Virtual Winery

Virtually everything is virtual these days – or at least can be. But does it mean – literally? Help me all-knowing Wikipedia?

“In various contexts, things are often described as “virtual” when they share important functional aspects with other things (real or imagined) that are or would be described as ‘more real’.”

Here is a list of my  favourite virtual things.

1. Virtual classroom
2. Virtual water [sounds dangerous to me]
3. Virtual colonoscopy [the most comfortable kind]
4. Virtual particle [I'm only pretending I understand what that means]
5. Virtual winery

Yes, I said Virtual Winery [although I've said the word virtual so much it's beginning to lose all meaning] and it was started by a Guelph boy making it big in the bright lights of Niagara.

Kevin Panagapka is the winemaker | owner of 2027 cellars.  It is a virtual winery located … nowhere. Well not quite nowhere.

Kevin is renting physical space [vines and buildings] to produce small batches of hand crafted wines.  Without the high startup costs of buildings and land Kevin can focus his resources on wine quality – and isn’t that what I want anyhow?  Currently Kevin sources fruit from 5 existing vineyards – and he and his crew prune, pick, and then ferment.

I suppose if Kevin had already made his fortune as a film director he could have bought his own place in Napa like Francis Ford Coppola – and then imported stone from Italy to make an absurdly expensive and grand winery / movie museum. But I like what he has going both literally and virtually. And tasting his wines will be the best virtual reality you’ve ever experienced.

You can get the wine by ordering it from his 2027 website.

Cold Spell – Why I married ma femme

The weather couldn’t be cooperating less these days.  It should be stinkin’ hot outside and I should be sipping rosé.  My well laid plans seem to have been spoiled by something called a “Northern low”  brought down by the “Jet Stream”, or whatever the Weather Network people are talking about.

Last night I sat in my living room, windows open, cold evening air coming in to an already cool house.  ”Is it even warm enough to open that rosé chilling in the fridge?” I asked my wife.

“Close the windows and open the rosé” was her response.  I did marry her for her problem solving skills.

LA VIEILLE FERME COTES DU VENTOUX ROSE*
LCBO 622134 | SEASONAL/LIMITED QUANTITIES
Price $ 10.95

Water. Again?

Water.  Some say it’s healthy for you – some say it’s dangerous [maybe that's just me trying again to get you to drink rosé].

On the internet I found a site called webMD [whatever that's supposed to mean] that gave me 6 “Health Benefits” of Water. It was written by a “water” person who calls herself Kathleen M. Zelman  MPH, RD, LD [what the heck kind of degrees are those and why so secretive about your middle name?]

She makes the outrageous claim that drinking water can affect the saliva levels in your mouth [come on] and then gets into the scare tactics from there – mentioning such things as kidneys and bowels in order to frighten you. Why doesn’t she try the “everyone else is doing it” argument?

Let’s look at this realistically.  I haven’t talked to one rational person who would put an odourless, colourless, tasteless liquid in their mouth unless it was a dare.

This summer I’m drinking rosé if I’m thirsty.  That’s what a rational person would do.

Note from the author – This is my 4th attempt in 4 years to use scare mongering tactics to convince people to drink rosé. You can see my other attempts here.

2010       2011         2012

Summer Vice

I love a truly clever marketing strategy.  This week I learned of Muskoka Brewery‘s Instagram contest promoting their Summer Weiss – a wheat beer – made specifically for the summer season.

The contest – What’s Your Summer Vice? Share a photo of your Summer Weiss (“vice”) on Instagram or Twitter with the hash tag #SummerWeiss for a chance to win $1000.

Here’s my entry.  My garden is going to be my summer vice.  Also, I’m calling myself a micro-farmer [with apologies to the people who work way harder than me as real farmers - kudos to you].

How deep do you plant these things?

The Summer Weiss won the Gold Award for Best German Style Wheat Beer at the 2013 Ontario Brewing Awards.  More recently it won the Most Delicious Beer Consumed While Micro-Farming award in my back yard.  The weiss is crisp for a wheat beer, light enough for a brunch beer, and I found that the bottle keeps the dirt out while you garden / micro-farm.

Available in six packs for $13.50 /6 x 355ml.  Plant some every couple of weeks to ensure a summer-long supply of weiss.

Riesling for a good cause

Want a chance to drink Riesling and support a charitable organization?  That’s like a gift with purchase at the cosmetic counter – except that you get a couple of samples of Riesling instead of an obscure lipstick colour.

Saturday May 25 at the Scottsdale LCBO the 7th Annual Ontario Consumer’s Riesling Challenge takes place [noon - 4 pm. Put it in your iPhone calendar now!] with proceeds going to the Bracelet of Hope Foundation. That sounds like a good deal to me for the following reasons …

1. My man Orest [Vintages Specialist at the Scottsdale LCBO] throws a great party.
2. Riesling is Ontario’s finest white wine varietal [in my opinion - an opinion shared by people more knowledgable than me].
3. Noon is the perfect time to start drinking white wine.  Unless the doors open at 11 am.
4. 14 participants are bring their best Riesling for you to try.
5. $10 gets you 4 samples [and maybe more if I know my wine makers and sales reps].
6. The collected admission goes directly to Bracelet of Hope.
7. The Featherstone winery uses roaming sheep to prune their vines [the call it "Sheep Labour"] and will be there with their Black Sheep Riesling.
8. Fact #7 is darn cute!
9. There will be free food
10. My man Orest is worth the price of admission [seriously]

Featherstone’s Sheep Labour

Piña Coladas?

On my most recent visit to the wine store I was approached by another customer.  I took this as a sign that I appeared to be a confident shopper and therefore likely to have answers for a lady who frankly, looked lost.  ”Excuse me”, she started, “do you put rum in your piña coladas?” she asked.

I was completely taken back.  I looked down at my shirt thinking maybe I had the same one on as the employees. I didn’t.  I realized I wasn’t really sure what she had just asked me.

“Do I put rum in MY piña coladas?”, I replied, “Or do you mean is rum the alcohol that is used to make piña coladas?”.

By this time I had said the words “piña colada” more than any other time in my life combined.  I’ve also never had a piña colada so I wasn’t sure of the answer.

Then I became alarmed.  Not because I started singing that horrible “If You Like Piña Coladas” song [which I  haven't gotten out of my head yet], and not because I didn’t know the answer, but because apparently I looked like a guy who drinks piña coladas.

That’s not the look I’m going for. I may not get over this for a while.

For the record the last rum I purchased was a sipping rum and it was delicious.

APPLETON ESTATE EXTRA RUM LCBO 105742 | 750 mL bottlePrice $ 35.95

Al Gore on Wine

I have gotten a lot of mileage in this blog about Al Gore “inventing” the internet and winning a Nobel Peace prize (I didn’t imagine that).

I just found out that  …

• he won a Grammy
• he roomed with Tommy Lee (Men in Black) Jones at Harvard
• PETA is mad at him for not being a vegetarian [I think there are some PETA people with anger issues]
• his daughter Kristen is a writer for my favorite TV cartoon Futurama
• he made the closing speech at the World Meeting on Climate Change & Wine held in Barcelona in 2008 [now I'm impressed]
• there is absolutely no truth to the rumour that Al Gore is taking credit for inventing Gewürztraminer