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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Monday, November 16 2009
Cracked, but never broken- the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia
Okay, dumb title, but it's my favourite memory aid to states of the US East. I'm starting this blog entry on the 12th, and if everything goes according to the norm, I should finish it sometime next week, when I'm in Manitoba.
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| Posted by Tim AT 10:29PM |
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Thursday, November 5 2009
Downtown Atlanta. Looks different from that movie I saw--less burny.
Another Friday, another airplane and a chance to catch up on my bloggery pokery. It's been another zoomy week for Technical Services, aka 'Mr. Vandergrifts Chaos Emporium'. Monday I hopped on a Delta flight to get to North Carolina, via Minneapolis. I tend to be a linear thinker, so the idea that I can't always just go straight from airport A to airport B seems wacky, but the amazing and incomprehensible world of airlines dictates the use of hubs to direct traffic around. Funny, what I think of when I hear 'hub' is a greasy wheel bearing that's making horrible noises and is going to cost me money . . . there's a metaphor in there somewhere, I'm sure.
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| Posted by Tim AT 10:32PM |
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Tuesday, October 27 2009
If planes were powered by crying babies, they'd go 9000 miles an hour
It's been a bit since my last update, but I swear I've been using my time productively. I'm writing this entry on a flight to Minnesota, en route to Raleigh North Carolina (did you know that babies can cry in five-part harmony under the right circumstances? Neither did I until today), headed to the beautiful US south for more Limited Edition consumer events and store visits.
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| Posted by Tim AT 2:08PM |
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Tuesday, October 20 2009
Yes, the whole province looks like that.
If you're not a resident of coastal British Columbia, you may not appreciate one of the quotidian facts about our lives here: we have a fleet of ships at our command.
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| Posted by Tim AT 12:57PM |
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Thursday, October 15 2009
This'll do!
A hearty congratulations to our September winner, Dick Waterworth of Walnut Grove, California. Dick played the limitededtion20.com quiz and was chosen from our October winner's pool. His well-gotten gains include 30 bottle wine fridge, $300 Grocery Gift Card and a free Selection Estate wine kit. Wow, that's some prize package!
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| Posted by Tim AT 6:25PM |
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Wednesday, October 7 2009
Why are they all looking at me like that?
I've had a few days well-earned downtime, after my whirlwind tour of Minnesota, including Minneapolis-St. Paul. I was doing market visits and Limited Edition consumer tasting events with my pal, LD Carlson's account manager, Brian Wright. Brian and I travel well together, which mainly means he is able to tolerate my obdurate Canadian socialism and odd personal habits with grace and aplomb.
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| Posted by Tim AT 9:42PM |
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Monday, October 5 2009
Dharma, schmarma, get a job you bum!
"Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life." –Jack Kerouac
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| Posted by Tim AT 7:18AM |
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Thursday, October 1 2009
I wonder if 'Winexpert' is a red or a white grape?
Fresh Website! We've updated http://www.winexpert.com/ for a shiny-fresh new look, and a great look it is!
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| Posted by Tim AT 11:03PM |
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Thursday, October 1 2009
Ah, they grow up so fast . . . sniff!
The moment you've been waiting for! Winexpert (and me) are proud to present our 2009 Limited Edition line-up. Chosen from the best wines of the last 20 years, we've brought back some exciting varieties and blend, from great growing regions and prestigious vineyards.
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| Posted by Tim AT 8:07AM |
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Wednesday, September 30 2009
Look, I'm giving it away! Ha ha ha ha ha!
. . . and all through the house, not a bottle was stirring, not even a Jeroboam!
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| Posted by Tim AT 4:38AM |
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Monday, September 28 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.
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| Posted by Tim AT 11:30PM |
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Thursday, September 24 2009
Civilisation started when man mastered fire, and got much better when he discovered cold beer
Our retail store customer appreciation day was a smashing success! We grilled up burgers, smokies, European wieners (if they were really European, wouldn't they be European Viennas? I tried looking up 'wiener' on the internet to confirm this. My conclusion: don't look that word up on the internet) and one lonely veggie burger, which was for me, in solidarity with my Vegan peeps. Go soybeans!
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| Posted by Tim AT 5:45AM |
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Thursday, September 17 2009
Wanna see my picture on the cover, wanna buy five copies for my mother . . .It's not the cover of the Rolling Stone, but it is a whole darn magazine, all-Tim, all-the-time.
The story of how I came to write for Winemaker Magazine is a funny one. A dozen years ago a very nice publisher sent my company (at the time I worked for one of Winexpert's competitors, doing much the same thing I do today) a copy of their brand-new Magazine, and asked if we'd be interested in distributing it in Canada to our retailers. The marketing honcho tossed it on my desk and asked if I thought it was a good bet.
