Grassroots Video for The Great Canadian Wine Match

Love this! Wine Blogger Joe Hache took the initiative to create this video about the 6 Prince Edward County Wines that he’s nominated for The Great Canadian Wine Match. It’s awesome to see the people behind the labels… however, you don’t have to live in wine country, as Joe does, to create a simple video of your favourite wines. Download the free YouTube app on iPhone, Android or Windows and take a quick video clip from your smartphone of your wine(s), or do it from your laptop using your built-in video camera and YouTube recorder button. Either way, just takes […]

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Canadian Wine Featured in Food Pairing Competition

The Great Canadian Wine Match was our topic on CBC Alberta at Noon yesterday, a radio show broadcast across the province. You can click on the arrow below to listen to our chat. We talked about how the contest involves wine pairings for six food categories with voting done online with real-time results reflected in the number of votes for each wine and its relative ranking in the competition. Full engagement of social media is at the heart of this food and wine pairing competition. Posted with permission of CBC.

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Online Battle of Bottles in Canadian Contest to Match Food and Wine

The Canadian Press (CP) news service syndicated this story to newspapers and web sites across the country on May 2. OTTAWA – Oenophiles can vote for their favourite food and wine pairing with a new online competition that launched Thursday. Instead of experts weighing in with their choices, The Great Canadian Wine Match lets ordinary wine drinkers from coast to coast vote for their favourite wine and food pairings. Natalie MacLean, who has combined the old world of wine with the new world of technology and social media with an app, blog and website, will moderate the competition, including coast-to-coast […]

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Great Canadian Wine Match Challenges Social Media Users to Drink and Vote

You don’t need to tell me that wine is the most important meal of the day. The question is, which type of food do you prefer as a side? That’s the question being asked by Canadian wine writer Natalie MacLean who has worked up a time-sensitive way to pit region against region in The Great Canadian Wine Match, the object of which is to pair your favourite wine with a particular type of food, eventuating in a winner at the end to be voted on by participants in the social media campaign. Crowd-sourcing competitions like these have flourished in recent […]

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The Great Canadian Wine Match: Red, White and True North Food

In The Great Candian Wine Match, an annual battle of the bottles, you can vote for your favourite Canadian wines to pair with Canadian cheese, chicken, beef, seafood, pizza and dessert. As the people’s choice awards for Canadian wines, the competition takes a grassroots, “bottoms up” approach to get us rallying behind our favourite bottles from coast to coast. How do I nominate a wine? Go to the nomination wall for one of the six Canadian food categories: chicken, beef, pizza, cheese, seafood or dessert. Simply enter the name or product code of the wine. You can find product codes […]

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Vancouver International Wine Festival Chardonnay Kitchen Party

By Mari Kane When I got the invite to a Chardonnay Kitchen Party at the Miele appliances showroom in downtown Vancouver, I didn’t quite know what to expect. I’d heard of tastings there, but having walked by the store many times, I couldn’t work out how they’d fit so many bodies into it. The Chardonnay Kitchen Party was part of the Vancouver International Wine Festival, and organized by consultant Dana Reinhardt and wine writer Tim Pawsey. With its labyrinth of demonstration kitchens, Meile turned out to be a fantastic venue for wine and food grazing. One kitchen after another had […]

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Swiss Wines and Sommelier at Four Seasons

Although Fabio Masi, chief sommelier at Four Seasons’ Restaurant Il Lago in Geneva was born and raised in Milano, Italy, his interest in Swiss wines is anything but neutral. He spoke to us about how the revolution in the country’s wines, his remarkable experiences in the dining room and his own path in developing a passion for wine. When did you develop a taste for wine?  When I was four years old, my grandfather would dip a piece of bread in wine at dinner and let me taste it, so my passion for wine started early. My first real wine […]

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Pairing Wine and Cookies Video Tips

Pairing wine and cookies? Oooh yes! In this video chat, Laura Englander and Leah Kuo, the founders of Cookies n Corks, talk about how you can match cookies and wine. They discuss the types of cookies that work best with white wine, red wine and sparkling wine — and they have great ideas on how to host a fun tasting party with friends.     How did you came up with this idea? What were the challenges in starting this business? Don’t cookies make dry wine taste bitter? How did you adjust the recipes for the cookies to go well […]

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Wine and Charcuterie Pairing at Halifax Wine Bar

Heather Rankin is co-owner (with her brother, Christian Rankin) of Obladee Wine Bar in Halifax. The oldest of five kids, she was born and lived in the Halifax area until she was a young teen, when her parents moved to the fishing town of Port au Choix on the Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland. After studying at St Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, NS, and at Carleton in Ottawa, she spent 15 years working in web development in places like New York and London, England. “It was when I was in London that I decided it was time to move back […]

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Oprah Loves Wine and Living Life to the Full

When I went to listen to Oprah Winfrey talk last night, I expected to hear cliches about believing in yourself and taking a positive attitude. However, her insights were incredibly more practical, grounded, and ultimately, inspirational. She used the rise and fall and rise again of her own network to make her advice concrete: “I live a big life,” she observed. “My mistakes show up on the evening news. But that can force you to dig deeper, move in a new direction and do the next right thing.” She also talked about Sheryl Sandberg, the former COO of Facebook whose […]

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