Tuesday, June 15 2010
LD Carlson Conference: Cuyahoga Falls or Bust
It may not look like much in this picture, but you should see it when it's on fire.
One of the nice things about coming to the LD Carlson conference is a chance to hang out in Kent-Akron. The Carlson warehouse is located in this area and it’s a pretty nice place. Kent is a university town, so there are a lot of young folks (‘Darn kids, get off my lawn!’) hanging out, decompressing from studies and generally being youthful.
The local landscape is very pretty too: brick buildings, charming shops, and a really pretty river walk. The picture above is the Cuyahoga River, made famous in the past by being so horrendously polluted that it once caught fire and burned to the ground (and how do you put out a river? Pour water on it?) It’s come a long way since then, and is now as clean as any river in Ohio, and charmingly pretty as it passes underneath the Sheraton Cuyahoga Falls, the location of our 2010 conference. I had a few hours on Saturday to hang around in Kent with my pal Lisa, a book reviewer extraordinaire and teller of delightful tales of the testing lab business.
The redoubtable Lisa: bookish gal, raconteur, destruction tester and excellent pal
We met as is our usual custom in Ray’s Place, a Kent institution that features what every college town needs, burgers and beer—but really, really great burgers and a fabulous line-up of beer.
Decisions, decisions . . .
I need to take a minute to explain things between my US and Canadian readers: the difference in beer culture between the two nations is profound. While there are still areas where it’s difficult to get a wide range of truly great beers of diverse character in the USA, the average bar there is significantly better than the those in Canada, and we have absolutely nothing to compare to a dedicated beer-bar with a thirty draft taps (or fifty, or ninety) and several hundred specialty bottles. Sadly, it’s our archaic and constraining liquor laws and egregious alcohol taxation. For the most part we have to make do with mass-market yellow fizzwater, heavily advertised in leadenly sexist ways, and a few desultory and sadly ersatz ‘micro brews’ that would raise an eyebrow of even a moderately well versed beer geek, and the very few Canadian brewpubs that actually understand great beer and work to serve it only underline the paucity of choice available to us poor Canucks. The exceptions to this are so rare that I’ve tasted most of them!
Yes, I sound bitter, but this comes from a man who threw away clothing to make room in his suitcase for 19 bottles of tenderly wrapped beer for the plane ride home. The things we do for love . . .
Where was I? Ah yes: after a delicious burger and a pint of Belgian-style India Pale Ale, we took a walk along the aforementioned Cuyahoga to view the Riverwalk. There was also a food and wine festival on in Kent that day, but we were cut short from viewing it by a little rain. Then a lot of rain. Then a truly stupendous amount of rain. Deciding that not drowning was the better part of valour, we wisely chose to go indoors.
Lisa and Ann, showing the way
Picking up Lisa’s cousin Ann, we hied ourselves off to the Riverwalk Wine bar, a lovely joint that offers wine by the glass and a nice selection of appetisers, cheese plate and nibbles to compliment them. We had a chunk of Spanish Manchego cheese, a bit of homous, and started off with a bottle of Sancerre, a Sauvignon Blanc wine from the Loire region of France.
Sancerre is the perfect antidote for flagging tastebuds. New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc often comes off as under-ripe to me, and is often so over-the-top with wacky vegetal notes and out-of-control grapefruit flavours that it’s a bit overwhelming. California Sauvignon Blanc is a bit soft and fruity for my tastes, lacking backbone. The Loire version is crisp and tart, but not sour, and perfectly ripe so that the acid provides stingingly perfect structure and backbone to the white peach, green apple and stone fruit notes of the wine. Few wines are as consistently enchanting as a good Sancerre.
We followed that up with a bottle of Stag’s Leap Petite Verdot. While not inexpensive, split three ways this represents an affordable luxury. Stag’s Leap in Napa is famous for excellent Merlot, Cabernet and Chardonnay, but Petite Sirah is a little outside the pale. The name fools some folks: it’s not related to Syrah or Shiraz in any way, but has a character all its own. The most striking feature of this bottle was how much it evolved over time. Because it was still fairly young for a big blockbuster red, I had the server decant it for us. The first glasses were almost assaultive with red fruit, and in particular a note of ripe cranberry that drove a host of raspberry and sour cherry aromas into a finish with gentle hints of smoke and a grippingly stern tannin profile that lingered for many minutes. As it opened up it lost the cranberry, gained a deep note of red currant, currant leaf and mulberry, and the tannins transformed into a character like very well-made, fresh Orange Pekoe tea—gentle but mouth-filling and pervasive. I have to give the wine full marks: if given the opportunity (and, alas, the capacity) I could down this stuff like water.
We lingered for several hours, gossiping like fishwives and having deep discussions about important topics like which cheese you’d like to be stranded on a desert island with, and at what stage of life it’s appropriate to run away to the circus. After a while things got a little rainier, and when the heavy-weather sirens went off (sounding to this ignorant Canuck like an air raid warning) we thought we might have to go inside, but still tarried. The deciding factor was when the music suddenly shut off and the Emergency Broadcast System noted that there had been a tornado sighting that we decamped to the interior of the bar to finish the last precious drops from the decanter.
