The Tasting Room with Terry David Mulligan

October 31, 2008

Letter to Editor

Tasting Room with Terry David Mulligan

I've been travelling my own wine trail lately. My weekly radio series The Tasting Room has taken me to Vancouver and to a series of food and wine interviews in Victoria, Oliver, Osoyoos and Edmonton. Each trip gave me an even better understanding of what makes certain wines popular and why certain foods are spectacular partners with certain wines and why certain restaurants "get it.”

Like Cafe Brio in Victoria, to read that wine list and menu...is to find balance. The restaurants that don't "get it" are the ones that try to impose their tastes on the customers with little consideration given to other opinions, other tastes and knowledge.

My other journeys have been taken on behalf of Hollywood and Vines, the food and wine TV series that Jason Priestley and I conceived several years ago. We're now shooting Year Two for Super Channel in Canada. Season Two will begin to air this winter. Hollywood and Vines is not your usual TV wine show. We've seen them all and thought there was always something missing in each. Yes we do winemaker, chef, sommelier interviews, mess with the food and in my case ask goofy questions. However, we also wanted to de-mystify the business of wine and make it far more approachable and perhaps bring it to a whole new audience.

This year we started filming Year Two in Nova Scotia. We'd heard rumblings of a new spike in production and growth and yup it's all there. Including a winery called Benjamin Bridge that appears to be making a world class bubbly, we'll know 2 years down the road. The food industry back East is currently well ahead of the wines, but there'll be balance soon enough. Next stop was Niagara, where wineries abound as far as the eye can see. Their fundraising festival was a classy affair. Jann Arden was the MC, (she did a lip lock on Priestley that made headlines the next day)and the Pointer Sisters and Temptations were also performing.

Now we've just wrapped up a return visit to the Okanagan where we visited Nk'Mip, Jackson Triggs, Chef Roger Planiden at Cellar Door at Sumac Ridge, Bill Eggert-The Bear at Fairview Cellars, the best kept secret in BC wines, Le Vieux Pin, and, finally, the rock and roll king of the kitchen Ned Bell at Cabana.

Next trip. Italy.

What a life!!

PS – Tasting Room Radio is now on air in Toronto and Edmonton as well as Kelowna, Summerland and Vancouver.

~ Terry David Mulligan

Email | Print | Letter to Editor | Share on Facebook

The Tasting Room with Terry David Mulligan

Most read across BC