The Economist has the Canadian Wine Industry in an article in this week's paper. The article is not a great one for the industry, the tone is dismissive of Canadian wines. The idea of Canadian wine does make most of the world shake their heads in disbelief.
In Canada we have moved from making the worst of plonks with subsidized grapes to being able to making drinkable wines, though most of our wines are uninspired and bland. At the end of the day in Canada we have few locations that can grow reasonable grape volumes per acre. We crop at 3.8 to 4.3 tonnes per acre in our best regions. South of us in Oregon the same grapes crop at close to 5 tonnes per acre. They are getting 25% more grapes per acre and therefore can have cheaper grapes.
Land costs are also killing us. In the Okanagan land sells for about $50 000 per acre. Not much further south in Washington the land sells for a fraction of the cost. The Okanogan Valley in the US has very little viticulture even though it has better conditions that the BC Okanagan valley.
Outside of our real grape growing regions, the volume of grapes cropped per acre is between 1 and 3 tonnes. At these very low volumes of grapes per acre, a grower on somewhere like Vancouver Island needs about twice as much land as an Oregon grower to provide the same number of grapes. At three tonnes per acre the gross return is only $3000 to $4500 per acre. With the same land you can produce about 10 tonnes of apples and sell this for $6000 wholesale and about $15 000 at the farm gate.
The Economist article raises a whole other issue, in Ontario you can use 70% imported grapes in your wine and still call it an Ontario wine. Ultimately I suspect this means the quality of the wine could be higher and costs be lower, but it does blur the idea of where a wine is from. My sense from the article is that the labels will not make it clear where the imported grapes are from.
The Canadian wine industry survives in large part because our nation applies very high tariff barriers against wines from the rest of the world. We also apply high taxes against our domestic wines. We are paying a lot more for our wine in Canada than we would be if the level of government levies against wine was at a level comparable to many other nations. These high taxes, especially on imported wines, means that making and selling a $20 bottle of wine is a viable business in Canada. The consumers are paying $20 for a wine that would be about $5-$10 in New Zealand, the US, or Australia.
Ulitimately Canadians seem to be happy to have this protectionism so that we can have wine produced in Canada. I am not happy about the way things are and think we should look to the viticulture industry in Germany and emulate it. We can produce wine in Canada that makes economic sense without state intervention. We can make ice wines. We can also produce German white wine grapes are commercial levels instead of wasting time on marginal grapes, especially the red ones.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Comments in the Legislature by new MLA Lana Popham on Agriculture
AGRICULTURE INDUSTRY IN B.C.
L. Popham: This summer I was fortunate to travel through Kamloops and the Cariboo region on a six-day agricultural tour with the member for Cariboo North. Since most of my experience with agriculture has been on Vancouver Island, I was taken aback by the huge scale of agricultural operations in the Interior. [DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
In town after town we consulted with ranchers, farmers and people interested in expanding local food production. We visited working ranches and organic farms, took a tour of an abattoir and attended a livestock sale. [DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
It became clear during this tour that a single vision was being articulated. Just like on Vancouver Island, there is a vision shared by the First Nations Agricultural Association, the Fruit Growers Association, the B.C. Livestock Producers Co-op, the meat processors, local agricultural steering committees, farmers' market associations, individual ranchers and an increasing number of consumers who are interested in supporting local food production. [DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
It is a vision about self-sufficiency and sustainability of B.C. agriculture. It is a message about our untapped capacity. It's hard to believe that in a time of accelerating climate change, a time of economic turmoil, we are not focusing on our own back yard for solutions. A self-sufficient British Columbia is not such a crazy idea. It's an idea whose time has come. [DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
I'm not talking about cutting ourselves off and shutting our doors or about being independent from the rest of this planet. I'm talking about a wasted opportunity if we don't start to develop B.C.'s agricultural community to its fullest potential. That's the message I'm bringing back to this House from the farmers and consumers of B.C. who want to be part of the solution. [DRAFT TRANSCRIPT ONLY]
Friday, August 21, 2009
Poppy, the last of the three restaurants
Live got in the way yesterday and stopped me from writing about Poppy in Seattle.
Sheila and I wanted somewhere interesting to go for dinner in Seattle. We got a sitter, dinner with Max is not relaxing. Kudos to the Olympic in Seattle for general amazing service, some good restaurant recommendations and finding us a sitter for Max.
Seattle is much more of a foodie city than anything we have in Canada. The current trend in the city is chef independence, small hole in the wall places with chefs really playing with their art. I see the Seattle food scene as the polar opposite of Las Vegas where it is all about big money backing big name chefs, this season's Top Chef is really showing that as the food scene there.
