I've chosen a winner for the great Scrap Wood Give-Away of 2010! Here at Timsblog World Headquarters we enlisted the help of a basket and a mostly disinterested cat to choose from the entries, and came up with a deserving individual. Thanks for everyone who entered--it's nice to know that Hobbes had so many admirers.

The winning submission came from Kenton Foster, and I have to tell you he had a real edge with his submission. He wrote:

Since Hobbes is from Missouri it seems appropriate that he return to Missouri.

My plan is to smoke pork shoulder for pulled pork using Hobbes as the smoking material.

I promise to send a picture of my smoking the meat and the meal.

The ashes will be collected and scattered in the vineyard of Keltoi Winery (which is owned by a friend of mine); this way Hobbes can continue to fulfill his destiny of giving himself in the service of winemaking.

First, sending Hobbes home to Missouri (where the tree he was made from grew) appeals to my sense of the proper order of the universe. It seems a likely and pleasing concatenation of events that he should travel, see the world, put in a good, useful life, and go back to the place of his birth to take his final rest.

Second, Pulled Pork.

If you've never had really good Pulled Pork (so called because when it's finished cooking the meat is shredded by 'pulling' it into bits with a fork--that's tender) you're missing something in your life. If you don't eat pork, I don't know what to say. There's no substitute in this world--not pulled tofu, pulled chicken or pulled eel--it's just a perfect flavour and food.

Finally, returning the ashes to a vineyard, where Hobbes can become part of the carbon cycle again, fits well with the criteria of my value system--maybe someday I'll see a few molecules of him again in a glass of wine.

Look for Hobbes in the mail, Kenton. I hope you enjoy him as much as I did.

So long pal. Safe journey, wherever the world takes you next.

--Robert Service, The Cremation of Sam McGee

It's wonderful to quote a little bit of that poem. It was my Grandmother's favorite, and if properly wheedled she would quote it from memory to us pesky little grandchildren. She's passed, lo these years gone by, but the poem remains a favorite connection to her. If you have never read it, stop wasting time on my blog, click the link above and read it, out loud, wherever you are. If you want to annoy your Granny, try chanting it to the tune of 'Gilligan's Island'. If you have read it then you'll know that the climax of the poem is when poor, chilly Sam McGee meets his final reward inside a funeral pyre.

So what's the connection? Faithful readers will recall that I finally retired good old Hobbes, one of the first wine barrels I ever owned. Barrels don't last forever, and Hobbes and I had each held a lot of wine, him first and then me. A friend like that you can't let go quietly into the night. I felt it only honourable to send him off with a proper Viking funeral, rather than the ignominy of becoming a planter or a display piece in a retail store. I would cremate him.

First things first: I needed to get him into shape to burn properly. I emptied out the last batch of wine he contained, cleaned him with some soda ash and hot water and then stored him bung-down in a cool, low humidity environment, to get him partially dried for handling.

The first step was to get all of the hoops off of the outside of the barrel. They're held on with a little nail/clip device that keeps them from sliding down. In the picture above, if you look on the left side of the hoops you'll see them in place. A quick twist with a pair of pliers and out they come. Next step is to loosen the first set of hoops. Even with the clips removed they're still wedged in tight.

After all the hoops come off the barrel it's ready to come apart.

A quick tap with the handle of the screwdriver and

I had thought that after ten solid years of being full of wine that the staves would be completely saturated, but that was far from the case.

The inside of the barrel smelled absolutely terrific: winey, oaky, and toasty with plenty of vanilla. One thing about Hobbes had always worried me. I got him at a slight discount because one of the staves had a visible crack half-way across it. It had obviously happened while the stave was being heated and bent into shape, but I'd initially worried that it might leak. That turned out to be a baseless concern:

Even though the crack goes half-way through, the stave held wine and never leaked. Good old Hobbes.I took the opportunity to have a look at the heads (ends of the barrel) as well. Although the wood there is much thinner, it had held up as well, with a small accumulation of tartrate crystals.

These crystals are actually precipitated potassium bitrartrate, formed when tartaric acid from the grape juice combines with a nitrogen source (minerals from the soil the grapes were grown in, or from nutrients added to the fermentation for yeast health) and grow into what look like little sugar crystals. The industry calls them 'wine diamonds' but most people know them by their common baking name, 'Cream of Tartar'. Cool eh?

My next step was to gather up all the bits and stack them to finish drying.

I got busy and didn't get to my burning ambition until the middle of August. But it was worth the wait. I grabbed some gear and headed down to a secluded spot on East Beach. Technically it would be illegal to hold an open campfire there because it's more than 500 feet from a fire hydrant, but I'm pretty sure that it's not possible to burn down a shingle beach with no trees and no brush for hundreds of yards in every direction and an ocean ten steps away. Step one was to stack up the staves and light 'em up.

It took only about 20 minutes to get a really intense fire going the heat was tremendous inside the little cairn of rocks. My remote infrared thermometer read 775 degrees!

After it died down I put a variety of things in the griller: marinated pork tenderloin, a dry-rubbed chicken breast, a big juicy steak and a bunch of onions, zucchini, peppers and whatnot.

The heat was a little tricky, so I wound up getting some extremely well-browned chunks of vegetables, but the meat was delightful: smoky, a little sweetened from the wood and beautifully charbroiled.

A fine dinner was had by all, except that it being a public place we couldn't have any wine with the meal. BC has some funny laws about drinking in public. Basically they say, 'don't', and they're not really kidding, so it was icewater until we got home. But for all that, it was a delicious interlude and a novel way to take my old faithful companion to a new place where he could serve me once again.

And therein lies some fun: I only used half of the staves from Hobbes carcass. If anyone wants the rest of them, minus one of the heads (I'm mounting it in my wine room) send an email telling me what you'll cook up with it (and promise to send a picture of your meal) to tim(at)winexpert(dot)com and I'll choose the best request and ship it to your door. You too could have a super hardwood wine oaked beach grill.

Fun and exciting news! I'll be guest-blogging over at NOJuju tomorrow. NOJuju is a food/culture/lifestyle blog, principally about New Orleans. It's written by my dear friend Julie, who lives there in the heart of things. She's a great source of NO culture and important information, like where to get a good SnoBall and who has a good Po' Boy. She's taking a break to give her typing-gronked hands and wrists a rest so I seized on the opportunity to rampage around someone else's playground for a while, talking my usual nonsense on her dime. You should read her blog all the time, just for the cooking adventures. Julie is the one who introduced me to Puy Lentils, for which I owe her big time, and her food is always drool-worthy.

