For Your Personal Consumption: The Lobster7 and the Canada3

Posted on May 31, 2012 by

Having just wrapped up four days in Halifax for the Atlantic Canada Wine Symposium, I was given three bottles of Nova Scotia wine to take back to British Columbia with me.  I am not unfamiliar with the young industry out there.  It reminds me of the Okanagan Valley 20 years ago when I arrived from California. 15 wineries.  So much enthusiasm, hope and promise.  The wines are crisp, cool, refreshing, and low alcohol (the “hot” thing now).  The friendliest bunch of producers you’d ever like to meet.

I also took home 7 live lobsters caught fresh from the waters surrounding Nova Scotia. Anyone who has gone to the Halifax airport is familiar with the pools of fresh lobster you can choose from just next to the security gate entrance.  I had a chance to meet some Nova Scotia lobster fisherman last year on a family vacation.  As good a bunch of people you’ll ever come across.

What could be more perfect? The marriage of two Canadian-grown products, one grown in our seas and one grown on our land, that travel in one day across this huge country of ours and end up on my table in Oliver, BC.

That’s true patriotism in my book. Not flag waving but supporting in a real way what we do here.

The similarities between the Lobster7 and the Canada3 end here.

The Lobster7 were purchased before I checked in.  They were boxed up (still alive–I know, I’ve had a hard time with this part of the story).  They were carried on the plane and placed in the overhead bins—riding the plane with the big people. They flew across 9 of our 10 provinces and arrived at their destination 12 hours later. The most well-known product from Nova Scotia was unpacked and lowered into their steam bath of doom.  Around the table were four friends, my husband, me, and my seven-year old daughter.  The Lobster7 were accompanied by a home-made butter (although they did not need it).  They were delicious.

Oh, and did I mention that you can also order these live lobster from your home and have them shipped to you?  Anywhere in Canada.

Meanwhile, the Canada3 were not so lucky.  They were acquired the night before departure, wrapped in copious amounts of cardboard, 2 pairs of wool socks, various pieces of clothing, and put in my checked bag.  No overhead compartment for them.  They rode on the underbelly of the plane in a sea of luggage—no guarantee they would survive their trek.

And theirs was an illegal journey.

Alcohol, even for personal consumption, is not allowed to cross provincial borders. An antiquated law from 1928 and politicians without the courage to stand up for a truly entrepreneurial industry have ensured that nothing has changed in decades.  The best-hidden secret from the Island (three Nova Scotia wines) were chilled, cracked open and enjoyed by all (including a sip or two for my seven-year old—like it should be).

Local foods being paired with local wines.  One matching the other.  The way it’s done in wine regions around the world.

Wine is food.  Canadian wine should be enjoyed by all Canadians who choose to partake.  I want my daughter to be proud of what her mother does when she grows up.  I don’t want her to think of me as a bootlegger.  I want her to crack open a bottle of estate grown Canadian wine and enjoy.

With a home-grown lobster if she chooses.

Posted in Grapes and Wine | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

#CabFrancTuesday #West and #East

Posted on April 29, 2012 by

#CabFrancTuesday #West
Tinhorn Creek Vineyards

In 2010 I followed ONE Chardonnay vine in front of my home for the entire growing season (April until harvest in Fall).  I called it #ChardyTuesday because once a week on Tuesday I would tweet the progress I had seen in both the vine’s growth and the clusters.  It was a great way to document the growing season, week by week, from one vine’s perspective.

In 2011 I choose a Syrah vine, also near my  house, to documents in the same manner.  I called it #SyrahTuesday because I am so very creative.

This year a group of ladies came out in August for a weekend of tasting Cabernet Francs and helped me choose the vine I would follow in 2012.  #CabFrancTuesday was born.  Our  little vine, whose trunk leans to the south, is planted on our Diamondback Vineyard on the eastern Black Sage Bench.   Block 2, row 45, vine 5 was planted in 1995. The vines all run North–South, allowing for great air flow and sun exposure on both sides of the canopy.  The soil is sand as far as you can dig and this helps to keep a normally vigorously growing variety like Cabernet Franc in check.

#CabFrancTuesday #East
Vineland Estates Winery

The 2012 #CabFrancTuesday Twist

I was approached by Brian Schmidt (@BenchWineGuy on twitter) from Vineland Estates Winery in Ontario.  Vineland Estates grows one of the best Cabernet Francs in Canada.  A serious wine.  And I’m not just saying that because he’s a great guy on twitter either.  He wondered if he could “sidecar” the #CabFrancTuesday adventure this year by chronicling an eastern vine from Niagara and our western vine from Oliver.  He has chosen vine 14, row 10 from Bo-Teek Vineyard which comes from a pretty nice pedigree…the vineyard used to be and Equestrian Training Centre for, among other horses, Northern Dancer. 8 acres of Cab Franc (clone 327 on SO4 rootstock) were  planted in 1998 after Vineland Estates took over the property.  It is slightly north facing toward Lake Ontario with clay limestone substrate soil.

