Monday, October 25 2010

This is the Week(s) That Was (Were)

I've been to all those places, and the Black Hills are more deep browns and greys

Limited Edition in the Mile High City

Weeks without blogging, for shame. People ask me how I manage to do all the stuff I cram into my life and still blog. Usually with deadline-crashing terror. I have so many words in a row due to various people that whenever I do manage to get any writing done, I feel like I'm cheating on someone else. That's the (overdue, past deadline) story of my life.

One of the things a long-time traveller does after a while to compare the weather in the locations they visit, both against each region they find themselves in and to the weather at home. Mark Twain famously said, 'Everyone complains about the weather but nobody does anything about it'.

It's not so much climate and season, as one automatically compensates for those. I know that when I go to Winnipeg in November it's going to be much, much colder than what I'm used to. Pack warm and remember gloves a hat and lip balm (it's really dry there) and you'll be fine. Likewise Florida in summer is going to be hot and wet, like being trapped in a pressure cooker with a lot of senior citizens. No, it's usually more about he quotidian concerns about the amount of rain and sunshine. Since I live in the Pacific Northwest rainforest (albeit on a beach setting) I tend to get a lot of rain at home, so my comparisons are often brighter than not. My week in Denver was an amazing one for tallying up good vs. bad. Not that it was horrible at home, with some clear skies, but Denver for the week of October 18th was ridiculously warm and mild. I brought a jacket, of course—October is usually a sure bet for at least a snow flurry—but I never used it in anger. If we'd had a little more time in our busy schedule I probably would have wound up taking a nap on somebody's lawn, the air and sunshine were so inviting and mild.

Just like the good people of Denver! If you've never been, I highly recommend it. The Mile High City is filled with bright, active, good-looking folks who seem to carry an extra dose of good cheer around with them most of the time. To be sure the roads are a bit kooky with traffic, but that's true of any major metropolitan centre these days, and my only real complaint about my visit is that I never have enough time to just look around and check out the sights and fun stuff. I was lucky enough to get out to see my very good friend Glenn while I was there. We don't get together often enough, so it was great to see him again. We stopped in to a wonderful restaurant called Root Down and had a spectacular meal. For a converted gas station the food was spectacular, and the companionship even better.

Good to see you again buddy

Ah well, all play and no work makes Tim a bum, I guess. My travelling companion, David from LD Carlson is a good chap and a sturdy friend, but on the road he's a slave driver. While I usually struggle to be up and doing by the crack of 9 am—without appointments or deadline pressure—with David I'm usually pulling out of the parking lot by eight for a long busy day of store visits and meetings. I don't mind though—somebody's got to be the adult.

High Country

One of the places where we had a chance to stop in was High Country Home and Garden in Monument Colorado. It's one of those interesting two-part stores, a garden centre and a home beer and winemaking shop. The proprietor, Woody, is one-of-a-kind. The winemaking side of the premise is always looking great and has just about everything you might need ready at hand, and he's got an excellent staff, all of whom are enthusiastic about everything they do.

Woody, Tim, Gary and Scott. Matt (not shown) had some great questions too.

You can tell what kind of a person you're dealing with when you see his dedicated, long-time customers interact with him. In this case is was Gary and Scott and Matt who dropped by for a visit—being as they were really dedicated winemakers and Gary just happened to be the organiser of the local home winemaking club I have a suspicion that Woody tipped them off that I'd be around that morning—which is to say that they ribbed him mercilessly and were in turn ribbed right back. Professionalism and politeness are a great approach, but when your customers are ready to bust your chops and laugh when they get it back in turn, you know that there's a great personal philosophy for consumer relationships at work there.

Woody would laugh if I told him, but one thing I count as an incentive to visiting him is the presence of the non-human staff at the store. Samantha the black Lab is a genuine sweetheart, always happy for a pat and a scratch, and the shop cat rules the roost with benevolent disdain. I rarely get to interact with pets or companion animals when I'm on the road, so the chance for a little social interaction with friendly, well-behaved junior citizens is a real treat for an animal fancier like me. Just don't tell Spot that I've been cheating on him.