I'd love to write something insightful and pithy about The Crescent City's culture ('The Crescent City' is a poetic name for NO. Calling it 'The Big Easy' marks you as a gringo as surely as calling San Francisco 'Frisco') but I've only ever been there once, not enough to take the whole majestic, frantic party in. It was at the annual HWBTA conference (Hobby Wines and Beer Trade Association, now defunct) and while the visit was way too short (only one week) we were there we ate like kings the whole time: Brennan's, Commander's Palace, Emeril's NOLA and half a dozen other places. If I was going to draw any conclusions from my short stay there it would be that a) I have no idea how people eat and drink like that and don't blow up to zeppelin size, and b) vegetables seemed to be in very short supply, overtaken by dense, rich foods like gumbo, jambalaya and any amount of seafood you could hold.

But the fancy-pants joints really didn't hold my imagination as much as little hole-in-the-walls, places where regular folk went to eat simple food, well prepared. We were staying at a hotel just off Canal Street, and around the corner was Mother's. We ate there three times, and every time I wanted to order every item on the menu. The ambiance was pure lunch counter, but the food was pure heaven. You haven't lived until you've had a Po' Boy with Debris, which isn't anything what you might imagine, but goes great with iced tea. 

Another thing I remember about N'walins was the music. I'm a huge fan of Jazz, and although I'm not big on Dixieland, there is every type and genre of music on offer there that the hand of man has ever devised. Of course, being tourist-hicks we went out to Go! See! Music! at 10 pm. After hours of wandering around the French Quarter, we found only dead-silent bars and barred doors on the clubs. Mightily discouraged, we finally gave up and headed back to the hotel at nearly 1 am. As we walked down the street music suddenly started to fill the air. We hadn't read the memo that the party doesn't start until the weak and impressionable are in bed, and then it lasts until noon the next day. We heard some fabulous music than week: The Tin Men, Mike West, and Galactic, who lead us to Stanton Moore, and a half dozen other excellent bands pumping out Bop, Cool Jazz, ragtime, Zydeco, Cajun and everything under the sun. It was a wonderful time, filled with great food, great sounds and too many of those tourist-poisoning propane-and-kool-ade drinks called 'Hurricanes'.

Between Katrina, the shameful response to Katrina, the Gulf Oil disaster and many other bits of random bad luck, New Orleans has taken more than its share of knocks. But the people there have a wonderful sense of . . . I dunno if there's a word in English. Optimistic Fatalism? Cheerful Acquiescence? Whatever, they soldier on, having a good time, and always welcoming visitors with good food, good music and plenty of charm. I can't wait to get back there some day. Let the good times roll!

The garden his been a bit challenging this year: our garlic and tomatoes both got blight, we only got one head of cabbage (but it's the size of a beach-ball), beavers got one of our grapevines and the strawberries and corn have come to naught. But on the other hand we did really well on broccoli, zucchini, squash, lettuces and of course, on our beloved basil. We do quite a bit of Italian cooking at home, and there's nothing to make you feel wealthy like having all the basil in the world to put in salads, sauces and especially pesto. Every year I plant at least a half-dozen basil plants, usually focusing on good old sweet basil, although sometimes I do plant the exotics like lemon basil (amazing on fish) or Cinnamon basil (fantastic in iced lemonade).

It's getting on in the season, and I had been deadheading the plants (removing flowering tops) for weeks when I noticed the leaves were just starting to get a little bit tougher. Time to harvest for pesto! The pile above represents all that was left in our garden. If you had to buy it at a grocery store, a) it probably wouldn't be as fresh as this, and b) it would cost a day's pay.

For those who have never made their own pesto, it's a traditional sauce originating in Liguria in northern Italy. Basil leaves are crushed with a mortar and pestle (pesto = pestle, those clever Latins) with garlic and salt, and then pine nuts, cheese and olive oil to make a smooth, yummy sauce, great on pasta, vegetables, potatoes and steaks (no, really: you have to try it on a piece of red meat. It's like heaven).

Mortar and pestle work sounds too much like, well work to me, so I use a very different method. Also, with traditional pesto the chlorophyll in the leaves turns black from oxidation in only a short time, losing the gorgeous green of the plant, and unless you spend forever with your grinding, it's rarely a lovely and smooth sauce. So I make a pesto emulsion.

Emulsions are combinations of two immiscible liquids, and in cooking generally refer to mixtures of oil and water with some kind of emulsifying agent to keep them dispersed within one and another. Mayonnaise and hollandaise sauce are both emulsions, with both of them being oil and lemon juice stirred together and emulsified by the action of the lecithin in the egg yolks.

My pesto is an emulsion of olive oil and water, but the emulsifier is far different than lecithin: I take advantage of Pickering dispersal, where tiny particles in the mixture prevent it from separating out. Homogenised milk uses the principle of Pickering emulsions by forcing the milk through very small holes under pressure, tearing the fat into extremely small bits. In this case the particles are formed from the basil itself.

Confused? Hah, it's not rocket surgery, but it is SCIENCE! Remember, COOKING is SCIENCE for HUNGRY PEOPLE!

Step One: Clean and pluck the basil.

It's tough to judge from the picture, but that is a huge stainless steel bowl. There's probably ten litres of loosely packed leaves there, all freed of dirt and any tough or woody stalks. You don't have to remove every little stalk, because they're going to get whizzed up soon enough: few things can survive my high-powered, factory prototype, heavily modified kitchen gear.

Next, put on a pot of boiling water, assemble the equipment and known associates of Mr. Pesto.

Blender, grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, olive oil and almonds. I know that the traditional recipe calls for pine nuts, but I finally decided I just don't like the way they taste. They always seem slightly greasy and a bit rancid to me, even when they're perfectly fresh. Commercial pesto sometimes substitutes cashews (cheaper than pine nuts and similar texture) but I like almonds. They bring a little sweetness to the table and they're a very healthy nut, like me.

Of course, every pesto needs garlic.

Another issue I have with traditional pesto is the garlic bite it can develop. The worse you treat garlic, by crushing or grinding it very fine, the more pungent and assaultive it gets. Don't get me wrong, I like a good whiff of allium sativum as much as the next man, but the next man isn't a man, it's my wife, who does not care to smooch Mr. Always-Has-Garlic-Breath. My solution is to use a very small amount of raw garlic, and to cook the rest whole before using it.

I peel the cloves and put 3/4 of them in a small saucepan with olive oil, on medium-low heat until they soften and brown just a tiny little bit, maybe six to eight minutes. Once it's fully cooked it won't get bitter or harsh, no matter how you handle it afterwards. When they're ready, they look like this:

When the garlic is soft, gorgeous and sweet and mellow it's time to blanch the basil. This all happens really fast. First step is to dump all the cleaned, sorted leaves into the boiling water for ten to thirty seconds. Punctuality matters!