So we will be chronicling the growing season in both BC and Ontario through the “eyes” (leafs? buds? berries?) of two Cabernet Franc vines grown 3,144 kms away from one another.

This is why I love twitter.  This is why I love connecting.

Posted in Canada, Grapes and Wine, TInhorn Creek | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

The F-ing Bird

Posted on April 22, 2012 by

The Northern Flicker

I am trying to find balance.  Balance between running a business and the idea of being a steward of the land it sits on.  Recently, I am fighting a war against nature…specifically the Northern Flicker.  It’s a bird.  More specifically a type of woodpecker. It has butchered our barrel cellar since 2002.

Henceforth, I will call it the F-ing Bird (“F” for Flicker, of course).

Barrel Cellar

Le Damage--Barrel Cellar

Know your Enemy  First off, let me say that the F-ing Bird’s population is dwindling but it is “widespread and common” and it’s conservation status is “least concern”.  It makes its nest in excavated dead tree trunks…or in our case…in the exterior walls of our barrel cellar.  Click here to hear the little darling.  Back in 2002 this building was covered in a layer of styrofoam for better insulation before its final coat of stucco.  The F-ing Bird knows when it pounds on this building’s walls they are not solid and begins digging out a cavity 13-16″ deep.  The next year the F-ing Bird returns to this nest for its next little F-ing family.

…have you tried?  For a decade a parade of people have imparted their wisdom for eliminating or deterring this bird.  We have:

  • wrapped a wire mesh and even a metal strip of siding around the upper part of the barrel cellar (which looked ugly).  The F-ing Bird just went lower.  Then to the other side of the building.
  • played bird distress calls which, I guess, were meant to make the bird so sad it didn’t want to bang on our walls anymore.  Our F-ing Birds continued on like we had played a motivational tape.
  • hung a rubber snake on the walls.  Seriously.  It didn’t stop the F-ing Bird’s hole making but we did get to spend endless  hours explaining to tourists why there was a rubber snake hanging on the side of our barrel cellar.
  • contemplated the elimination route but really, that is a losing battle.  There’s always another F-ing Bird around the corner.

Plan of Action  I refuse to patch the holes yearly.  I am not a fan of patching problems but not fixing their root causes (I could refer to liquor regulations here but would digress).  At some point we will probably do one of two things.  We will rip off the entire exterior of the 5,500 square foot barrel cellar, take the styrofoam layer off and re-stucco OR we will add a concrete layer on top of the stucco already there, then re-stucco.  Both remedies are not in our budget for the next few years.

So until that time, here is my idea.  We will live with the F-ing Bird.  We will allow it to massacre our barrel cellar.  I have decided to post signs on the damaged walls so that visitors to our winery and restaurant understand we are surrendering to the F-ing Bird.  I am thinking the signs will look something like this:

Posted in Eco Sustainability, Grapes and Wine, Local, TInhorn Creek | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 14 Comments

BCWineChat Turns Four Months Old

Posted on April 14, 2012 by

Some of you may know that I began BCWineChat on Twitter at the end of December 2011.  My hope was to find an open forum for BC wine consumers, BC wineries, retailers and restauranteurs to meet, once a week to give thoughts on one issue for one hour.  My report card on our first four months:

The Participants: The chat started out driven by myself, some retailers and a handful of consumers.  It has grown to include many more participants and specifically, more consumers–but there is many more opportunities to grow.  I would love to see a forum where consumers can talk with winery owners, winemakers, wine retailers and sommeliers about all things surrounding BC wine.  In addition, it would be great to have politicians (thank you @Dan Albas for starting that ball rolling!), government agencies and regulators not only “lurking” but participating–ENGAGE the consumers–don’t be afraid of them and their questions.  It is a great dream…  Grade: B (quality of participants is great…now for more of them)

Twitter as its Home: I have had requests to put it on Facebook, a regular running discussion board and various other social media platforms.  All great ideas, but since I have only a small slice of my week to organize this it will stay on twitter  if it continues to be organized by me.  With Twitter as the chosen format, the biggest complaint has spoken to the limitations of being able to get your point across in 140 characters in a one hour time limit.  The tweets definitely do fly fast.  In response to this, I have always been willing to add subsequent chats on the same topic if it seems like there is still a lot to talk about once the hour has come to a close (that was the case with Ways to Boost Winery Tourism Part Une and Deux).  I also encourage people to take the conversation to the website and make comments on the posts. On the plus side, we are not solving world problems here.  We are getting the creative juices flowing once a week for an hour.  Not a bad thing. Grade B-

