Calgary Wine Life: Value Wine Uncorked! (by Shelley Boettcher)

17 12 2012

[Cross-posted at www.calgaryisawesome.com.  This book was provided as a sample for review purposes.]

Uncorked2013COVERYou almost certainly don’t need me to remind you that it’s December 17th.  By some true Christmas miracle, I managed to finish both my shopping AND my wrapping this past weekend, easily setting a new XMas Efficiency Standard for myself.  But if you happen to be using the eight days between now and the 25th to scramble madly around looking for last-minute gifts, fear not, because I can help you with two simple words:  buy wine.  Shopping = finished.  Everybody likes receiving a gift they can drink, and even if they aren’t sure about the wine you pick out on the first sip, by the fifth glass I guarantee they’ll be all over it.  Alternatively, if you don’t quite feel up to the pressure of picking out that perfect bottle for the people you love, you can do the next best thing and buy them a book that tells them what that perfect bottle might be.  Shelley Boettcher’s slightly pre-emptive 2013 edition of Uncorked! is one such book that is focused on finding that rarest of beasts:  good cheap wine.  All of its recommendations clock in at $25 or less retail.  It is also the only such wine guide that I have seen which is geared entirely to the Alberta market instead of to American or European audiences, each of whom have a remarkably different selection of vino to choose from than we do here.  If you live in the province, you should be able to find at least some of these wines at a shop near you; if you live in Calgary or Edmonton, you should have access to almost all of them. Read the rest of this entry »





New Links!

24 07 2011

I realized two things today:  (1) I hadn’t updated my Links section down the right-hand page of this site since I started PnP, and (2) my Links section sucked.  When thinking about how best to describe it, words like “half-hearted” and “filler” jumped to mind.  Well, no more — I set about re-tooling it tonight and I feel I’ve upgraded it to at least “work in progress” or “mediocre-plus”.  Check out my new additions below, most of which are wine sites that I visit on a regular basis.

I especially want to invite you to take a look at some of the other local wine blogs that are out there, all of whom do a wonderful job of building and promoting Calgary’s wine culture.  YYC Wine is sharp, well-written and easily readable, and they provide not only regular insightful wine reviews (with specific mention of where in Calgary/Alberta you can find each subject bottle) but also write-ups of special wine events in the city.  Check out YYC on Twitter (@yycwine), where they have been known to pass along info about some killer Calgary wine deals…  Tom Firth is a wine blogger and reviewer for Canada’s own Wine Access magazine, but I know him best from his prolific and interactive tweets (@cowtownwine)…I’ve gotten more than one piece of sage 140-character vino advice from him in the past few months.  Highlander Wine & Spirits (@highlanderwine) runs its own stream-of-consciousness wine blog, Vinous Virtuosity, as does the Calgary Herald with Uncorked, the latter of which I use more for local events news than actual wine write-ups.

Do you know of any other solid Calgary online wine contributors?  If so, please let me know in the Comments section below, because I would love to add them to my Links.  There’s an amazing amount of local expertise in our fair city, but I feel like a lot of people don’t know where to look to find it…that seems like something that can be fixed if we do enough to spread the word.  Have a great week!