After they are just wilted, they need to be strained and immediately tossed into a sink of iced water to cool down and stop the cooking process. Once they're properly cooled they can be strained out and left to drip for a minute. Why blanch 'em? Blanching does a couple of very important things. First, it sets the chlorophyll so that it won't oxidise and go black after processing. The green colour stays beautiful for a very long time.

Second, it makes the leaves very tender and sloppy, so that when they go through the blender they are very easy to puree into a very fine, smooth liquid, generating the teensy particles we need to keep our water and oil emulsified.

Finally, all ready to go. Because the blender is only so big the pesto has to be done in a series of small batches. I don't use any kind of coherent measurement. It's a kind of by-feel sort of thing. The first step is to liquefy the basil in the blender with a small amount of water.

Once that's fairly smooth it's time to add part of the olive oil, the cheese, nuts, garlic, grey salt and a lot of black pepper, freshly ground. Don't forget, there's raw garlic as well as the cooked.

I add more water and the rest of the oil as necessary. You don't want it to get too runny, but if it's too thick the bottom will whizz away while the top doesn't get fully blended--that's why you don't fill the blender more than half-way.

Once it's smooth and fluffy I adjust the seasonings and portion it off into containers for the freezer. It will keep for six months, but no matter how much I make I've never had any last that long.

Of course not all of the pesto gets frozen right away. What with fresh salmon being in season, there's no time like the present for our favorite summer meal, tomato and onion salad with grilled salmon and three-cheese tortellini with fresh pesto. Throw in a delicious glass of rosé and you've got a meal fit for anyone.

Next up, I've got pickles to process. I understand there's no rest for the wicked, but I had no idea that I'd been this bad.

From the Blindingly Obvious Department at Reims University in France comes the news, published int the Jouranl of Agrucultural and Food Chemistry, that French Scientists Discover the Best Way to Pour Champagne.

According to the article,

The study showed that the best way to maintain the bubbles inside the glass is to tilt the bottle and let the champagne flow of the sides.

It took a team of scientists in Champagne to discover what any beer drinker could tell them instantly?

Of course if you don't tilt the glass, the beer foams like crazy, and you lose half the fizz. I pour my sparkling wine and other carbonated beverages gently, into tilted glasses, to conserve carbonation. But when I think of it, every depiction of Champagne service I've ever seen has gone for the straight-up-glass.

Half the fun of good sparkling wine is tickling your nose on the bubbles (the other half is how quickly it goes to your head). If you've always poured up and down, now there's even science to back up the practice of tilting your glass, and I'll drink to that.

It's been a couple of fun weeks here at Chaos Manor: vacation, Vegas, cooking, gardening, birthdays, road trips, and some very merry afternoons on the patio. We had a little bit of inclement weather in August, but fortunately we chose to go to Nevada for precisely that period, so walked into 42 degree C (about 8 million F) sunshine in Vegas. Fortunately it was a dry heat, which means I had to drink four times as much to keep hydrated . . . I love that kind of weather!

We managed to keep our cool, but the gardens went out of control. We got a lot of great veggies this year.

We're almost at the point where we're breaking into houses to leave bags of zucchini, and it's only been by dint of eating stir-fry twice a week that we've kept ahead of the broccoli.

There was trouble in paradise, however. We went to water the garden one morning and to my dismay the entire Concord vine was dead. Every leaf and branch sagged, limp and lifeless. I have to admit I engaged in a fundamental attribution error, thinking someone had spiked the vine with a defoliant--it's an open public space and there have been incidents in the past with Children of Modern Society ruining plants and stealing produce.

But when I looked closer I saw that the trunk had been severed 30 centimetres (a foot) above the ground, at a point where it just poked through the fence. It wasn't clipped or sawn, and there were absolutely no wood chips. The severed end displayed a series of long parallel scrapes at an odd angle. Looking at the square holes in the fence it became obvious that the angle was from corner-to-corner of one of the squares. With a bone-chilling wave of terror, I knew I was facing man's deadliest enemy.

Our garden is next to an estuary and bird sanctuary, and beavers have set up a dam and seem to be thriving there. If it were the old days I'd have a fine top hat and some stew by now, but in today's Canada you can't even use harsh language on varmints, and they recently made beaver repellent a controlled substance. Looks like we'll have to wait another five years for a crop of Concords.

But that incident didn't keep me from pursuing other fun stuff. August 1st marks BC's provincial holiday, where we celebrate not being Ontario. White Rock does a fine job and this year the fireworks were spectacular and all the events were great bunches of fun, but the one thing we love the most is the Festival of the Sea Torchlight Parade. While technically there were no torches (smelly and kind of dangerous, really) it's held after sunset and local community groups come out and strut their stuff.The fun part is that the parade is right under my balcony! It's a wee bit like Mardi Gras, although people would probably be willing to throw me trinkets to keep my shirt on.

This year we had Charles and Marie over for dinner and as is our custom we cheered the various floats and kids marching, roundly booed the local politician slinking along in his corruptionmobile, and had a rollicking good time.

My favorite part has always been confusing the poor Shriners. I'm not a member of a lodge, but I wear a Fez around the house, you see (need it for pipe smoking and harrumphing purposes) and when they roll by in their little cars I wave and they always wave back, vastly confused. I make up for this by always buying one of their raffle tickets at the mall every year, but it's good clean fun.

We also had time for a high-speed road-trip to Kelowna, to have lunch with my sister and her husband, and to pick up some wine from Calona winery. They carry the Sandhill Small Lots bottlings up there and I snagged a half-case each of One, Two, Three, the Petit Verdot and a case of their Rosé. The pink wine is ready to drink now, although being a blend of Gamay Noir and Cabernet Franc it's got a lot of backbone. I had a  bottle of the Petit Verdot with a steak a few days ago, and even after an hour of decanting it was still really stiff. I think in two to four years it'll soften up and be a lot more generous. The other three, I'm not even going to look at until 2015.

Is there more? Sure, I didn't even cover Las Vegas, adventures in pickling or grilling Hobbes. But I'm all out of frivolity time--there are 138 emails in my inbox, a stack of mail and correspondence a foot high, and a lot of meetings I need to prep for. Golly, it's like it all waited for me. Fortunately, waiting at home are some of those peaches I bought up in the Okanagan on our road trip. My favorite hot-days treat is to peel one, slice it into a glass and top it off with Spatlese Riesling.

Ah, it's great to be back, and my barrels and sur lie project missed me, so I've got that going for me, which is nice. Tally-ho.

August 12th, 1878 marked the birth of the man who invented the future: Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger. While he’s not quite a household name, in his position as the father of quantum physics he contributed to the original ideas that shape the way we approach the 21st century. He was also credited by Watson and Crick as the man who pointed the way to DNA and the storage of genetic information in molecules.