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| Posted by Tim AT 8:23PM |
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Wednesday, September 16 2009
Look at that punim! Such a nice young man.
It's Bar-B-Q time! Winexpert's retail store is having it's annual customer appreciation day, with hot dogs, hamburgers (veggie burgers for my vegan friends!) and balloons for the kiddies (plus, helium for squeaky voices!) this Saturday, September 19th, from 11 am until 4 pm.
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| Posted by Tim AT 11:34PM |
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Monday, September 14 2009
What else could make a man this happy? Hair not precisely as shown.
When one is asked, 'How was the Great Canadian Beer Festival?', the proper response is, 'How would I know, sir? After all, I was there.' That is, if you really recall the events surrounding the festival, you were doing it wrong.
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| Posted by Tim AT 10:31PM |
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Wednesday, September 9 2009
We can't stop here: this is CAMRA country!
The great Doctor of Journalism, Hunter S Thompson, is a personal hero of mine. Not because of his personal conduct, or his persona as a substance-addled dangerously self-centered lunatic, but because when faced with a nation that no longer responded to solid journalism, he invented a new ethos, 'Gonzo journalism', where he injected himself into the story to try and make sense of a Rashomon-like cloud of contradictory and often self-serving viewpoints.
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| Posted by Tim AT 9:03PM |
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Friday, September 4 2009
Hey! I can see my house from here
The name we give to something shapes our attitude to it–Katherine Paterson
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| Posted by Tim AT 9:56PM |
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Tuesday, September 1 2009
That's like 140 in wine kit years
Limited Edition time is nearly here! Varieties will be announced at the bottom of this blog entry!
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| Posted by Tim AT 9:28PM |
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Friday, August 28 2009
They call 'em cherry tomatoes, but they're sweeter than cherries
Whew doggies! It's been a busy month this week. Limited Edition looms, there are conferences to get ready for, gardens to harvest, apples to pick, friends to visit, visitors to befriend, bread to bake, DVD's to edit, PowerPoint presentations to finish, and so on!
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| Posted by Tim AT 7:25PM |
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Tuesday, August 25 2009
Kraken, calamari that fights back
From the Veblen Economics Gone Mad file, it turns out that Kraken Opus, luxury publisher of such scintillating books as the one on soccer star Diego Maradona which included blood and hair samples from the player, and another on Prince's concerts at the O2 arena which will be inlaid with diamonds and will have the symbol the singer adopted as his signature embossed in pure platinum, plans to release a wine book that will retail for more than $1,000,000.00
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| Posted by Tim AT 6:35PM |
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Monday, August 24 2009
If you've been reading this blog for a while, you'll have noticed that I have a certain fascination with the religious observations and celebrations of many different cultures. My people (Mennonites) are very happy and merry in their own way, but might appear a bit dour to outsiders. That's always niggled at me, because I think if you got to know us, you'd like us (well some of us, I hope!) The obverse of that is true as well: the more I know about other religious traditions and cultures, the more great people I get to know.
One religion I'm learning more about is Islam. I have to admit that until very recently I was more or less ignorant of the details of the faith--a Eurocentric view of history in school and a little bit of news snippets over the years left me without a real clue. With the Islamic prohibition against consuming alcohol it's not like I was going to meet a lot of Muslims in the course of business either!
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| Posted by Tim AT 8:52PM |
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Thursday, August 20 2009
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me that a frontal lobotomy
It was the missus' birthday this month, so we had a few very nice bottles to celebrate with, as well as some patio weather and whatnot to work through.
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| Posted by Tim AT 10:49PM |
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Tuesday, August 18 2009
Never drink anything that can stare back at you
Wines and cordials flavoured with various additions like herbs, spices, seeds and fruit are part of the long tradition of Western medicine, and we're so used to the idea that few of us rarely think of drinks like Chartreuse being a health tonic (they called it 'the elixir of life) or Jaegermeister being a stomach remedy (for all its taste, I'd rather drink Pepto-Bismol™, thanks). There is even a kind of spiced mead (fermented honey drink) called metheglin, derived from 'meddyglyn', meaning 'medicated'. I need to be medicated to taste mead, or anything else made from bee-sick.
Asians take their medicine far more seriously. Many Asian cultures have densely complex belief systems around the consumption of various animals and plants to instill health, vigour and increased prowess, ahem, in the imbiber. To outsiders it seems strange and to some it's even kind of icky, but those feelings are cultural artefacts, based on our innate desire to reject unfamiliar foods, a survival adaptation of sorts.
