Monday, February 8 2010
There's a face that could use a wee dram
In addition to my day job in the wine industry I have many other interests, including beer, whisky, tequila. brandy, rum, gin, champagne and virtually all other fermented beverages. It's not so much that I'm a lush (I do have aspirations that way, but I'm modest about my talents). It's more that the history of civilisation is the history of alcohol. After all, neolithic hunter-gatherers didn't settle down to farm because they were hungry for a steaming bowl of grit-laden, mouldy gruel: they planted grain to make beer! Similarly, the Romans didn't conquer territory because they had better soldiers, boots, roads or organisation: they conquered territory with an agricultural system hinged on the production of high volumes of wine.
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| Posted by Tim O'Shanter AT 4:33PM |
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Thursday, February 4 2010
Tim, you ignorant Sauvignon . . .
Since I've been away from computers and my traditional sources of news for a couple of weeks, a few interesting tidbits have piled up, and i thought I'd share. First, from the Fraud Files, French Wineries, Co-operatives, Negociants and Conglomerates Charged in Pinot Noir Fraud.
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| Posted by Anchorman Tim AT 2:07PM |
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Monday, February 1 2010
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Aye, you can call me Angus MacGringo, of the clan MacGringo. Tequila and haggis for all!
Richard Orben once said, 'A vacation is having nothing to do and all day to do it in'. By that measure, I had a pretty successful time the last two weeks. This was our third trip to the Caribbean side of Mexico and it just gets better every darn time. I know this is technically a blog about wine, but there really isn't any in Mexico--sure, Mexico makes wine, but it's universally bad, and while they give the cheap stuff away at all-inclusive joints, it's not worth drinking, being the very cheapest imported swill.
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| Posted by Tanned Tim AT 2:40PM |
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Monday, January 18 2010
No, it's only this beautiful on days ending in a 'y'
I'm off, only this time it's not for wine business. Instead of the exotic locales of Philadelphia and St. Louis I'm heading to boring old Mexico. We're staying on the Caribbean side at a place called Xcaret. It's an all-inclusive resort inside a nature park, next to a Disneyland-style Mayan theme park.
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| Posted by Itchy Foots AT 12:43PM |
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Thursday, January 14 2010
Brenda, Tim, Gladys and Floyd
Had the chance to step out for lunch today with my parents and my sister, who was in from Kelowna, in BC's interior. I'd love to report that we enjoyed a couple of bottles of wine with our repast, but my parents are teetotal and Brenda was very abstemious, so I made do with a pint of Crannóg Ales Crannóg Ales Crannóg AlesStout, a fine brew.
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| Posted by Young Mr. Vandergrift AT 3:31PM |
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Monday, January 11 2010
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So many words, so beautiful.
I love books. I read three or four books a week, own several thousand, and would have more books than would fit in my living space if I didn't need space for beds, kitchens and the cat's laboratory. Books and reading are the secret keys to the universe. Bruce Sterling said in his immensely important work on futurism, Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the Next Fifty Years, that successful people in the future would be those who could read and understand information, and re-purpose it to good use. That's essentially how I make my living--that and being charming, mostly. Reading is my primary method of dealing with my world, and prosecuting my job activities.
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| Posted by Tim the Grumpy AT 2:54PM |
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Tuesday, January 5 2010
I've gotten a couple of notes asking me if I did the Polar Bear Swim in White Rock again this year. The answer is, of course! My old friend (it's not that either of us is so old, per se, it's that we've known each other for coming up to 40 years) David and I hit the beach January 1st with several hundred other lunatics for White Rock's Polar Bear Swim.
David seems nonplussed. Weakling!
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| Posted by Timski AT 3:18PM |
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Monday, January 4 2010
Funny Cow Blue, Marcia Baldwin Looks blue-licious!
The last day of the year is traditionally one where new resolutions are made. In this context, my dictionary says a resolution is 'a a decision to do something or to behave in a certain manner'. Deciding to behave a certain way is much easier than actually doing it but that's human nature all over.
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| Posted by Timulator AT 3:47PM |
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Monday, December 28 2009
Grab life by the neck, I always say
A quick technical note for folks making our Selection and World Vineyards wine kits. Some of the upcoming products have a slightly different-looking bag and the spouts are blue instead of the regular attractive yellow colour. There's no change to the wine, or the use of the bag (grab the spout with your might kung-fu grip and pop it off, or use one of our handy bag de-cappers), but after ten million or so kits with the same colour cap, we don't want any confusion.
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| Posted by The Happy Little Elf AT 9:25AM |
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Monday, December 21 2009
I have an Unce Saul. Probably no relation.