He was a very complicated guy, and extremely unconventional for his time. While of Austrian birth, he firmly rejected Nazism (despite having to dodge around it a few times), and to put it plainly, chased anything in a skirt, living with two women at the same time and fathering a passel of little quantum kiddies. Talk about your Verschränkung!

But what Erwin is best remembered for is his cat, who not only had seven lives, but could be both alive and dead, at the same time. It goes like this: there was a paper out by Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen that described quantum superposition, and another very strange cat named Bohr wrote an interpretation of it. Without getting too sciencey, it said that the math shows that if subatomic particles have a number of different ways they can be organised they will exist in all of those positions, at the same time. Bohr’s Copenhagen interpretation implies that it’s only at the exact moment of being measured that the particle ‘collapses’ into a single state.

This irritated Erwin, so he did a reductio ad absurdum gedankenexperiment. Okay, sorry, enough train-wreck words: he pushed the idea as far as it would go to show how silly it was. He proposed locking a cat in a perfectly sealed box with a lethal device governed by a quantum process, like the decay of a particle. When the particle goes, the device goes off and the poor theoretical cat crosses the rainbow bridge.

Here’s the weirdness: the math says that over the course of an hour there is a 50/50 chance that the particle will have decayed, snuffing poor kitty. The Copenhagen interpretation says that inside the box the cat is both alive and dead, at the same time. It’s not until we open the box and look in that the collapse is chosen and the cat at that specific moment will have always been dead or alive. Up until that point the cat existed as a blur of quantum possibilities, like a blurred photograph.

If that doesn’t freak you out, nothing will. Well, maybe the other offshoot, quantum entanglement, but that’s a story for another day.

In any case, happy birthday Erwin, and thanks for making the future far less certain than ever thought possible.

Of all the things I put on my blogs, from snide commentary to lectures on history, two things get the most commentary: my horrible little cat, and food. Last year I wrote about a food and wine tasting I lead for Winesense, and mentioned green salt. Since then I've had at least two dozen requests for the recipe, so I thought I'd reproduce it here, and throw in some pictures of the process.

In a food processor, process until smooth

* ¼ cup sel gris

Sel gris is a type of sea salt. It's very coarse, usually a greyish colour, and it's damp and squishy. I buy a brand from Brittany (France) and use it for lots of things.

* 3 bay leaves

* 2 teaspoons fresh flat-leaf parsley

* 1 teaspoon fresh thyme

* 1 teaspoon fresh oregano

This time I added rosemary and sage and had to substitute dried thyme, as I didn't have time to run to my other garden to harvest any fresh.

Use green salt gently, as it's quite salty, but the flavour is exquisite. It gives a hint of garrigue, a really nice herbaceous character.

What should you use it on? Anything you like to eat. I mix it with olive oil, pepper and garlic and rub it on vegetables and meats or seafood for the grill.

I was going to do some grilling today, with oak reclaimed from an old wine barrel, but it's raining too hard on the beach. Looks like it's green salt on pan-fried chops tonight instead--not a bad thing at all.

Ah, vacation: nothing like it to soothe the ravel'd sleeve of nature's cares. And that's where I've been lo this last while. I was pressed to use up some leftover time and traditionally take off the week of my wife's birthday, so I'm out of the office until the 16th-ish. So why am I blogging when I'm not at work? Two reasons: first, my wife can't see me so she can't smack me for working when I could be fixing that closet or weeding that garden, and second, I was a little behind (as usual) on blogging when I left for my holiday.

Things are going well. Because her birthday is over the BC Day weekend, there's always lots of fun things to do at home. We had a big dinner with her brother and his wife (lobsters and champagne!) then there was the Festival of the Sea and the torchlight parade and hot tubbing on the patio, one night there was an outdoor movie on East Beach (Elvis' Blue Hawaii) and last night there was a spectacular fireworks display at the Big White Rock.

Tomorrow I'm taking her to Las Vegas, where fun will be had--almost too much fun, I'm worried: between helicopter rides in the Grand Canyon, a Cirque du Soleil show, a spa-day and shooting machine guns on the strip I'm concerned we might come back overloaded and saturated with bright lights and big cheese. Ah well, it's an easy job and nobody has to do it.

I'm also planning my grilling session for our return. A few posts ago I detailed the tribulations of my oldest barrel, Hobbes. I talked about dismembering him and using his bones to cook my dinner. Here he is:

And stacked neatly for air-drying

I'm incorporating the cremation of Hobbes in a couple of places: the food I'll put into my Unreserved blog, the mechanics of barrel dismemberment will go to Winemaker, and part of it to the second part of an article I'm writing for their magazine.

Like I said, I'm on vacation. Har!

As is my wont, I was perusing the New York Times today. While I still read my local newspapers, more from a sense of sentimental fondness from my days in the paper business, I like the NYT as a window onto a place I've only been to once, yet which feels strangely real to me, in the sense that there are a lot of people there imagining it into existence all the time.

What has that got to do with the gelatine-based treat glowing like a radioactive rainbow above? Cooking With Dexter, a column by Pete Wells that appears in their Sunday magazine. Mr. Wells chronicles the adventures of teaching cooking to, and eating with, his son. It's charming overall, and occasionally there's a gem of an idea there--like wine-flavoured gelatine desserts.

It's been hot at Chaos Manor for the last few weeks, and it looks to get hotter this weekend. I've got a lot of gardening and projects to attend to, and at least one barbecue, and I've been thinking about a fun, prepare-ahead dessert for the heat. In Well's column he talks about making wobbly desserts with Dexter (two inevitable notes: the word Jell-O is trademarked by Kraft Foods, who are notorious for not sharing with others, and it's spelled gelatine, no matter what neologists say) but throws a bone to the childless in the crowd by giving a recipe for Spiced Rosé Gelatine with Peaches--a natural for my desserty desires. Here's the recipe:

• 2 cups rosé wine
• 1/4 cup sugar, to taste
• 1 1-to-2-inch length of cinnamon stick
• Zest of 1 orange, with as little pith as you can manage
• 5 peppercorns
• 2 envelopes gelatin
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 3 white or yellow peaches, each sliced into 16 wedges.

1. In a nonreactive saucepan, add 1½ cups of the wine, along with the sugar, cinnamon, orange zest and peppercorns. Bring to a boil, then immediately turn off the heat and cover the pan.

2. After 20 minutes, pour the remaining wine into a medium mixing bowl and sprinkle the gelatin over it. Let sit for 3 minutes. Strain the spiced wine into the bowl and stir well for 2 or 3 minutes, until the gelatin is entirely dissolved. Place the bowl inside a larger bowl containing ice water, or put in the refrigerator.