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| Posted by Tim AT 5:03PM |
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Friday, August 14 2009
I sure hope he's got that chart upside-down . . .
Note: 'The Dismal Science' is a derogatory term for economics, coined in the 19th Century by Thomas Carlyle.
I was finishing up my article for the October/November issue of Winemaker magazine and I did a quick whip 'round the interwebs to see if I was on-base or out-in-left-field. The article is on saving money making your own wine (summary: yes, you can. Now you don't have to buy the magazine!) Seems pretty simple, but the results I got from looking at wine and the economy were deeply interesting (at least to someone who works in the industry and drinks lots of wine).
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| Posted by Tim AT 7:38PM |
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Wednesday, August 12 2009
I guess the name 'Le Goofball' was taken
I'll confess: I don't understand people at all. Even being one doesn't seem to help. From the 'more money, no brains' file, luxury purveyor Leon Verres produces $2.75 million/bottle sparkling wine (warning: site has awful sounds and vaguely pornographic images such as the one above, and above all is tacky and crappy and will sap your will to live). Targeted at the sort of billionaires who apparently make money without common sense, it features a diamond encrusted 9-litre bottle inside a sable muff.
While I can't find anything out about Leon Verres, I'm having a very hard time accepting any of it at face value. Even accounting for the concepts of Veblen economics (one of which is that the stupid are afraid to buy things that seem too inexpensive, and are reassured by being overcharged) the idea of buying a bottle of wine with no provenance (they don't say what's inside: it could be Mountain Dew™ for all they reveal) at a price hundreds of thousands of times than the median cost of real Champagne is goofy as all get-out.
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| Posted by Tim AT 8:20PM |
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Monday, August 10 2009
I been workin' in a coal mine
Goin' down down down
Workin' in a coal mine
Whop! about to slip down
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| Posted by Tim AT 11:13PM |
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Wednesday, July 29 2009
It's a decoy . . . this must be a trap!
Faithful readers may wonder where I've been. The answer is, ON VACATION! Yep, I get to go off-leash a few weeks a year and I chose the last week of July and the first week of August for my time off. Things get very busy for me from about the middle of August, with retailer and distributor conferences and prepping for Limited Edition travel season, so if I don't get my holidays in right around this time I have to wait until January-ish to take any time off.
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| Posted by Tim AT 6:08PM |
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Tuesday, July 21 2009
It comes up fairly often: "Just what do you do at work, Tim?", and not just from my bosses. My job is very difficult to explain or pin down. Yes, I do some drinking on the clock, but a lot of the time I sit and stare at a computer screen, or a pile of books,or reports, sometimes I talk to people on the phone or by email, and I have a lot of meetings, and all of it is about beverage alcohol in one form or another.
Trust me, I'm an actor!
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| Posted by Tim AT 6:51PM |
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Thursday, July 16 2009
If you can't trust a guy in a dress and a pointy hat, who can you trust?
From the 'all things old become new again' file, Decanter reports Liquid Cocaine Found in Bottles of Bolivian Wine:
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| Posted by Tim AT 11:40PM |
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Tuesday, July 14 2009
My, that does look stormy
July 14th marks the 220th anniversary of the storming of the Bastille. The assault on the Bastille, a fortress and prison that held political prisoners (held under shadowy 'lettres de cachet', the equivalent of the Canadian 'security certificate') as well as a large stock of gunpowder and ammo, was the first step in the establishment of a constitutional monarchy that preceded the First Republic of France.
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| Posted by Tim AT 9:14PM |
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Wednesday, July 8 2009
Norton, the Pinnacle of Wit?
It's been a slow drinking season lately, what with . . . gee, I dunno. I cannot for the life of me think why I'm not drinking as much as I should. Maybe I should ask my doctor if I need to get some help staying on my strict wine regimen.
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| Posted by Tim AT 6:10PM |
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Tuesday, July 7 2009
"What are the facts? Again and again and again - what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what 'the stars foretell,' avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable 'verdict of history' - what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your only clue. Get the facts!"
Born on this day in 1907, Robert A Heinlein had an enormous influence on my life and helped shape the person I am today. At the tender age of four-and-half I figured out how to read (I suspected that people reading me stories were holding out on the good stuff, and I was right--there was a world beyond 'Harold and the Purple Crayon') and within a couple of years I had a big-boy library card that let me take out books from the adult section as well as the kiddie stacks (God bless subversive librarians, sneakily letting kids read for themselves. Hug a librarian next time you see one.)
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| Posted by Tim AT 6:11PM |
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Thursday, July 2 2009
Don't be fooled by all the pretty, fellows: she's a sharpie!