We took the concierge's recommendations and went with the most innovative sounding one and they was Poppy. James Beard award winner Jerry Traunfeld, formerly of the Herbfarm, is the chef that created Poppy which opened late in 2008.
Poppy serves their food in thali style, though the food is not in anyway Indian. The thali is simply their way of offering a tasting menu and it works very well. One gets a plate with ten small bowls and plates on it with small bites of food, though each thali (and the seven piece smallie) has a centre piece protein, in many cases grilled American wagyu beef. How does one explain this sort of a meal?
If a good burger and fries is like going to good rock concert, and if eating in a 'typical' fine dining restaurant is like a string quartet playing some Mozart, Traunfeld's food is a symphony playing a sublime Philip Glass piece. I have never had anything quite like this and I loved the whole experience. Each mouthful was perfect, was enough. The most amazing thing was that food engaged the brain, it inspired us to talk about all the flavours and textures, about the unique uses of northwest fresh food, of how it was presented. the meal was physically, spiritually and intellectually stimulating.
In many ways the meal felt to me like a northwest riff on the family dinners I grew up with. When we had a family gathering, the table would be filled with numerous different hot and cold dishes from which everyone would take a small taste onto their palate. We call this zakuska.
The restaurant was casual but still allowed for dressing up. The decor was a current day re-interpation of early 1970s minimalist decor. The decor feels like it would suit Philip Glass music.
It is the sort of place that is about the food and vision of the chef and not about being a place to be seen or being the "trendy" restaurant. Though Conde Nast Traveller calls it one of the top 50 new restaurants in the world.
This restaurant is worth making the trip to Seattle.
Sheila and I wanted somewhere interesting to go for dinner in Seattle. We got a sitter, dinner with Max is not relaxing. Kudos to the Olympic in Seattle for general amazing service, some good restaurant recommendations and finding us a sitter for Max.
Seattle is much more of a foodie city than anything we have in Canada. The current trend in the city is chef independence, small hole in the wall places with chefs really playing with their art. I see the Seattle food scene as the polar opposite of Las Vegas where it is all about big money backing big name chefs, this season's Top Chef is really showing that as the food scene there.
We took the concierge's recommendations and went with the most innovative sounding one and they was Poppy. James Beard award winner Jerry Traunfeld, formerly of the Herbfarm, is the chef that created Poppy which opened late in 2008.
Poppy serves their food in thali style, though the food is not in anyway Indian. The thali is simply their way of offering a tasting menu and it works very well. One gets a plate with ten small bowls and plates on it with small bites of food, though each thali (and the seven piece smallie) has a centre piece protein, in many cases grilled American wagyu beef. How does one explain this sort of a meal?
If a good burger and fries is like going to good rock concert, and if eating in a 'typical' fine dining restaurant is like a string quartet playing some Mozart, Traunfeld's food is a symphony playing a sublime Philip Glass piece. I have never had anything quite like this and I loved the whole experience. Each mouthful was perfect, was enough. The most amazing thing was that food engaged the brain, it inspired us to talk about all the flavours and textures, about the unique uses of northwest fresh food, of how it was presented. the meal was physically, spiritually and intellectually stimulating.
In many ways the meal felt to me like a northwest riff on the family dinners I grew up with. When we had a family gathering, the table would be filled with numerous different hot and cold dishes from which everyone would take a small taste onto their palate. We call this zakuska.
The restaurant was casual but still allowed for dressing up. The decor was a current day re-interpation of early 1970s minimalist decor. The decor feels like it would suit Philip Glass music.
It is the sort of place that is about the food and vision of the chef and not about being a place to be seen or being the "trendy" restaurant. Though Conde Nast Traveller calls it one of the top 50 new restaurants in the world.
This restaurant is worth making the trip to Seattle.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Three Good Restaurants
In the last few weeks I have had three very good experiences at three different restaurants, all of them outside of Victoria.
1) Captain Hardy's 7145 Market Street in Port Hardy
I recently went on a trip to Cape Scott and ate at this restaurant before and after the trip. I highly recommend that if you are in Port Hardy that you check out this restaurant.
This is a classic greasy spoon, they would be a good place to be on Guy Fieri's Diners, Drive-ins and Dives. They make very good fries and they make their burger patties from meat they get ground for them. This is one of the best burgers I have had in ages I should recommend it to the Victoria Burger Blog to check it out. It was the perfect classic diner burger.