3. When the gelatin is as thick as the white of an egg, 30 to 45 minutes later, put the lemon juice in a wide-bottomed bowl and add the sliced peaches, stirring as you go to coat the peaches with the juice. With a slotted spoon, transfer the peaches to the bowl of gelatin and fold them in gently. Divide the gelatin and peaches into 4 wineglasses, cover each with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 3 or more hours. Serves 4.

I'm a little iffy on the peppercorns and cinnamon. I think I'll stick to a really flavourful wine to drive the character, like my Jumbleberry fruit wine, made from blueberries, blackberries, red and black currants, rhubarb and strawberries, and instead of peaches (not in season here yet) I might try some Raspberries from my garden, but it sounds like a perfect way to incorporate wine into a light and cooling summer dessert. 

From the 'How About That?' files comes news from Stockholm that divers have found the world's oldest bottles of Champagne. According to the Associated Press story,

Divers have discovered what is thought to be the world's oldest drinkable champagne in a shipwreck in the Baltic Sea, one of the finders said Saturday. They tasted the one bottle they've brought up so far before they even got back to shore.

Diving instructor Christian Ekstrom said the bottles are believed to be from the 1780s and likely were part of a cargo destined for Russia. The nationality of the sunken ship has not yet been determined.

"We brought up the bottle to be able to establish how old the wreck was," he told The Associated Press. "We didn't know it would be champagne. We thought it was wine or something."

Ekstrom said the divers were overjoyed when they popped the cork on their boat after hauling the bubbly from a depth of 200 feet (60 meters).

"It tasted fantastic. It was a very sweet champagne, with a tobacco taste and oak," Ekstrom said.

The divers discovered the shipwreck Tuesday near the Aland Islands, between Sweden and Finland. About 30 bottles are believed to be aboard the sunken vessel.

There's no telling who made the wine (they don't even know the identity of the ship, yet) but there are a couple of things that make for a compelling story, the destination and the sweetness. The Russian Imperial court was cuckoo for sparkling wine, and they liked it sweet--really, really sweet, to the point where it would be designated 'vin doux' by the French champagne houses. They drank it chilled to the point of slushiness and served it almost like a sorbet.

The most successful exporter to the Russian court was the house of Clicquot, later named Veuve Clicquot, after the widow of the founder. On her watch the process of remuage was instituted, which allowed Champagne to be carbonated without a sediment of yeast in the bottle. This made her wares very popular with the court.

Catherine the Great of Russia was fond of the bubbles, and when not increasing the power of Russia as a major European player or fostering artists and philosophers, she and her court enjoyed a glass or two. Was this booze destined for her? Hard to say, but it's kind of nice to think we have a link back more than two centuries to her time.

By the way, if you want a bottle, it's expected they'll sell for €50,000--each--at auction. I think I'll make a batch of my sparkling wine and toss it in the drink for a couple of centuries. Now that would be a retirement fund!

There's nothing as much fun as a bicycle ride, and some of my favorite rides have involved impromptu picnics with wine, cheese and bread in the middle--no sense in overdoing the whole physical exercise thing without the prospect of a reward!

I don't follow the Tour de France, except when I can't avoid it in the media, but something funny caught my eye today. According to the New York Times, The International Cycling Union is taking a very strict line on cheating on the tour this year. Cycling is considered by drug-testing cognoscenti as one of the dirtiest sports for drug use (right up there with my chosen sport, Powerlifting) but this time it's a little different. This time they're checking bikes

. . . the International Cycling Union on Saturday wanted to make sure that Cancellara’s speedy, 10-minute victory on the 5.5-mile course was not too good to be true. Suspicions of motorized cheating arose this season, fueled by Cancellara’s dominant victories at Paris-Roubaix and the Tour of Flanders.

 So, soon after Cancellara crossed the finish line Saturday, officials grabbed his bike, took it to a nearby tent and X-rayed it, checking to see if there was a tiny motor inside. His was one of 14 bikes X-rayed Saturday. All passed the inspection.

Seriously check out the thighs on any rider in the top ten: they could pedal a bulldozer up a hill, they don't need motors! But that's not really what made me laugh.

This is not the first time the Tour, in its 97th edition, has endured controversies. In the past, those controversies were part of the spectacle.

Some riders have been accused of guzzling alcohol along the way — including carrying wine bottles on their bikes — to dull the physical pain of the race.

Ha ha ha, they have to be kidding! If I drank a bottle of wine while simultaneously burning every energy resource in my body to try to wine a gruelling race, I'd ride right off the first cliff I came to. Cheating in sport is a serious matter, but when it comes to this controversy I take the same tack as I did with the Ross Rebagliati incident or Dock Ellis' no-hitter: if someone can win with a headful of mind-altering substances that are shown not to be performance-enhancing, then don't take their medal away, give them an extra one for doing something spectacularly hard while showing really bad judgement.

Now where can I get a bottle rack that will hold a magnum of Champagne?

You can check out all of the video interviews, including those with such luminaries as Tom Wark of Fermentation and Steve Heimoff, the keynote speaker at the WBC Youtube Channel, but here for posterity is my piece:

Hobbes has finally reached the end of his natural lifespan, and I'm going to give him a send-off I think would please him no end: I'm going to pull him to pieces, build a fire to his bones, and grill on his glowing coals.

Lest you think me a candidate for the dangerous ward, Hobbes is one of my four wine barrels. While I avoid anthropomorphising inanimate objects (they don't like it) I have a penchant for naming things. Thus my barrels are Calvin, Susie, Hobbes and Moe. Calvin and Hobbes are from Gibbs Cooperage, Moe came from Yugoslavia (he's the biggest one, and kind of mean) and Susie is a recent arrival from my friend Anna at Barrel Imports. I've got Susie running barrel-fermented batches of Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Gris right now, all for Sur Lie and some ageing time.

I was racking the other three to get them ready for some Okanagan Meritage and Sonoma Pinot Noir, but the wine I took from Hobbes had an unfortunate dull odour: he's gone on me. Not surprising, considering that Hobbes is a decade old, a very advanced age for a barrel. It's usually in less than three years that a barrel loses its oaky character, but neutral barrels still improve the quality of the wine stored in them, and while you can add all the oak you want from chips, cubes and powders, structural elevage, a magical change in intensity and smoothness, can only come from time in a barrel.

Hobbes started out like all my barrels, with batches of white wine, both barrel fermented and post-fermentation and graduated to reds. His last batch was Zinfandel/Shiraz, now sadly consigned to the sewer. I can't blame him, however: I neglected poor Hobbes for several years, in a back corner of a cooler and between excessive time and failure to top up regularly the wine spoiled. Completely my fault and yet another of winemaking's endless lessons.