As a social gadfly and quasi-public nano-celebrity I have a very large circle of acquaintances, colleagues and co-conspirators. My actual circle of friends is much smaller, and I cherish the ones I have all the more for it--including great pals like Melissa (that's her above).
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| Posted by Tim AT 8:38PM |
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Tuesday, June 30 2009
With glowing hearts, we see thee rise . . .
To all my American friends puzzled by the absence of Canadian voices on the other end of the telephone/email device July first, we have a good excuse: it's Canada Day/Fête du Canada! While on many levels it's analogous to the American Independence Day, it's mostly not, really.
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| Posted by Tim AT 9:29PM |
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Monday, June 29 2009
Things go better with Kalimotxo?
Two things combined this week to make me feel both out of touch and completely excused for my cultural ignorance. The first was my discovery of a drink called Calimocho, or as the originators spell it, 'Kalimotxo' (apparently tx is pronounced 'ch' in Basque).
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| Posted by Tim AT 6:16PM |
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Tuesday, June 23 2009
Mary, Mary, quite contrary . . .
Y'know, I feel a bit guilty most of the time because I'm always running late with deadlines, blogs and projects, being a natural born procrastinator. I'd like to think I have good excuses, like spending the weekend working in my garden, teaching the cats to skeet-shoot or building a cathedral out of Popsicle sticks, but if you use a good excuse one day, you'll use a bad excuse the next, I suppose.
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| Posted by Tim AT 5:52PM |
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Tuesday, June 16 2009
But he that dares not grasp the thorn Should never crave the rosés.
Anne Bronte may or may not have drank rosé wine, but she seemed to know about thorny situations, and the European Commission seems to have it's share of pri . . . er, prickles. Case in point, their recent cowardly retreat on changing how rosé wines are produced. In a nutshell, the proposal was to change the manner in which pink wine is defined across Europe, allowing rosé to be made from blends of red and white grapes, in addition to the traditonal method seen in some areas of making it from 100% red grapes and relying on short maceration times to give the light pink colour.
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| Posted by Tim AT 5:15PM |
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Thursday, June 11 2009
Rex Johnston and Barbara Bentley
Sometimes I have the best job in the world. Not only do I do something that I love, I also get to meet other people who love making and sharing wine as well. It's a community of folks who, while all different and so varied as to defy classification, all seem to share one thing in common: they're really nice. And every once in a while I hear something about one of my winemaking friends that's so good I have to share it.
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| Posted by Tim AT 6:02PM |
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Sunday, June 7 2009
It's a good life, if you don't weaken.
"A meal without wine is like a day without sunshine."
Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste (1825)
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| Posted by Tim AT 9:43PM |
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Saturday, June 6 2009
Welcome to the bingo capital of Canada!
Ah, Winnipeg. I come here at least a couple of times every year. Winesense, our retail partner in the city, does a solid week of Limited Edition wine tasting events every winter, and I do at least one training session for their staff and managers each year, so I get to see the city pretty frequently (as well as Brandon, too--hey Ben! Go Wheat Kings!)
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| Posted by Tim AT 11:09PM |
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Tuesday, June 2 2009
Stand tall, soldiers: you did your best.
It hasn't been drinktacular at Madhouse Manor lately. I've been on the road quite a bit, and thus doing my drinking out of town. Still, we managed to have a few people over and a couple of patio afternoons and I've piled up a few reviews.
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| Posted by Tim AT 5:13PM |
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Friday, May 29 2009
Sniff, it's so pretty I just keep breaking into tears
I've been promising that I'd visit the new digs for Beyond the Grape for months now, and last Friday I finally made it. It was worth the wait, because the new location is a knockout.
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| Posted by Tim AT 12:03PM |
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Thursday, May 28 2009
I wanted a haircut, not a shave!
No, it's nothing so gruesome as a head-ectomy. I was going through my pictures this morning and came across a sequence from Portugal. I was there last Spring, studying the wine and cork production. One of the funnest things I got to do while there was to participate in a Port decanting ceremony at the Vintage House in Pinhao, at the upper end of the Douro river.
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| Posted by Tim AT 8:55PM |
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Monday, May 25 2009
Waiter! There's a fly in my Sauvignon!
It was quite the weekend in Napa. Winemaker Magazine hosted their second annual conference on the 15th and 16th of May. Since I'm a columnist and feature writer for them I got the invite to be a speaker as well. This year I thought I'd do two seminars, one on troubleshooting wine kits and another on a larger topic.
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| Posted by Tim AT 10:55PM |
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Monday, May 18 2009
On the patio at Domaine Carneros, working diligently . . .