The rest of their food seems to be made with just as much attention to working with high quality but affordable ingredients. We also had a breakfast there and they were busy, they had orders flying out. I had perfect french toast. The pancakes my son had came with some very decent fresh blueberries and no one complained about anything they got.
The only possible complaint would be the coffee - but then I was not looking for barista and espresso machine. Even with the classic coffee shop coffee maker, they still had a much richer and full bodied cup of joe than you could get at Tim Hortons.
2) Silver Water Cafe 237 Taylor Street in Port Townsend
Recently Sheila and I went down to Seattle for a couple of days. We caught the Coho at 3 pm from Victoria and put into Port Angeles just around dinner time. I wanted us to eat somewhere decent and reasonable and not a chain like Applebees. I knew Port Townsend is a cool town with an interesting core of the city. I thought there might be a good place to go there. We used the Urban Spoon app on the iPhone to look for somewhere to go and quickly found a likely place in the Silver Water Cafe.
We had to drive a bit longer than we wanted to and arrived for a dinner a little bit later than Max would have liked. It was worth the 20 minutes of Max complaining to go this place.
Where to I start? It is located in a wonderfully restored Victorian building in the core of Port Townsend. It is casual in atmosphere and price but seriously up market when it comes to the food.
The staff are friendly and attentive even when it gets busy. The place was packed shortly after we arrived and people were standing in line for 30 minutes to get a table on a Monday night. I can not imagine what it would like to here on a Friday or Saturday night.
The menu is long which normally sets off alarms in my head, it is hard for large menu to be done well with fresh ingredients. My fears were quickly eased when the waiter told us a number of things we not available.
We started with the Asian Seared Green Beans, I had expected something like edamame, but instead they were the classic green bean with some wonderful Asian flavours.
I highly recommend their seafood selections. I had the Cioppino, an Italian fish stew, and it was full of seafood and had a tomato broth that I could not stop eating.
So often a good restaurant will bring in their deserts and I simply find that lazy and a bad way to the end the meal. Silver Water Cafe makes all their deserts on site each day and they run out of stuff soon. We were on the early end of dinner service and they were already out of many things. Sheila had the key lime pie and I had the crumbe-topped Amaretto peach pie - both of them were excellent.
I will be going back to this restaurant any time I am passing close to Port Townsend.
3) Poppy 622 Broadway East Seattle ( I have to help my son, I will finish this soon)
1) Captain Hardy's 7145 Market Street in Port Hardy
I recently went on a trip to Cape Scott and ate at this restaurant before and after the trip. I highly recommend that if you are in Port Hardy that you check out this restaurant.
This is a classic greasy spoon, they would be a good place to be on Guy Fieri's Diners, Drive-ins and Dives. They make very good fries and they make their burger patties from meat they get ground for them. This is one of the best burgers I have had in ages I should recommend it to the Victoria Burger Blog to check it out. It was the perfect classic diner burger.
The rest of their food seems to be made with just as much attention to working with high quality but affordable ingredients. We also had a breakfast there and they were busy, they had orders flying out. I had perfect french toast. The pancakes my son had came with some very decent fresh blueberries and no one complained about anything they got.
The only possible complaint would be the coffee - but then I was not looking for barista and espresso machine. Even with the classic coffee shop coffee maker, they still had a much richer and full bodied cup of joe than you could get at Tim Hortons.
2) Silver Water Cafe 237 Taylor Street in Port Townsend
Recently Sheila and I went down to Seattle for a couple of days. We caught the Coho at 3 pm from Victoria and put into Port Angeles just around dinner time. I wanted us to eat somewhere decent and reasonable and not a chain like Applebees. I knew Port Townsend is a cool town with an interesting core of the city. I thought there might be a good place to go there. We used the Urban Spoon app on the iPhone to look for somewhere to go and quickly found a likely place in the Silver Water Cafe.
We had to drive a bit longer than we wanted to and arrived for a dinner a little bit later than Max would have liked. It was worth the 20 minutes of Max complaining to go this place.
Where to I start? It is located in a wonderfully restored Victorian building in the core of Port Townsend. It is casual in atmosphere and price but seriously up market when it comes to the food.
The staff are friendly and attentive even when it gets busy. The place was packed shortly after we arrived and people were standing in line for 30 minutes to get a table on a Monday night. I can not imagine what it would like to here on a Friday or Saturday night.
The menu is long which normally sets off alarms in my head, it is hard for large menu to be done well with fresh ingredients. My fears were quickly eased when the waiter told us a number of things we not available.
We started with the Asian Seared Green Beans, I had expected something like edamame, but instead they were the classic green bean with some wonderful Asian flavours.
