From the category archives:

Hired Belly’s Best Wines

Why is this man smiling?

May 16, 2012

Because he always is!  I like this pic of Peller / Sandhill / Calona winemaker guru Howard Soon. It was just a quick snap, taken at a recent BC Wine tasting. But it shows you exactly the way Howard is: always there with something interesting to say and usually with a positive spin. It was [...]

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First Tastes from Lillooet: Fort Berens Unveils its Inaugural Estate Releases

May 6, 2012

Last week in Holland they were celebrating Koninginnedag or Queens Day—a national holiday in honour of the Queen, when everyone wears orange to the max. Rolf de Bruin and Heleen Pannekoek (who came to BC from the Netherlands) were also celebrating (and wearing orange), for a different reason. They were pouring the first releases of [...]

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Perfect Pairings: German Riesling (and more) Rules at Vancouver’s Bao Bei

May 2, 2012

We’re still stoked about last week’s German wine pairing dim sum, presented by the German Wine Institute with Master of Wine Jeannie Cho Lee, at Vancouver’s Bao Bei, Tanis Ling’s groundbreaking Chinese room. As we’re tight for time, here’s our North Shore News story (below) to bring you up to speed. In summary, though, we [...]

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Joie Springs Eternal: An Annual Highlight

April 16, 2012

Our recent nod to the BC Liquor Stores Alsace promo  just happened to coincide with the release of Joie Farm’s latest crop of whites and ever popular rosé. And, as usually seems to be the case, right out of the gate, the Joie wines are an indication of what to expect for 2011 (overall, a challenging year) [...]

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Alsace Puts a Spring in Our Palate

April 14, 2012

Up in the lofty surrounds of a marble clad tower high above downtown Vancouver, HiredBelly.com’s cutting edge IT department is still grappling with the challenge of how to present our ongoing Belly’s Best wine picks in a timely and easily accessible way. We’ll let you know when they finally get it figured out. (If they [...]

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Wine Festival Vintners Brunch Food & Wine Smackdown: Lift Ascends

March 8, 2012

Most people know the Wine Festival’s Vintner’s Brunch as the festival’s flagship food and wine event. It usually sells out within minutes of tix being available—even more so now that it’s held in the dazzling surrounds of the new Convention Centre West, with its sweeping ocean-mountain vista. Few realize that beyond being a pretty nice [...]

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Tasting Diversity – Speed dating wine-style with some of Chile’s best

March 7, 2012

Another Vancouver Playhouse International Wine Festival done! But what an action packed week, with an amazing array of events, most of which went off without a hitch. Kudos to the tireless Playhouse team, to the legion of unsung volunteers who make this thing work, and especially to Wines of Chile, for truly raising the bar on [...]

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Sun Peaks Winter Wine Festival: The Skiing Senator, Snowshoes and Syrah

January 30, 2012

How much fun can you have at an award-winning ski resort with a couple of dozen BC wineries in tow, more than a few good meals—and even some healthy outdoor exercise? Plenty! Last week’s whirlwind trip to Sun Peaks Resort for the 14th Annual Winter Okanagan Wine Festival yielded more material than we could squeeze into [...]

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Canned Budget Bites by the Book: Moving Well Beyond Sardines on Toast

January 24, 2012

A few weeks before Christmas we dropped into Barbara-Jo’s Books to Cooks to take a peek at what’s hot in the culinary book world. And, as usual, we wound up picking up a couple of things that would make fun gifts—but somehow we forgot to give them away. One was Len Deighton’s French Cooking for [...]

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Going Haywire (with a little BS thrown in) at Edible Canada at the Market

December 20, 2011

Yesterday we took time out from our pre-holidays deadline whirl, and Zagat Survey wrap-up (hence the lack of posts here), to catch lunch with the Okanagan Crushpad gang and consulting winemaker  Alberto Antonini. His best quote of the day was: “If I was a yeast, I wouldn’t want to spend my life in stainless steel!”, [...]

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