Yee-haw! After a year of conferences crammed into two months of work in only 21 days (math was never my strong suit, but my geometry is good enough for me to describe hyperbole) I'm home and resting comfortably. Last stop was a stint in the stupendously gorgeous Napa Valley, for the Winemaker Magazine 2009 conference.
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| Posted by Tim AT 5:25PM |
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Friday, May 8 2009
But why has all the rum gone? White Rock Willie gets his raspberry on
What on earth do delectable raspberries and my ruthless, rum-swilling neighbour, White Rock Willie have in common with the Final Frontier? Well, as it turns out, Outer Space Smells of Rum and Tastes of Raspberries. According to the UK Guardian
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| Posted by Tim AT 5:06PM |
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Wednesday, May 6 2009
SR-6, Nevada. Photo by Dave Becker
I've been a long time gone, and what a month this last week has been.
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| Posted by Tim AT 9:56PM |
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Thursday, April 30 2009
It'd leave a sour taste in anyone's mouth
It's no secret that I'm not BFF with Robert Parker. He is, after all, pretty much the most pernicious influence on the world of wine today, dumbing down good wine, pumping up bad wine, and generally distorting consumer perceptions about what wine is and should be--all to his personal profit.
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| Posted by Tim AT 7:30PM |
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Monday, April 27 2009
On the outside looking in?
I have curious, if somewhat tenuous connection to Randall Grahm (above), proprietor of Bonny Doon Vineyards and all-around wildly inventive marketer and polymathic winester. Bonny Doon used to sponsor a writing contest, 'A Gutwrenching Parody of Staggering Silliness'. On a whim I entered one year and to my surprise I took 5th place (of ten) in the Laureate's category for my silly little parody of Gravity's Rainbow (link: it's about halfway down the page).
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| Posted by Tim AT 10:52PM |
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Wednesday, April 22 2009
I can't believe you forgot the marshmallows! What will we eat with the lark's tongues?
Regular readers of this blog (why does that phrase always make me think of bran cereal and prunes?) will note that I like a bit of comparative culture. Last April I made note of Grounation Day, the Rastafari commemoration the visit of Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie to Jamaica in 1966. This year I got interested in the Roman festival of Parilia.
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| Posted by Tim AT 7:11PM |
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Monday, April 20 2009
Will there be a test on Monday?
I had an interesting experience last week. I had to take a training course on a field outside my normal one (specialising in explaining consumer-produced wine can only be considered 'normal' only for a given value of normal, one supposes) and for once, instead of being the guy with the books, lectures and tests I was the guy with the pencil, paper, and question.
It was a firearms training course, so while I have past experience with the subject, I'm no expert, and had to rely on my instructor for almost all of the correct technical information regarding the technology and construction of firearms, the correct and safe use of them, and the way they must be used under law.
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| Posted by Tim AT 7:13PM |
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Saturday, April 18 2009
Amish limousine, seen in Niagara On the Lake
It's a busy old week lined up for Winexpert. Many of the management and executive team are gathering in Ontario for Fiscal 2010 planning meetings. It takes a lot of time to coordinate the activities of our various divisions, given the complexity of the business, so we like to get started early.
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| Posted by Tim AT 11:10PM |
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Thursday, April 9 2009
Red wine does not go with gasoline
Interesting news from Decanter: Allegrini winery gives away wine to designated drivers. It works like this: in restaurants the designated driver who does not imbibe gets a bottle of Allegrini's Palazzo del Torre wine to take home and enjoy at another time.
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| Posted by Tim AT 6:15PM |
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Tuesday, April 7 2009
Startlingly accurate cartoon by Dave Walker
Customer service occupies a lot of my attention. I'm responsible for the answers we give to, and the solutions we provide for people who have concerns with our products. You know the saying, 'The Buck Stops Here'? Well, it usually stops antlers-first, and 'here' is my desk.
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| Posted by Tim AT 9:41PM |
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Monday, April 6 2009
Boing! Boing! Boing!
I love reading the British newspaper Financial Times for a variety of reasons. First, it's got good journalism and a soothingly neutral and cool quality to its prose. Second, I don't understand high finance at all, but sometimes they come through with an article simple enough for even me.
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| Posted by Tim AT 7:05PM |
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Friday, April 3 2009
The Bluebird of Chattiness?
It's official: I am apparently a band-wagoneer, now having signed up for a Twitter account, @WinexpertTim.
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| Posted by Tim AT 4:45PM |
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Thursday, April 2 2009
Europe's greatest ruler and its greatest lover, born this day.