But waste not, want not: fine, dense-grained oak is perfect for grilling, and oak that's soaked in wine for years is even better. The little bit of stinkiness will come out, as I've cleaned him well and I'll be air-drying him for a month or so. Come August 1st he'll be well seasoned and ready to grill. I'm thinking of a mixed grill of sardines, vegetables, maybe some lamb. If you've never had wood-grilled sardines . . . oh my, it's one of life's great pleasures.

If you're on East Beach in White Rock August 1st and you smell the nicest grilling-smells ever, drop by and I'll let you have a bite. Hobbes always liked a party.

WBC 10 was a real eye-opener for me, both in terms of how big the wine blogging world is (estimates ranged up to a thousand wine bloggers currently posting) to where the divide between 'traditional' wine writers and bloggers lies (solely in the minds of each) and what is my worst sin as a blogger (writing too long and not often enough).

Other seminars included

• Effective Wine Writing, hosted by Meg Houston Maker, Andy Perdue and Hardy Wallace, with wildly varying views
• The Future of Wine Writing, hosted by Steve Heimoff, Ken Payton and Tom Wark, very sharp gents
• Top Gun blogging, hosted by Maverick, Goose and Iceman. No, it was Andrew Lazorchak, Ben Simons and Joe Herrig
• Live Wineblogging, an exercise in intensity and organised thinking that also hurt the liver

There was also a number of informal tasting opportunities (partying) most of which I chose the better part of valor on, being old and wimpy, vineyard tours and an evening of staggering about Walla Walla, inundating tasting rooms with hundreds of other bloggers. A very good time was had, and if you're thinking of a wine destination for your next vacation, Walla Walla knows how to put on the dog and make a visitor feel more than welcome. You can check out some pictures of my walkbout in my Unreserved Gallery.

The whole experience was great, but one aspect of it got me thinking very seriously: the constant introspection about the nature of blogging versus traditional criticism. I had a couple of very useful exchanges with Tom and Steve about it, as well as a quick chat with speaker Lettie Teague (wicked smart wine critic for the Wall Street Journal) and a whole bunch of back and forth with attending bloggers. There seemed to be this gulf between what I saw as the false perception of traditional wine criticism as cold and dispassionate, undertaken by insiders with agendas and the image of bloggers as shoot-from-the-lip cowboys (to be fair this does actually apply to Hardy Wallace, but in a very nice way)

It bugged me until this morning when I recalled a quote from Oscar Wilde, in the forward to The Picture of Dorian Gray,

The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography.

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty.

There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

I don't actually think that people who sneer from one side of the debate or the other are corrupt, but this quote takes on a fascinating level of meaning if you've studied the book. The central them is responsibility for one's actions: Dorian foists all blame for his wretched excess and immorality onto the painting that keeps getting uglier and uglier, and in the end he destroys it not in a fit of remorse, but to cover up evidence of his guilt.

The lessons I'm taking are twofold: first, no matter how objective a wine writer or critic strives to be, they'll always be filtering wine through their own sensibilities. This can either be 'voice' or pernicious prejudice and will quickly inform an audience of where they stand. Better have your voice in order!

Second, anybody who writes about wine, in whatever continuum of print media, blogs or even tweets, should talk responsibility for the quality of their writing. Excuses about time constraints, or being an amateur don't excuse one from doing their very best each time, and conversely, good writing is good writing, and cannot be condemned by entrenched authorities without imperiling their status and future relevance.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a picture to burn.

It's been a whirlwind 24 hours at the 2010 Wine Bloggers Conference. First, the drive down from White Rock to Walla Walla took a bit longer than I thought it would--but that was fine, since the drive was beautiful and the scenery was superb.

I chronicled my adventure last night at Basel Cellars over on my Unreserved blog.It's a stunningly gorgeous place, with great cellars and soaring architecture. The wines are pretty big--not really my bag, as I'm all about elegance, but they're really stretching some boundaries with their intensity and fruit.

Of course I got to bed early, in order to register and take advantage of the educational opportunities. Like drinking at 10 am. I picked up my bag o' swag, which fortunately included a pile of USB thumb drives. This is a new trend at conferences, since you can include thousands of pages of advertising, information, literature and pictures in a cutesy little package that people will hold on to and - for a long time. I'm especially grateful since I go through dozens of the silly things every year.

Ah, yes, drinking at 10 am. I ran the table at Mollydooker (more hyper-intense wines), drank all of the sherries at Gonzalez Byass and sampled anything offered. It's a tough life, but it's a good life if you don't weaken.

In short order I got interviewed by Winebizradio, and a did a sit-down video diary blog for WBC, which I'll be able to link to on the WBC YouTube channel later on. Then it was time for lunch, and a Taco Truck tasting! Wine isn't the first thing that comes to mind when you're food pairing with tacos (agua fresca!) but the icy chilled glass of fino went perfectly with the spicy lengua sopa I got.

Organised by the local chamber of commerce, a half-dozen taco trucks showed up and dispensed Mexican-y goodness to all. Washington state has a strong Mexican community, based on migrant farm workers following the harvest north, coming from California through Oregon, stopping here to put down roots. The taco truck is a noble and and splendid expression of their cuisine and their practicality. And, dang: tacos are awesome!

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After tacos I just had time to powder my nose and then it was straight into the keynote address by Steve Heimoff.

He had a lot of interesting things to say about the gulf/differential between traditional print media and bloggers. I didn't agree with everything he said, but it was fascinating to hear an old-media guy working to bridge the emergent phenomena of bloggers. I'm pretty sure that he and Tom Wark were comparing notes before the conference. I've heard amateur bloggers talk about democratizing wine writing (and thus eventually de-monetizing the activity until nobody can make a real living at it) and I've heard professional wine writers sneer at the quality of the writing from most bloggers.

There's truth in both positions. Actually, there's lots of truth: sometimes I'm bowled over by the errant nonsense I read from amateurs, parochialism masquerading as considered opinion, going for blood just to delight those who enjoy conflict, and a lot of less-than-refined work. A segment of the pro publishing world is perhaps worse (because they have a wider audience and can inflict more harm), resting on laurels long since ossified, taking money to write favorable reviews for fake restaurants, and sneering as hard as possible at the new communication channel, the blog. Steve negotiated this really well--not easy when you're one of the few old-school print journalists with the stones to do a completely independent blog. Good job, Steve.

Afterwards it was a bizarre but fun session of getting out the 2010 Wine Blog Awards. Tom Wark started these three years ago, to recognise excellence in bloggery, all peer-nominated and judged by serious folks. That's where the serious bit ended, as the presenter was Alan Kropf, editor of Mutineer Magazine. He did a sort of co-presentation with comedian Ben Morrison popping up on a screen from time to time to talk about White Zinfandel and time machines. Seriously. The winner for the best wine blog was  1WineDude. Joe Roberts was truly humble--and very deserving of the award.