The Topics: I get many requests to host more and more “controversial” issues from the trade (retailers, restaurants and especially BC wineries).  BCWineChat is a great place for it–but not every week.  If the hope is to engage consumers to a greater extent, then BCWineChat cannot become synonymous with controversy.  Who wants to tune into a bunch of whiners, and not a bunch of wine-ers, each week?  Wine isn’t negativity and controversy.  It is a celebration.  Some of the most lively discussions have been about wine pairing everyday meals, wine epiphany moments and getting questions about wine answered.  That being said, wine lovers want more access to BC wine, liquor laws reformed, and barriers to enjoyment broken down.  This is why BCWineChat will always sprinkle in the important issues periodically to highlight these issues.  Ultimately, it would be great if solutions pop up on the chat, but really, if we’re all talking openly, that is a great first step for change. Grade B+

Archiving the Chats:  Many participants are not aware that the chat is archived using CoverItLive (thank you @raincoaster) .  As long as each tweet has the hashtag #BCWineChat attached to it, the entire conversation is saved for later review.  To date, these chats have gone to the halls of Ottawa a for Members of Parliament to review for a certain topic (Interprovincial Wine Shipments in Canada) and no doubt to various wineries who want to see what the consumers feel about a certain issue (Cellared in Canada).  I have had many wine lovers thank me for the archive service because BCWineChat conflicted with their life during the Wednesday 8-9 time slot…like Canucks playoff games–understandable!  If people are reading the chat after it ends it means that they are interested and engaged even after it has ended.  Grade A-

Again, we aren’t solving any world problems on BCWineChat.  We are trying to open up a conversation around a local product.  A conversation that can include all the public and private organizations, groups and people that contribute to that product in BC.  Retailers talking to retailers.  Winemakers from one winery talking to vineyard managers from another.  And most importantly, consumers telling everyone what’s on their mind.

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Get Yer Grabber Thingy

Posted on April 2, 2012 by

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Agriculture Water not an Essential Service?

Posted on February 23, 2012 by

>>UPDATE: April 9, 2012 the water flowed!! <<

Let’s start with some facts:

  1. We grow grapes
  2. We live in a desert–less than 10 inches average of precipitation per year
  3. Grapes need a minimum of 20 inches of precipitation minimum to survive each year.
  4. The difference between what falls from the sky and what the plants need, is called irrigation (say it with me…ir-ri-ga-tion)
  5. Other farmers farm other things where I live.
  6. Those farmers need ir-ri-ga-tion too.
  7. We farm to make money.
  8. We need money to live.

What part of agricultural water is NOT an essential service?

The local municipal workers’ union (CUPE) of the Town of Oliver have voted to go on strike.  No problem with that.  It is their right and I don’t want to get embroiled in the negotiation of wages between their union and the Town.  Here’s the problem, they have called domestic water an essential service but agricultural water not an essential service. Therefore, the water flowing outside the town to maintain our million dollar investments, our livelihoods, the livelihood of the 24+ families we support at Tinhorn Creek, is not essential.

Since when is one man’s access to water a right but for another man it is only an option?

Farmers don’t complain in traditional media sources too much. They talk it in local coffee shops.  They pull over on the side of the road.  They lean over fences.  Really.  They do.  I have done all  three of these things.  But farmers can roar when something like WATER is taken away from them.

If water is not flowing in our irrigation canal (fondly called “the ditch”) in mid April, believe me…the whole province of British Columbia will hear about it.

Not just readers of this blog.

Media Release from Town of Oliver

Letter from Area C Director

Posted in Canada, Grapes and Wine, TInhorn Creek | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Social Media for Businesses

Posted on February 19, 2012 by

I’m sure in the late 1800′s when the telephone was invented and was finding its way into homes and businesses, there were some people who did not see a need for it.  No doubt there were those who said “Why do I need a telephone? It’s going to take away time from customers at my counter” or “I won’t do business with a telephone–I like to  speak face to face with MY customers.”

Insert the words Social Media in for the telephone above and  you have the same conversation going on over a century later.

I hear business owners all the time saying “I don’t do the Twitter Thing” like resisting it is somehow a badge of honour.  Not having a presence on Facebook and Twitter for your business is like not answering the phone–it may feel nice and quiet for a while but sooner or later it will catch up to you.  Customers will call somewhere else.

Also, customers want to speak with humans when they call your business.  We all know what voice mail hell feels like, “Press one for…” and we all desperately try to get a living, breathing person on the line if we have any kind of question.  Social media is the same.  Even if your business has a Facebook page and/or a Twitter account your customer still wants to know that there’s a real person behind those accounts.  I am sure that most people who follow @sandraoldfield on twitter  know that I am a real person–especially if they have taken the time to converse with me (too much information sometimes!)

All businesses will need to embrace social media soon so that they can join the conversation that’s already happening.  Successful businesses will find a way to bring a human personality to these various platforms.

The ones that don’t do this will be sitting by their telephone…waiting for it to ring.

Posted in Social Media, TInhorn Creek | Tagged , , , , | 13 Comments