Another great shop we had a chance to visit was Beer at Home. They have two locations, and we managed to see Steve at the Englewood store and chat for a while. They have one of the friendliest stores around, and the reserve of brewing knowledge there is really impressive. Things are different in Canada: while there are a few retail-only stores that specialise in all-grain brewing, they're spread pretty thin. As an old-school grain-brewing beer geek it does my heart good to hang out with people so heavily immersed in brewing. Not that they don't do a good job with our wine kits, mind you! Good seeing you again, Steve—Bubbles says 'Hi'.

We dropped in on the Water 2 Wine folks as well. They have two locations in Denver and are an interesting mixture of the Canadian model (wine made on premise for take-away) and actual, real-life winery, able to sell wine by the bottle, hold tasting events, run a tasting room and lots of other things that would make a Canadian WOP operator green with envy—that kind of stuff would get them tossed straight into jail! Both locations are gorgeous, well-appointed and comfy, just like the finest tasting rooms in Napa or Sonoma. They do a great job with the wines as well, making me wish I had one in my neighbourhood so I could use a few bottles for sampling—giving away my own wine is something that's never going to be legal in Canada, more's the pity.

We did two Limited Edition wine tasting events while we were there, and both were not only successful, they were an awful lot of fun. I used to obsess with details and worry constantly about my lecture, the venue, equipment issues (projectors and computers and microphones, oh my) but ten years in I'm much more interested in the people I'm talking to, and in getting a chance to share winemaking techniques and hear their stories about making wine.

Steve and Tim: too much handsome for one room, no?

Our first event was for The Brew Hut. I've done events for them before and I was really gratified to see folks back from my very first visit. Some have gotten so enthusiastic in the intervening years that not only are they averaging a new batch of wine every week, they're on the verge of going pro! Steve did a fabulous job of setting up the tasting with his staff, and the food pairings were excellent, particularly the beef jerky with the Australian Shiraz-Viognier.

Never considered that? What do you drink with your beef jerky, Champagne?

I only wish I'd had more time to hang out in their store, which has Dry Dock Brewing attached to it. It's Kevin's (the owner of Brew Hut) expansion of his previous brewery/tasting bar. I could smell the beer, see the beer and really coveted the beer, but I was working, so alas, no pints for Tim. Maybe next time.

Tasting at Stomp

We had another event for Stomp Them Grapes. They have two locations in Denver, including a shiny new shop with thousands of square feet of space set up in a former warehouse on Lipan street. All small business layouts do the best they can within their square footage, but when you've got five or six thousand square feet to work with you can really open up and display lots of great stuff, and I love the feeling of openness and airiness.

When you pull out the camera, there's always one deer in the headlghts. Sorry, Miss!

The event was a lot of fun, with plenty of questions from the audience and even a couple of friends of mine from Denver in attendance, and some really good catered nibbles. For me the two shining successes of the evening were the mushroom pizza with the Primitivo, with the earthy mushrooms working great against the fruitiness, and the tomato sauce meeting and making friends with the firm acidity, and the salt and vinegar potato chips with the Gruner Veltliner. Normally we pair it with the other white wine, the Pacifica White, but for some reason it seemed to work even better that night. Fortunately they've taken all the trans-fats out of potato chips these days, so they're practically health food, so I could assuage any feelings of guilt.

I think he's in the throes of potato-chip overdose. Thanks for inviting me Brian!

Speaking of guilt again, as I said, it's been nearly three weeks since I managed to update this blog, and I've got a few entries piled up. If you want to have a look at the pictures of my graveyard (the one I put up for Halloween, not a real graveyard. Who needs a real graveyard?) I'm putting them up over at The Unreserved, and I'll update on some BC LE events this week.

Now I have to fly, as there's a pumpkin with my name on it, and I feel a big bowl of candy coming on!

Posted by King of the Wine Road AT 4:08PM

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