand. Are the ‘cult’ wines of the world (and BC) really worth that kind of money? Things like that have made me think more than a few times before shelling out for a bottle of wine that costs more than $25. I understand the expenses that wineries have and the cost of doing business, especially in BC, is what dictates the final price of a bottle of wine. If people refuse to pay it, then is it still a worthy drink? Does a photograph that nobody sees succeed as a true work of art? Is art successful if nobody (or only a small cadre of people) appreciates its value?

Sometimes a wine is just a wine. Wine is just a food. Let’s not get carried away. East, drink and be merry. Slainte mhath. Cheers.

Wine reviews – honestly

I started this as a discussion topic at http://www.bcwineries.net but I thought that I would explore it a little further here just to see if there were more people who feel like I do.

Has anyone seen any honest reviews of BC wines? I mean really honest where they aren’t just given a point score (which are always between 86-90) and then a list of aromas and flavors that they get from the wine (of which there might really be a lot to list – different people find all kinds of different things in the same wine). I’ve had some fabulous wines that I think should be rated far higher than 86 points and I’ve had some stinkers from wineries that finish top 10 in Wine Access Canadian Wine Awards. But surely not all wine is created equal.

This topic has been buzzing in my head for a while and was one of the reasons that I started Wine Country BC. I’ve been reading Vines and Wine Access and Wine Spectator and Decanter and Northwest Palate and Vancouver Magazine’s Wine Awards issue and all of their online versions and review sites and all that stuff and I can’t really ever find anything truly negative or positive about wines from Canada. Some blogs can have great and brutally honest critiques (http://tv.winelibrary.com or http://www.vinifico.com for a more local example) but most of the time the passion for the subject (or maybe for the act of blogging itself) propels people into posting things about wines that are most interesting only to themselves. That’s why I stayed away from blogging for so long – who cares what I think? Who the hell am I to write about this stuff? What brought me into the new wave of blogging was the idea that maybe I can contribute constructively to the industry within which I literally live.

The wine industry in BC has been growing at a bizarre rate compared with the rest of the world, where oversupply has created excess product. Wineries here can’t make enough wine and some sell out well before the next vintage is even ready. (Good luck finding any La Frenz product after the fall wine festival.) Some have more trouble accomplishing this but the demand has been there and so eventually even the mediocre products will move. This can’t last forever and as we’ve seen with the so called ‘economic downturn’, growth on that scale can’t continue for long. At some point, if we haven’t gotten there already, the demand will plateau and decrease and we’ll be left with wine to drink and no one who wants to drink it.

So we have an industry with unprecedented growth and a bevy of ‘yes-men’ publications that will not really truthfully critique a wine. This also guarantees that they won’t loose the advertising dollars from the winery that bought the full-page ad on the inside front cover. The critics themselves, though well meaning and possessing a knowledge of wine that I truly admire, probably don’t have much control over that kind of content. Look no further than the whole “Cellared in Canada” debate last year, which took someone from beyond Canada’s wine industry really get the discussion going. Mainstream media was able to look at this subject from a ‘consumers are getting screwed’-perspective rather than curtailing their coverage of it because their publication depended heavily on ad revenues from (probably) all three of the major wine producing corporations that make wine labeled as “Cellared in Canada”. Wine Access and Vines magazines hardly mentioned anything about it yet Wine Spectator felt it was important enough write about.

Perhaps in the old days (ie the early 1990′s) wine magazines and CIC wines were needed. Perhaps wine companies couldn’t make enough from using only locally sourced grapes. Perhaps the public at the time needed to be convinced that the wines produced by a Canadian company were good quality. All of those things were perhaps needed at that time and kudos for the people who worked at that time in the wine industry and wine media. You have all done excellent work and have created a whole generation of wine lovers who have learned and are learning to appreciate wine and who are now helping others to do the same. Without John Schreiner, Anthony Gismondi, Julianna Hayes, James Nevison and Kenji Hodgson and many more, there would not be a person like myself who loves BC wine, and has enjoyed reading and dissecting every word and nuance written about it for the last 10 years. And I am not alone. Many blogs and online communities are springing up who are all as passionate about BC wine as I am.

At this point in time, most blogs are being run by people like me who are interested in something and want to share their passion for it. As the business community starts to embrace *buzzword alert* social media, blogs will start to develop around a specific marketing goal, which means that their honesty may be compromised. How easy will that be to spot? Will it be important? We’ll have to see. It sure is an exciting time to be watching. Let’s just hope we can be honest about it and help our wines be the best they can be. Cheers!