Alas, all play and no work makes Tim an unemployed bum, and I ran off to attend a dinner meeting with our Capo di tutti Capi, Rob, Export Manager Jeff, Sales Manager Gavin, and a bunch of our partners from the US, UK and New Zealand. A fine time was had by all, comparing tales of jet lag, UK football (‘Don’t say soccer!’) and the wine business.
Become great retailers, or I will crush you with my giant hands! Just Kidding.
The next day dawned early (especially for someone on West Coast time!) but there was a speaker in front of me, Bob Negen, who did a really great job, talking about retailing success and how to achieve it. More than a motivational speaker, Bob had some great pointers and strategies which I am shamelessly snitching for my own use.
Kwan, workin' the crowd
After that Winexpert’s Winemaker and Manager of QC/QA, Susan Kwan popped up to talk. I was really excited to have Kwan there—I’m the technical guy, but after a decade of giving talks to retailers I think I’d finally gotten some of them to the eyes-glazing stage with my patter. Kwan (and if you think it’s odd to keep referring to her by her last name, it’s a Chinese thing—I do it out of respect for her) wowed folks by answering questions in ways I normally don’t and explaining in fabulous detail concepts that aren’t that easy to parse for non-technicians.
When it was my turn I covered off some stuff about upcoming instruction changes. There are some procedural things coming up, like temperature recommendations and new ways to check degassing status, but I’ll cover those off in a blog before they happen. This was just my chance to talk to our US retail partners in person, and I'm sure they like to be the first ones to know for a change!
I also talked about changes to kits, and some upcoming projects like the new customer service troubleshooting database and our Winemaking Excellence 101 online course, and of course the upcoming video for Limited Edition 2010. I played my usual joke, offering to show the introduction of the varieties. Of course, when I played the video it had a big flourish of me talking about how cool and wonderful Limited Edition is, ‘and the five varieties are . . . ‘ and then the video cut to black. Ha, I’m such a meanie.
After that, Jeff Anderson, our US/Export Sales Manager talked business and upcoming programs, Brian Wright from LD talked about US programs and stuff and it was all over—an eight hour day that shot by in a flash. We trundled down the street to an exhibition centre and enjoyed a whack of Winexpert wine (there are ways to do this legally in the USA, where in Canada we can never, ever let anyone taste our finished wine. Sigh) and a lot of delicious appetisers and assorted nosh. A dang convivial time was had by all; especially after folks discovered we had loaded a couple of slushy machines wine Twisted Mist Strawberry Margarita and Mojito! Those things are dangerous on a hot day when you’re thirsty!
Photo Courtesy Ed Krug
Next day we did an open house at LD Carlson, with a meet ‘n’ greet for all the retailers touring the warehouse and quite a few picking up supplies. I always enjoy hanging out and talking socially to folks—Tony, Jerry, Mike, Jon, Roger, Forrest, Ed, the Carlson crew, all folks I only get to see once or twice a year, but look forward to seeing again every time.
And that was it, aside from fun with Air Canada. They delayed me out of Cleveland long enough that I missed my Vancouver flight, and on the makeup flight they sat me between a very large man and a woman with a fussy baby. When all looked about lost, I was moved to make a seat for the baby—moved to First Class! Woo-hoo, I take back 50% of all the bad things I’ve ever said about them.
And on into another busy week: more video editing (we’ve got nearly 30 minutes finalised for rendering on WME 1—for those who’ve made TV before, that’s a pretty spectacular output for hi-def greenscreen work) many meetings, and a bunch of niggling details like a couple of hundred emails and oh yes, my wife and family. Spot has so much free time on his hands he’s set up his own Facebook page—no doubt he’ll soon have more friends than me, but I’m starting to worry about his cellular data bill. How can an animal with no opposable thumbs send 900 text messages a week?
I’m finally finishing this extra-long blog off on yet another Air Canada flight (no upgrade on this one), this time to Toronto for strategic planning meetings with my Global Vintner’s Group counterparts. I’m looking forward to a couple of really interesting days of analysis and strategic goal-setting.
This sort of stuff used to fill me with despair and loathing when I was a dewy-eyed young Trotskyite, (the whole Red Diaper Baby thing takes a long time to wear off) but now I’m really fascinated by it. If you treat it like a really complex and intensive game, one with consequences to winning and losing, it can be a lot of fun. The parts I’ve come to enjoy most are those that deal with financial analysis—the math is a lot more subtle than it looks at first blush, and sometimes assumptions are completely counter-intuitive. I’m sure that if I stick to it for another couple of decades, I’m going to get pretty savvy with it.
The immediate good news on my horizon is that my recent injury to my thumb seems to be healing normally. I had a bit of a scare on the road when my arm got seriously jostled, but I came through fine, and physiotherapy is ramping up to the point where I can type at about 30 WPM. That’s probably why this blog entry came out so long, all the backed-up words stuck in my fingers had to flow out.
Flight’s already half over and I’ve got real work to do, not least of which is prep for a big day tomorrow, so I can keep up with my peers and hopefully contribute to the discussion. I’d better get crackin’!
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