A few weeks ago I was invited to a wine tasting at Salt in Gastown. I was excited to accept the invitation even more so when I found out that Aidan’s preschool teacher babysat. (Anthony figures it was a really expensive softball game but I was happy to try out the situation so we could have a reliable babysitter available.)
Urban Reserve was putting on the wine tasting and I was assured by Colleen that the swag was fabulous. So I thought to myself, getting to try new wines, check out Salt, eat some fantastic cheeses and meats, what is the downside? Turns out there was no downside. The food was fabulous, Salt was cool and the company was out of this world. I got to hang around with some of my favourite Vancouver bloggers and Social Media twitterati.
I sat with Terra and Karen and was right across from Raul and Adrienne. We chatted about the food and worked at learning more about how to taste and categorize our wines. Using the five S’s: See, Swirl, Smell, Sip and Savour we rated the wines, made notes about the taste and then figured out what we would spend on a bottle. Of course I really should have brought my notes home but they got left on the table.
What was left unsaid until after we had finished tasting all four wines was that these wines were made from wine kits. These kits were the RJ Spagnaols and the company that provides grapes for wines all over the world also provides kit wines from all over the world. This is their chance to show a new group of people how good making your own wine can be. The joke on us we laughed at what we would have paid for a bottle of wine, realizing that these wines would cost about 1/3 the amount we would have paid in a store.
While there was one wine we would not have bought, three of the four were very good. This was a good sign as we learned about the swag coming to us. Each of us had a coupon for a wine making experience. Thirty bottles of wine to make at one of six locations in Greater Vancouver. The only thing we had to do was pick out a wine, put in the yeast and help with the bottling in a few weeks.
This brings me to part of the reason why I am writing about this experience. As part of the potential swag there were cards to give out about Urban Reserve. The person at this tasting event who signs up the most people to join Urban Reserve will get tickets to an event at the 2010 Olympics. As a member of the Urban Reserve website you will get invitations to events like wine tastings, or author events during the year. There are chances to exchange wine/food pairings, or discuss wine in as much or as little detail as you want. While the main two communities are based in Toronto and Vancouver at the moment, the site is not mearly geared toward those two cities.
I am asking all that read this blog to join Urban Reserve (urbanreserve.ca) and when asked at the bottom of the registration let them know that Gwen Floyd sent you. If I only have a small chance at winning the tickets so be it. I just want to make sure I did my best and I think that if you like wine and want to learn more about wine of all kinds then this is a really good way to start. I may even start a wine blog of my own to let you know a little about my own adventures.