April 2nd marks the birthday of both Karolus Magnus, rex Francorum, rex Langobardorum and imperator Romanorum and Giacomo Girolamo Casanova de Seingalt, a librarian with an interesting hobby. Modern folk will most likely recognise them by the handles Charlemagne and Casanova.
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| Posted by Tim AT 4:59PM |
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Wednesday, April 1 2009
Dateline: April 1st, Winexpert International Product Science Headquarters
Winexpert is proud to announce an entirely new line of consumer winemaking products to our kit line! We're blending the best of new technology, desirable wine styles and a fun, 'hip' drinking experience for our loyal customers in the tradition of innovation that has seen the introduction of the World's First Carbon Neutral Wine Kit and many others!
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| Posted by Tim AT 9:39PM |
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Monday, March 30 2009
Dude, invest in a decanter or something!
Regular readers of Tim's Blog (is there such a thing?) will recall how I slammed the practice of en primeur (pre-selling Bordeaux wine as futures) as a cheat and a scam. Unimpeachable sources, such as Petrus' winemaker Jean-Claude Berrouet agreed with me (clever fellow), saying the system forced wineries to alter the way they made wine, to cater to the tastes of the nouveau riche and dolts with palates of felt and glue who can only taste sugar and alcohol (I'm looking at you, Bob), because the wines have to be 'as seductive as possible far earlier, to the detriment of the Bordeaux style'. Even the ever demure Jancis Robinson hoped the 2006 en primeurs would fail, leaving merchants holding the bag on unsold stock.
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| Posted by Tim AT 11:39PM |
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Monday, March 30 2009
Now that's what I call grillin' and chillin'!
Note: Today's blog comes to us courtesy of Peter Mills, Winexpert's account manager extraordinaire from Atlantic Canada. A bon vivant of some note, he shares with us his dinner plans, leisure pursuits and wine matching advice. And here I thought Australians were all ruffians and ex-convicts--it seems I was partly mistaken.
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| Posted by Tim AT 8:24PM |
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Friday, March 27 2009
Do you suppose he only drinks white wine?
I was doing some bottling yesterday, a two year-old rhubarb wine made from my garden produce, and a very interesting carboy of the original Montagnac Crushendo. I made it specifically to demonstrate racking of grapeskin products at one of our retailer conferences. I do believe it was back in the summer of 2006. It served its demonstration purposes, I racked it again, sulphited it and added 50 grams of toasted French oak cubes and left it until yesterday.
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| Posted by Tim AT 10:27PM |
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Thursday, March 26 2009
How convenient: a glass of wine with the canapés already in it!
It's that time of year again: the Vancouver International Wine Festival is on. I've attended almost every year since 1987 and it's one of the best wine events in Canada--or anywhere.
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| Posted by Tim AT 8:11PM |
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Wednesday, March 25 2009
That's amore!
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| Posted by Tim AT 5:32AM |
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Thursday, March 19 2009
Waiter, I think this wine is corked . . .
Note: Today's blog is courtesy of Peter Mills, Winexpert accounts manager for Atlantic Canada--our man in the East, long may his big jib draw.
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| Posted by Tim AT 6:38PM |
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Tuesday, March 17 2009
The great thing about the EU was how it abolished nationalism . . .
I've managed to travel a bit, so I recognise that other countries and other societies have different ways of doing things. I also think it's appropriate to pass laws to preserve heritage and prevent the loss of important cultural assets. Heck, I even like the French on the side of my cereal box.
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| Posted by Tim AT 10:16PM |
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Monday, March 16 2009
I hope it's got compact fluorescent garters . . .
You could have knocked me over with the weather. I got an email from the marketing folks this morning congratulating me, and while it took a solid ten minutes to figure out why, I couldn't be more pleased, or more impressed the the company I'm keeping: Tim's Wine Blog declared one of the top 5 business blogs in Vancouver.
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| Posted by Tim AT 11:25PM |
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Thursday, March 12 2009
Bottles not shown actual size. Thank goodness.
It's nice to have a couple of days off the road to catch up on my drinking. I know I just blogged about the big ol' wine dinner at the FGBC, but that hardly counts--it was work! All right, all right, I know most people would prefer that kind of work if they could get it. Ahem.
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| Posted by Tim AT 5:46AM |
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Friday, March 6 2009
Is the logo half-empty, or half-full?
It's hard to believe that's it's been a year already, but last Sunday was the Fermenters Guild of British Columbia annual conference. The FGBC represents the consumer wine and beer making retailers in the province, and the annual get-together revolves around their annual general meeting where they elect new officers, propose new measures, discuss important news, attend various educational seminars (that's were I come in) and have a trade show (Winexpert, other kit manufacturers and associated trades) and a pretty interesting dinner.