And then on to breakout sessions: there were three going on simultaneously, Beginner and Advanced blogging, and blogging with marketing and PR folks. I chose the Advanced bloggery and got a steaming heap of information. Apparently I've missed a few tricks, but there's all the time in the world to correct that . . .

We powered through the Q&A, took a short break, and then launched into one of the most gruelling tasting sessions I've ever done: blogging about 12 wines in 60 minutes. I put the reviews up over at The Unreserved. I fared a bit better than a lot of folks, as many of them weren't used to tasting that many wines and making judgements that fast. I felt justified in bragging a little that I do that sort of thing on a regular basis. Pro winemakers had the edge, but I saw a few of them toss in the towel after three or four wines: with only a 30 second break between wines it was tough to form an impression, much less take notes and blog about it. Still, I'd like to do it again, as it sure enforces disciplined thinking. Luckily, it turns out I am going to get to do it again Saturday at 5 pm with red wines. I should be careful what I wish for . . .

And then on to dinner, a casual affair with sliders and appetisers and all the wine you could possibly drink, and that was most of day one of the official conference. I'm leaving out the bits where I managed to offend a French winemaker, meet a dozen-dozen really creative and insightful people and power-staggered through the streets of Walla Walla like wine-soaked Japanese cinema monsters. Hooboy, somebody has been feeding Godzilla wine for hours!

I read an article once, by a prominent economist. He contended that people didn't mind taxes, they just hated getting lied to, and they hated getting nothing in return for their part of the social contract. It ain't the heat, it's the hypocrisy, apparently.

And thus we come to the matter at hand. According to the Vancouver Sun, BCLDB Increases Markup On Booze As HST Lowers Tax.

It's tough to know the players without a scorecard, so here we go: last election the ruling party in my home province solemnly vowed they wouldn't radically alter the tax structure here, and most especially they would not harmonise the sales tax between British Columbia and the federal government. About thirty seconds after the poll numbers were tallied, they did exactly that, handing over sovereign control of provincial taxation to another government and applying a new tax to many previously untaxed items.This process was considerably aided by a $1.5 Billion dollar 'incentive' from the Feds, who know which side of a greedy government to butter to get the HST pushed through.

This has been very upsetting to many, so much so that there has been a recall petition circulated to have the tax repealed. It's managed to sign up over 15% of all registered voters in every single riding in the province, an accomplishment so overwhelming and unprecedented, it's terrifying the government, whose rattier members are jumping ship. But they counter with the argument that the tax burden will be lifted from manufacturers, who will pass the savings along to consumers, and thus the tax will be neutral! In the same breath they claim it will raise extra revenue necessary to balance the budget. How could that possibly be? Why, through the power of lying!

According to the Sun article:

British Columbians won't be getting a price break on their favourite libations this summer, even though the harmonized sales tax lowers the provincial sales tax on booze.

The provincial Liquor Distribution Branch is . . . increasing its markup on wines and spirits to offset a three-percent reduction in the sales tax, said Gord Hall, the LDB's corporate policy director. In other words, prices of wine, beer and spirits at provincial liquor stores will remain the same.

So, while the government is telling consumers that businesses will reduce prices because of the benefits they receive under the HST, the government's most profitable business, their provincial liquor monopoly, will do the exact opposite. It's enough to (designated) drive you to drink.

One of the worries presented by commentators is the potential for a black economy to spring up to evade taxation on goods and services. This is a very real worry, and works on the principal of the Laffer curve.

The Laffer Curve is a variant of the law of diminishing returns. If tax rates are too low, the government can't raise enough funds to meet budgets. If rates are too high, economic activity could be stifled and/or people will refuse to pay and tax revenues fall. Ideally governments try to fiddle in the area bounded by points A, B and the equilibrium, as though human responses can be easily codified into mere numbers. It's thinking like this that's getting those sign-ups to the anti-HST petition.

What really influences people's willingness to pay more taxes is the sense that they're getting value for dollar. The Swedes have incredibly high tax rates, but pay them contentedly because they have an excellent social structure and prudent governance and sound fiscal policy. Other western countries are less pleased because they see their money going to boondoggles and photo-ops for the ruling cliques. (Countries where taxation is low to non-existent are pretty much places where you don't want to visit.) When the government says tax burden will fall, and immediately takes steps to make sure it doesn't, then the midden hits the windmill.

There is some good news in all of this. If you make your own wine, you'll be able to afford to drink: there's no HST on the raw materials for consumer winemaking. After all, it's just grape juice!

Consumer winemaking isn't tax evasion: it's tax avoidance, which is not only legal, it's the prudent duty of every patriotic citizen After you don't want to overpay the government. That simply encourages them. Consumer winemaking isn't a black economy activity, it's an avocation that people have followed for centuries, connecting themselves to the handiwork that produces their food and drink, and the pride they can take in making something essential for themselves.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a patriotic winemaking duty to attend to.

Ah, another airplane ride, another blogging opportunity! I recently realised that if I spent six hours a day on airplanes, without the internet, telephones or meetings, I could meet all of my writing goals for the next two years in about a month and a half. There’s just something about sitting in a giant Pringles™ can in the sky full of strangers that makes me want to retreat into the world of words and stay there until I can get my feet back on the ground.

On the other hand (the one in the cast, I guess) I want to spend another day on an airplane like I want to moisturise with Tabasco sauce, so I guess I’m not going to be spending all my spare time as a junior birdman.

Aha, moment of amusement here: a lady just walked up to me and asked a question. When I had prised my earbuds out (I’m listening to Stanton Moore’s All Kooked Out, excellent as are all of his CD’s) she asked me with great amazement how I was getting the internet on an airplane. I guess not that many people actually use laptops to write or do presentations these days, surfing instead. Her face really fell when I told her there was no internet, perhaps a sign of her incipient webaddiction.

I’m coming back from Toronto, after attending a strategic planning meeting with the Global Vintner’s management group, including folks from Operations, Marketing, Sales, Finance, Administration and me. Global Vintner’s is the umbrella group of kit companies that are owned by Andrew Peller Limited (Canada’s largest winery—there’s another winery in Canada that’s a bit bigger, but they’re wholly owned by people from New York). These companies include Winexpert, where I work, Vineco, our sister company that is available in specialty retail (consumer winemaking shops), Wine Kitz, a franchise operation with over 70 stores across Canada, and Artful Winemaker, a specialty division that makes a tabletop/small footprint winemaking apparatus mainly seen outside of Canada.