Winter solstice passed at 9:47 am December 21st (Pacific Time). Solstices happen when the earth's axis reaches its maximum or minimum distance from the sun. Like a spinning top that's starting to run down, the earth's axis isn't parallel to it's orbit: it wobbles back and forth, giving us our seasons (at least above and below the equator!)
Many cultures and traditions have revered the sun, or at least acknowledged it as a primary force in the universe. Early herding cultures equated the day/night cycle with the sun being shepherded across the sky, Ra, the Egyptian god tooled around in his 'solar barge' (sounds like a new product from Toyota), the Nipponese have their sun goddess Amaterasu hiding in a cave from her irksome brother, the Aztecs and Mayans had fabulously complex mythologies surrounding it, backed up by keen astronomical observations, the Norse had the sun in a chariot, pulled 'round the sky by some sort of fireproof horse, and of course, the Druids (maybe . . .) built henges such as Stonehenge as astronomical computers to tell them about important events like equinoxes, Solstices and suchlike portents of their year.
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| Posted by Tim AT 11:13AM |
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Friday, December 18 2009
Will I turn into a pumpkin now?
Limited Edition pre-order season is officially closed! Everyone had their orders in by December 12th, and we've counted 'em up. The good news: we're going to be able to make enough kits for every order!
Mr. Sadball says, 'I forgot to order my Limited Edition kits!' Better luck next year.
The bad news: if you didn't order before, you're going to have to scramble! Some of our retail partners bring in a few extra kits--it seems they understand human nature and the urge to procrastination--and they might have one if you hurry, hurry, hurry!
Thanks to everyone who made the 20th anniversary Limited Edition a lot of fun: the team here at Winexpert, our retailers who got excited about the great wines we were able to get, the folks who came out to our tasting events, and everyone who's ever had the thrill of making an unusual or rare wine just to see what would happen.
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| Posted by The Timinator AT 10:30AM |
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Monday, December 14 2009
Look upon the face of evil:
Mark Anderson, thief, arsonist, vinicide, wiener
Back in 2005 there was a terrible fire in a 240,000 square foot California wine warehouse. Located in Vallejo, it was a re-purposed WWII bomb/torpedo bunker. Wine warehousing may sound funny, but when you're a small, specialty property you want to use all your available land for vines, not waste it on a big warehouse to age and store your wine, so there are a number of specialty houses that will take on the task in their guaranteed temperture and humidity controlled facilities, freeing up the winemakers to grow grapes and make wine.
The blaze took eighty firefighters a full day to contain. Ironically, the big selling point of the warehouse, three-foot thick concrete walls and impregnable construction, prevented effective firefighting, and temperatures inside became very intense. The good news is, only two people, both firefighters, suffered minor injuries--small mercies.
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| Posted by Tim the Great! AT 2:25PM |
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Friday, December 11 2009
Andy, the hardest working man in the room
Whew, it's great to be back in blog business! I've got new editing software, a new interface and the ability to change font sizes without spraining a back muscle! It's all good, more on that later, but now I'm waaaay behind on the Limited Edition Chronicles.
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| Posted by Tim Vandergrift AT 12:44PM |
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Tuesday, December 8 2009
Hey, I'm back--sort of. If you've been wondering where the blog is, it's still here, but we've been working on some changes and a side effect of our good intentions was to temporarily kill it dead.
Fear not! I'm back, bay-bee, and as soon as I can figure out how to post pictures and format things a little better (what do all these little buttons do?) I'll be posting a backlog of stuff from my Limited Edition sessions and new and cool things that are going on, all the time.
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| Posted by Tim the Great AT 10:21PM |
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Comments
Ken
Posted 3 days ago
So where can I get one of these jackets? You folks are missing out! You could sell more in accessories than you sell in wine kits!
Tim
Posted 3 days ago
You can get one of those jackets by slaving in the salt mines with the rest of us! "It will be an heirloom of my house, though I buy it with great pain", as the man said.
Honestly, it has never occurred to me that anyone would want branded logowear from Winexpert . . . you'd pay us to wear our advertising material? I like the way you think!
Mark
Posted 3 days ago
In reference to your pinot noir fraud discussion, there must be a lot of trust on the part of the consumer of both wine and wine making kits. The consumer could very easily be duped into buying something labelled as something it is not, and never have a clue really. We've seen a hint of this in the Canadian wine market, where many bottles say 'Product of Canada' but look closer and the label says 'Cellared in Canada from imported grapes and or juice'. Buyer beware! But with a wine kit, I've wondered, how do I know that when I buy a New Zealand Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc purported to be from the Wairau Valley it actually comes from the Wairau Valley, and perhaps even New Zealand? I find I must trust that I'm getting what I paid for, and that the company is functioning with integrity. What else can you do?