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| Posted by Tim AT 7:26PM |
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Thursday, March 5 2009
No thanks, I had centipede eggs for lunch.
Once you smell a rotten egg, you never forget the distinct aroma of hydrogen sulphide gas. Winemakers tend to know about it because it's a by-product of yeast metabolism, showing up in all fermentations too a greater or lesser degree. Once in a great while something can go awry, and too much H2S will be formed. Fortunately, in small quantities it can be driven off with a little sulphite and some vigorous stirring, and in moderate amounts it can be treated with copper or Bocksin. In large amounts, the wine smells like a housefull of fart, and it has to be dumped out. You'll occasionally run across bottles of wine that have a wee hint of it, which can be gotten rid of with decanting and airing, or in extremis, a handful of sanitised pennies (the copper bonds to the H2, forming copper sulphate, removing the smell).
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| Posted by Tim AT 10:34PM |
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Monday, March 2 2009
Whew, that's certainly a relief! Actual sign on Congress Avenue store.
Gadzooks, what a funny sort of week it's been. We flew from blowing snow and icy roads at 0ºC to absurdly warm sunshine at 35ºC. Locals assured me that it was unusually warm for Texas at this time of year, and I hope that's true because if it's not, they'll be able to melt lead on the sidewalks by August.
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| Posted by Tim AT 9:35PM |
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Tuesday, February 24 2009
David Shepherd and Travis Price, heroes.
Although it only seems like a year ago,Pink Shirt Day is upon us again. Inspired by a couple of Nova Scotia high-school kids who decided to stand up against bullying in their school by getting hundreds of students to turn out in pink. Christy Clark of CKNW radio has been instrumental in coordinating a Day of Pink, in cooperation with Boys and Girls clubs.
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| Posted by Tim AT 5:53AM |
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Tuesday, February 24 2009
The stars at night, are big and bright,
deep in the heart of Texas,
The prairie sky is wide and high,
deep in the heart of Texas.
The sage in bloom is like perfume,
deep in the heart of Texas,
Reminds me of, the one I love,
deep in the heart of Texas.
I get to travel to a lot of places. Sometimes it's pretty ordinary--nothing wrong with making the trip to New Jersey, but once you've seen one mob hit, you've seen 'em all--but many places are special, and one of the coolest, most interesting and delightful places I've had the privilege of visiting is Austin, Texas. This Friday I'll be heading there for a retailer conference with my pals at LD Carlson and I'm stoked.
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| Posted by Tim AT 6:10PM |
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Monday, February 23 2009
Portrait of the artist as a 17th-Century crypto-blogger
It's a busy day in the annals of human history: in 1455 Gutenberg published his first book (go moveable type!), in 1836 the battle of the Alamo began, in 1942 Glenn Seaborg isolated and purified Plutonium for the first time in human history, in 1932 geek cultural icon Majel Barret and in 1944 melanin-challenged blues guitarist Johnny Winter were born, and it's Terminalia, the festival of Jupiter Terminalis. Whew!
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| Posted by Tim AT 6:16PM |
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Thursday, February 19 2009
The first space ship Enterprise
It's time for an embarrassing admission: I am a complete and utter nerd. Not only did I play Dungeons and Dragons when I was a kid, I also read a lot of science fiction, watched Star Trek and wanted to be an astronaut when I grew up. I eventually left the twenty-sided dice and the monster manual behind, and it was gently explained to me that monocular vision wasn't good enough for astronaut duty, but I never quit with wanting to be part of the bright shiny future. I wanted to live in a world where you could go to a Spaceport, buy a ticket to the moon, and wear exciting unisex jumpsuits.
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| Posted by Tim AT 12:23PM |
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Tuesday, February 17 2009
The Honorable John J. Blaine
Today is the 76th anniversary of the Blaine act, a bill sponsored by Wisconsin senator John J. Blaine and passed by the United States Senate on February 17, 1933, to repeal the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution: Prohibition. The repeal helped stem the tide of social upheaval and criminal gangsterism that was driven by the massive profitability of contraband liquor, much of it flowing from Canada (and the source of some of the richest fortunes in Canadian history).
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| Posted by Tim AT 6:36PM |
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Monday, February 16 2009
Nothing says home cooking like a pan of fried carrots
I had lunch with my publisher, Brad Ring, the other day (ooh, sounds fancy: I had a taco) and he asked me the same question he asks all the time: what was I reading right now? I don't know if it's a standard conversational gambit (not a bad one if it is) or if he's interested in my reading list in particular. I talked about four or five of the books in my pile right now, but I think the most gripping tome I'm reading right now is Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen. I bought it because I had read Heston Blumenthal'sHeston Blumenthal: In Search of Perfection. Heston credits McGee with introducing him to molecular gastronomy.
