Monday, September 28 2009
Winexpert Western Canada Retailer Conference 2009
You may see a stranger, across a crowded room . . .
Saturday September 19th was a busy one for me: as soon as I set down my barbecue tongs, I snatched up my tasting glass and hurried from our store in Port Coquitlam to the fabulous River Rock resort hotel and casino in Richmond.
Hotel not exactly as shown. Some accessories such as elevators, stairways
and reasonable construction plans not included . . .
Despite a bit of uproar surrounding ongoing renovations both inside the hotel (the middle of the building seemed to be missing) and outside (they put a light rail transit system in when I wasn't looking) the venue as usual worked very well for us. The picture up top shows our retail partners waiting politely for us to get on with the night's entertainments, which consisted of several parts. First, we played a guessing game: there were five tables of wine glasses and complementary food pairings, and we wanted them to guess which, of the 30 possible candidate wines, each of this year's Limited Edition kits would be. It was plenty of fun, milling around slurping wine and noshing. I was feeling so good about it that I even gave out hints ('Three reds and two whites!')
After an hour we collected up the tasting notes and guesses and announced the wines and the winners. It was double-plus fun because my pal Melana, part of Mission Creek Wine Cellars not only got 4 out of 5 correct (one of 3 who did) she hit the draw for the grand prize (a stay int the fabulous River Rock resort hotel and casino in Richmond), and this very day was her birthday!
Afterwards I gave a little chat about the varieties and styles, and talked about why we chose each of the wines and what they represented to us at Winexpert and why we wanted to share them with our faithful Limited Edition followers, one more time. I got a chance to talk to a lot of old friends (and new!) and hang with my peeps from Ontario, Rob Van Wely and Gavin 'G-Unit' Hawthorne, two fine fellows who I don't get to see often enough.
Finally after that I drove home, caught cold, and spent the rest of the week in bed!
I took so much purple drank I got my own Hip-Hop cizzontract, yo!
And that's where I've been ever since. It ain't the pork fever or ham plague, but it'll do. I've got serious up-catching to do here, including adding some serious flair to my Powerpoint presentation, getting some documents ready to roll, and finalising some travel plans and planning some travel.
Oh yes: and I'll be announcing, right here, Thursday October First, the 2009 20th anniversary Limited Edition kit line-up. I'll also be uploading a video of my presentation to my youtube channel, along with a soopah-sekrit bonus track . . . wait'll you see it!
Till then, where's my cough syrup? Wheeze!
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