I highly recommend their seafood selections. I had the Cioppino, an Italian fish stew, and it was full of seafood and had a tomato broth that I could not stop eating.
So often a good restaurant will bring in their deserts and I simply find that lazy and a bad way to the end the meal. Silver Water Cafe makes all their deserts on site each day and they run out of stuff soon. We were on the early end of dinner service and they were already out of many things. Sheila had the key lime pie and I had the crumbe-topped Amaretto peach pie - both of them were excellent.
I will be going back to this restaurant any time I am passing close to Port Townsend.
3) Poppy 622 Broadway East Seattle ( I have to help my son, I will finish this soon)
Chickens
OK, I have a bad task coming up, one of the birds seems to ill and on her way out. I should likely go and kill her, but I am too much of wimp to do it myself. I am getting my vet to come over and it.
My friend the vet and chicken keeper says I should have expected to have one of my birds to die in the first year or two. He is not surprised one of them is having problems.
Still I am not looking forward to this less savory aspect of animal husbandry. I am also realizing this means my egg production will drop off by 1/6th. Realistically four chickens should be enough for us on an ongoing basis though this will mean I will have fewer eggs to give away.
My friend the vet and chicken keeper says I should have expected to have one of my birds to die in the first year or two. He is not surprised one of them is having problems.
Still I am not looking forward to this less savory aspect of animal husbandry. I am also realizing this means my egg production will drop off by 1/6th. Realistically four chickens should be enough for us on an ongoing basis though this will mean I will have fewer eggs to give away.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Email from my neighbour Anne Cirillo about her pasta sauce and pizza dough
My friend and neighbour Anne is making her awesome tomato sauce. I highly recommend it, here is the email she sent me.
_______________________________________________________
Hey Bernard, How about a trade for eggs??
Hello Everyone,
I'm in the kitchen making sauce and kneading dough. If you're interested please read below.
Anne
Cirillo's Italian Cuisine
My grandparents, Joseph and Elgesera Cirillo immigrated with their five children to Ontario, Canada in the late 1950's. Together they opened Cirillo's Italian Restaurant. My grandmother became famous for her traditional Italian cuisine, especially her tomato sauce. It is my honour continue the family tradition of making delicious Italian foods.
Tomato Sauce:
Pizza Dough:
Additions to the menu are coming.
I am happy to deliver or you are welcome to pick it up. My usually delivery day is Friday.
Please email to cirillositaliancuisine@shaw.ca or call 250-507-5197 to order.
Anne Marie Cirillo
_______________________________________________________
Hey Bernard, How about a trade for eggs??
Hello Everyone,
I'm in the kitchen making sauce and kneading dough. If you're interested please read below.
Anne
Cirillo's Italian Cuisine
My grandparents, Joseph and Elgesera Cirillo immigrated with their five children to Ontario, Canada in the late 1950's. Together they opened Cirillo's Italian Restaurant. My grandmother became famous for her traditional Italian cuisine, especially her tomato sauce. It is my honour continue the family tradition of making delicious Italian foods.
Tomato Sauce:
- 1 litre - $12
- 1/2 litre - $7
Pizza Dough:
- Organic Spelt - $5 - add $2 for side baggie of sauce to make pizza - (makes a small/medium pizza)
- Organic White - $5 - add $2 for side baggie of sauce to make pizza - (makes a small/medium pizza)
- White Unbleached - $5 - add $3 for side baggie of sauce to make pizza - (makes a large pizza)
Additions to the menu are coming.
I am happy to deliver or you are welcome to pick it up. My usually delivery day is Friday.
Please email to cirillositaliancuisine@shaw.ca or call 250-507-5197 to order.
Anne Marie Cirillo
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Chickens in the media
The other week I was interviewed by Sarah Elton for the Globe and Mail. Here is the article.
The latest edition of the Economist also has a story about the backyard chicken movement in the US. This is the article.
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Meanwhile in some restaurant stuff, we were at White Spot last night, the one at Quadra and McKenzie. Sheila is tracking her calorie intake closely at the moment and to help with this I asked if they had any nutritional information about their food. Turns out they have a full binder of complete details of everything on their menu.
The latest edition of the Economist also has a story about the backyard chicken movement in the US. This is the article.
---------------------------------------------------
Meanwhile in some restaurant stuff, we were at White Spot last night, the one at Quadra and McKenzie. Sheila is tracking her calorie intake closely at the moment and to help with this I asked if they had any nutritional information about their food. Turns out they have a full binder of complete details of everything on their menu.
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