Calling your Muse: BC Wine is “Poetry in a Glass” Contest

Friday and Saturday August 8-9 2014 is our 7th Annual BC Wine Festival Weekend in the store. On both days we will be sampling BC wine. On the Saturday we have a special guest host – Tim Martiniuk, General Manager and family owner of Stoneboat Vineyards in Oliver, BC. Tastings are 3-6pm both days.

 

Our Community Sponsor for the Saturday is Bowen Island Arts Council who are sponsoring a poetry competition to celebrate BC wine. It’s easy to enter. Just send your entry to creative@biac.ca by email or post it on their Facebook Event page at https://www.facebook.com/events/429007857239404/

Please put your town or community on your entry. Entry is open until Midnight Friday 8 August.

We’ll post all the entries on a board in the store and tasters on Saturday 9 August will vote for their favourite entry. If you cannot make the tasting you can also vote for on-line submissions by “liking” the entry on the BIAC page above.

Poems can be in any form but must reference something specifically about BC Wine – can be a region, a general reference to why you like BC wine, a vineyard or a winery etc.. Entries will be judged on the first verse only. Haikus are welcome.

There will be prizes for the top votes in two categories:

• Entries from Bowen Island
• Entries from off-island

If you cannot make the tasting you can also vote for on-line submissions by “liking” the entry on the BIAC page above.

 

P.S. Must be 19 or older to enter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

New product arrivals

In preparation for the new store opening I’ve been adding a bunch of new products in all categories. Here’s a brief summary and there are lots more to come after we get into our new digs.

Wine

Opera Prima – ultra cheap and surprisingly good Spanish sparkling wine. Great for Mimosas, Buck’s Fizz etc.

Lavit Rosado – agents unearthed a cache of this no-longer-available-in-BC Spanish sparkling rosé. One of my very long-time favourites (see the Desert Island video). Back for a very short time.

Cantavida Riesling –  super value Chilean dry riesling

Doma Chardonnay & Merlot – 2 big bargains from Chile

Backyard Vineyards Zweigelt & Riesling – good red from the local Fraser Valley. Riesling is very fruity.

Dirty Laundry Hush (rosé), Pinot Gris and Gewurztraminer – New 2010 vintage. Hush is fabulous this year, 50% cab. Franc, deep pink and solid dark red fruit taste.

Cedar Creek Rosé – first time for a rosé from this significant BC winery. Think strawberries…

8th Generation – Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Gris and Merlot. The sparkling chardonnay has sold out completely.

Lake Breeze Pinot Blanc – simply the best PB in BC

Stoneboat Pinotage & Chorus – back for the summer season again

Cassini Maximus – BC produces some great Bordeaux style blends. This one has extra heft too.

Fairview Bear – Big Cabernet Sauvignon from BC, will reward cellaring. Coming soon: Two Hoots, Cab Franc and Sauvignon Blanc too

Blandy`s Madeira – the brown wine of the Azores

& a new selection of draft Sake

Spirits:

Pyrat rum 750ml

Courvoisier VS cognac 375ml

Remy Martin VSOP cognac 750ml

Van Gogh Duble Espresso vodka 750ml

Red Breast pot-still Irish whisky 750ml

Bell’s Scotch whisky 750ml

Dewar’s White Label Scotch whisky 750ml

Jack Daniel’s bourbon 375ml

For the Cocktail Cabinet

Akvavit

Kirsch

Alizé Blue and Red

Créme de Cassis

Galliano

Coolers

El Jimador pre-mixed Margaritas

Beer

Ayinger Dunkel – German dark lager

Cooper’s Australian pale ale

Cider

Sea Cider – Victoria, BC’s great cider maker. Kings & Spies and Pippins are back in stock

And the Winners are…

Draw prize winners from our BC Wine Fest are:

Memphis Blues cookbook: Ticket # 567350 Jen
Menus from the Orchard cookbook: Ticket #5674388 Ryan

and…

Gift Certificate for a 2 night stay at Tinhorn Creek’s guest lodge: Ticket#5674369 Wendy

Congrats to all the winners. You have been contacted and have one week from today to claim your prizes, Any unclaimed prizes after that will be redrawn.

August Wine Tasting Schedule

We will be offering two complementary tasting events in August.

Weekend Aug 14/15 (and possibly 13) – BC Wine. In conjunction with BowFEAST we will feature a selection of BC wines (predominately whites) over the Saturday and Sunday. May do a bonus session Friday evening, but have to confirm on that. Some of the wines in the line up for the weekend include Dirty Laundry, Blasted Church  & CedarCreek

The second tasting is Saturday August 21. This will be the second in our Unusual Grapes series and will feature wines from Greece. This country has an ancient wine growing tradition – and it’s not just Retsina any more.

BC Wines – Good Value for Money? Your Votes are IN

In our annual customer survey we asked a series of questions about BC wine. In addition, we put up an on-line poll using SurveyMonkey and asked twitter followers to vote on one of the questions and to nominate their favourite three BC wines. Across the two polls we received 105 responses to this question.

“Compared to wines from other countries, do you think 100% BC wines offer good value for your money?”

39% of voters categorically agree that BC wine provides good value. Another 39% believes that there are some good value wines out there. This is good news for BC wine. On Bowen the ratio of the Yes/No votes (a “No” means the buyer is unlikely to buy BC wine at all) was 4:1 in favour of BC, but on twitter 2:1 against. It would have been nice to know if a larger response on twitter would have changed the ratio but it is a pointer towards the turbulent winds buffeting the BC wine industry in the past year.

Respondents were also asked to name up to 3 favourite BC wineries. Ranking of the responses is the simple count of mentions of the winery name. 51 wineries received a mention, a creditable spread as that accounts for about 1/3 of the total wineries in BC! Of these 51, 19 were unique to the twitter response set and 10 were unique to Bowen Island customers. The rest received mentions from both sets.

So, with a flourish of the drums, let me introduce…

Top BC 10 Wineries – A Popular Poll

#1                   Burrowing Owl

#2 (tied)    Mission Hill, Quails Gate

#4                   Cedar Creek

#5                    Joie

#6 (tied)      Gray Monk, Hester Creek, La Frenz, Sumac Ridge, Township 7

Tied votes are presented in alphabetical order. Burrowing Owl was #1 on Bowen and Quails Gate #1 on Twitter.

Sundry Notes & Observations on the Poll

• 75% of the total voters are 40+ years old, 42% of the twitter voters are under 40 years old
• Median price of wine purchased is $15-$20 in both sets of responses. 60% of voters say their average expenditure per bottle is in this range.
• 40% of all voters and 77% of twitter voters visited a BC winery in past 12 months.
• Total response was 105 (79 Bowen Island, 26 twitter).  While results from Bowen have some statistical accuracy, none can be claimed for the twitter responses – so the outcome does not necessarily reflect an accurate opinion on the BC wine industry.