The companies have different production, warehousing, distribution, sales and marketing teams, and compete against each other, albeit in a gentlemanly way. But because we all work towards a common goal (producing consumer winemaking products) for our parent company, we work to keep ourselves aligned and to try and grow our whole industry, together. While we all love to win market share and I’ve been known to quote Genghis Khan on the rewards of winning, I’d really rather make the whole pie bigger, so our slice grows, rather than just steal someone else’s piece of pie (which is pretty much a deadly sin, way I was raised.)

Plenty of fun was had: the group was lead by Tim Shaw, a business consultant who facilitates high-level planning sessions just like these. He’s an impressive leader—low key, but really able to sort through ideas and opinions and drill down to core ideas and concepts. It really was a room full of strong-minded individuals, none of whom are shy about sharing opinions. Me, I’m meek as a mouse, but we all really like heated discussions, and a vigorous exchange of ideas and challenges. Tim kept us right on track pretty much to the minute, and got the whole thing done. I was geeking out most of the time because I found the whole thing as fun as a box full of Mexican fireworks.

(The whole Tim thing was pretty funny. Not only was Tim Shaw there, Tim Martin from Wine Kitz was in attendance as well. Timothy is not that usual a name so I’m normally the only one around. But for two days anytime someone said ‘Tim’, three heads swivelled or flinched.)

Due to the way I work, pretty focused on my own stuff, largely unsupervised (I’m mentored, lead and inspired by my boss, but supervising me just makes me all slitty-eyed and mulish) so I occasionally pine for the bigger picture, not only what other parts of the company are doing, but also what’s really happening with the industry and our long-term plans on a really macro scale. It makes me feel like I’m a part of something larger that’s headed somewhere good, and my kicks at the wheel, however small are adding to a bigger result. And bigger picture I got.

Just what we got done I really can’t say in specific terms—secret company stuff, don’tcha know. But we were there to talk about what we wanted to be in the future, not just next year, but in three to five years, both as a specialty manufacturer/distributor, and as a part of the wine industry as a whole. We wound up with a strategic vision of a ‘willed future’ and a bunch of initiatives and programs that are going into implementation over the next half-decade. I’ve got my own chunk of the work set in front of me and it’s a doozey, but I’m looking forward to it with relish.

I also got so infected by the strategic thinking thing that I pulled out something I’ve been working on for a couple of years, a diagrammatic analysis of what a wine kit manufacturer does, and where in the value chain we extract labour (by crushing and pressing the grapes into juice for our end-users) or technical savvy (by blending and balancing the juices in our winery), where we add value (packaging the juice so it can be transported and held for extended periods) and how we help our retail partners and where the touch points are for consumer winemakers. I’m going to fire up a graphics program when I get back to the office and map the whole kooky thing out a little neater than my crummy handwriting with lines and boxes and get some input and review from my peers. I don’t quite know where I’m going with it, but it feels important to look at what we really do, not what we think we do.

Dang. I’m sounding so company. I’m in danger of losing my street cred as a rebel without a clue. I think it comes from being a sort of desultory historian of the consumer produced wine industry; partly because I’ve been in it so long that I’ve seen an awful lot of it happen, partly because I got trained by people who had been in it long before I came around, and partly because I’ve done a whole whack of research on the industry, part of it for magazine articles, part to see what has been done before that worked or not-worked, and partly just because I’m curious about our little corner of the wine distribution chain.

Friday is another day, with a lot of catch-up on correspondence and projects that are cooking. It also holds a physiotherapy appointment. The surgical wound on the thumb I chopped up with the Champagne bottle is now mostly healed, and it’s time to make it move again. This involves both passive physio, where the nice lady bends and yanks on the frozen digit to increase range of motion, and deep-tissue massage, where she works to separate the scar tissue that’s adhered to the tendon so it will move. I had a wee bitty of a panic attack last week. My thumb got severely jostled, even inside the cast/brace and with the lack of movement I was concerned I’d torn the tendon off again. Fortunately my surgeon says it’s all there, just frozen up with the big lumpy scar. At least by now I can type again, up to 30 wpm and rising! My high school typing teacher would be so proud, if we kids hadn’t driven him to the madhouse all those years ago.

I think it’s the weekend too, which means I have a date with my wife on Sunday! We’re going to the fabulous Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver to see Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings. If you’ve never heard of her, she’s a treat. She backs up Amy Winehouse when that person isn’t in jail, rehab or on a rampage, but she’s a lot better than Winehouse. Her version of 100 Days rocks like a rocky thing composed entirely of rockiness. I owe a hat tip to my buddy John Tataryn for turning me on to her music a couple of years ago. Thanks John! The missus is going to be a little sad because she can’t dance right now due to being hobbled by a hamstring injury, which is a double-pity because watching her dance is a real treat for me.

Ah, there’s yard work too, I have to clean out my office (my desk is one paper clip away from collapsing into shards) and I promised Spot I’d take him bowling. Monday it’s back into the editing suite to get another couple of chapters done and rendered to hi-def. Also, I really should go into the office one day this month . . . well, let’s not push things!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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’!

Lack of blogs lately, partly due to my aforementioned thumblessness, partly because I've been on the road, and partly because I'm so swamped getting ready for conferences and video shoots and other stuff. This whole job thing can really put a crimp on social networking.

The Winemaker Magazine Conference in Washington state was a success and a huge amount of fun. I got to meet a bunch of supercool winemakers, give lectures, listen to lectures, drink some great wine and generally hang out in the company of my peers. I'll post some pictures in the future, but rest assured, what happens at Winemaker may not stay at Winemaker!

I also spoke at the FITA (Fermetners International Trade Association) gathering in Portland on the weekend. It was nice to see a lot of folks I rarely get a chance to spend time with, and a real treat was getting to listen to the Grand Master, Mr. Fred Eckhardt, give a talk on beer making and craft brewing.

In addition to being the dean of beer educators in America (I still consult 'The Essentials of Beer Style' after 20 years) he has the distinction of having a beer Named (very affectionately) after him, Hair of the Dog's Fred.

After the conferences, the lectures and the obligations I got a chance to hang around with some of our US retailers in town for the occasion, doing some careful research on Portland's beer scene and the local cuisine, including Voodoo Donut (indescribable, but very good donuts) and a stop at Le Pigeon--a shout out to my pal Jim Willis for the recommend. Anyone wanting extremely good cutting-edge bistro cuisine is advised to book early, as they're terribly busy, but it's worth it: order the puff pastry stuffed with foie gras ice cream drizzled with salted caramel sauce (and a glass of Sauternes) and it will change your life.

Must close: typing is still difficult and I've got way to much stuff to do right now--story of my life!