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| Posted by Tim AT 11:44PM |
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Tuesday, February 10 2009
Author not exactly as illustrated
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| Posted by Tim AT 10:48PM |
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Sunday, January 25 2009
Hey! Your end is draggin'!
At the end of January I'm always pulled in two competing directions: jau gok and a nice bottle of Tsing Tao, or haggis and a wee dram? It's not only Chinese New Year on January 26th, but also it's Robbie Burns Day on the 25th.
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| Posted by Tim AT 8:19PM |
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Tuesday, January 20 2009
Nice doggie!
Man, it's like news stories are designed to scare me--me, personally. According to the Daily Mail if you've got the right sort of liver, and enjoy a bit too much wine, it can turn you into a werewolf.
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| Posted by Tim AT 7:25PM |
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Friday, January 16 2009
That's how I chill, that's how I roll
While I don't think of myself automatically as a generous guy, I do like to share wine with other people. In fact, I rarely drink anything special when I'm alone–can you imagine hoarding your wine and rubbing your hands with greedy glee over the cork?
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| Posted by Tim AT 10:52PM |
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Tuesday, January 13 2009
Blue skies
Smiling at me
Nothing but blue skies
Do I see
Irving Berlin was a lyricist, not a physicist, but he knew a good thing when he saw it. Blue skies turn out to have a precise connection to the colour of wine. No, not blue wine--that's for Romulans and cosplay geeks, but rather why wine made from my kits is darker after it's been filtered, and why the sky is blue and not some other colour.
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| Posted by Tim AT 6:54PM |
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Thursday, January 8 2009
I once popped a magnum in Reno, just to watch it froth
Ooh, those kooky, flighty Germans! What will they think of next? According to Decanter Magazine, German Scientist Logs Champagne Cork Speed.
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| Posted by Tim AT 1:16AM |
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Wednesday, January 7 2009
I'd hide around the corner too.
For years I've advocated the use of pyrethrin-based insecticides as one of the few safe remedies for fruit-fly infestations. Melanogaster drosophila (the mug on the left) can be a real pain in the carboy. Not only are they unsightly, they carry the hazards of a schnozzle full of bacteria wherever they go, and can (at least potentially) transfer it into your poor innocent wine. They ignore flypaper, are too small to swat, and seem to appear out of thin air whenever there's fermentation going on.
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| Posted by Tim AT 11:34PM |
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Tuesday, January 6 2009
Mmm, there's nothin' like home cookin'
One of the things I hear from consumer winemakers is that their home wines sometimes don't measure up to their expectations (well, I hear that a lot, actually, from people who are tasting it during primary fermentation or from the carboy, a week or so after pitching the yeast. 'It tastes sharp and funny! What's wrong?' Well sir, perhaps if you took a pork roast out of the oven when it was half-cooked and tried to cut yourself a slice, you'd find it odd-tasting as well).
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| Posted by Tim AT 8:40PM |
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Monday, January 5 2009
Just looking at this picture makes me want to take up smoking and drinking bourbon.
I love modern journalism. So much of it has been streamlined to make way for more advertising and less budgets for research, follow-up and analysis that the most errant nonsense shows up as gospel, and gets recirculated by other news services eager for cheap and usually sensational pronouncements that sell papers (or increasingly, pixels).
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| Posted by Tim AT 6:42PM |
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Friday, January 2 2009
Coffee, the most important meal of the day for a Santa Claus in training
The Annual White Rock Polar Bear Swim was a success. My pal David couldn't swim, as he came down with a rotten cold at the last minute, but he did show up to take pictures for me, which does show a lot of fortitude. It was one of the coldest swims I can remember--less than 2ºC out there!
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| Posted by Tim AT 8:53PM |
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Comments
Gregory Sams
Posted 8 months ago
I like your little round-up of various solar characters from the past (and present in Japan) but detect a scholarly approach that assumes it all to be primitive ignorance. I point out that was not science, but a jealous Church that made us think such thoughts were primitive and ignorant, burning scientists and scholars as well as ordinary people who held them. Perhaps the ancients were onto something?
Looking at the science today, we discover that our local star has seven distinct levels all performing different functions. We know of the heliosphere, the invisible magnetic shield with which the Sun protects its solar system from high-energy cosmic rays. Is this all inanimate unconscious matter, or a high-energy life form looking after its own solar system? Dive deeper, if you like, at http://www.sunofgod.net