The Wine Symposium Hangover...Figuratively Speaking

Now that the Atlantic Canada Wine Symposium is over, it is back to reality for us.  It is now time to take everything that we learned and try and leverage as much as we can to do two main things:

1) Enhance the Content for this Blog
2) Become better Brand Ambassadors for the Wines and Wineries of Nova Scotia

For the content we want to make sure what we are talking about is as relevant as possible for our audience.  I am taking to heart the discussion from the Media Panel with Christina Harnett, Craig Pinhey, and Peter Spurway where they stated (and I am paraphrasing) that you need to provide interesting material with which to write stories and that makes engaging your audience easier.  So, we are challenging ourselves to keep the discussion interesting and lively.  So, let's see how that goes.

As for being a better Brand Ambassador, that task is much, much easier.  I saw so many good things going on and tasted some really great wines.  I think the easiest thing to get on board with is that we do aromatic whites really well and that is something we really need to play up.  The Tidal Bay Appellation and Sparkling wines are the first steps but there are so many more things we think might work to enhance the reputation of our wines.  We think the first place to start is domestically in the Atlantic Provinces.  We need to be better self-promoters and we need the restaurants in the area to not just pay lip service to that, we need them to really get on board with the fact that when someone orders grilled Digby Scallops they should (no they need) to pair it with a L'Acadie Blanc or Tidal Bay as the first choice.  The Chilean Sauvignon Blanc or French Chardonnay or German Riesling can then be second choices.  We need that level of commitment to our own products in the name of Buy Local or whatever other reason will help us move these products into the Nova Scotia mainstream.  The comment was made that we are all related to Captain Morgan here in the Maritimes and that is pretty accurate overall, but there are so many foodies out there who just need to be shown the light in the right way and using the right medium.  There is definitely an huge opportunity here at home.  We would also be well served by continuing to show our products to the world because we have a lot to offer.  One thing that would make this a lot easier would be the passing of Bill C-311 to tear down any barriers between provinces to expand our domestic wine market.....finally. 

We are also very interested to see what the next steps for the Atlantic Wine Institute might be.  Shannon asked me to fill her in let's just say it was a short conversation.  We are still a little fuzzy on what specific things it will be doing and who are the major stakeholders it will represent.  Will Acadia now offer a Wine Program like Brock University?  Is it a grape growing science lab?  We would love to know more about the mandate and the practical things that will be taking place.  In fact, if anyone who is connected to the program would like a medium to present these things, consider UnfussyWine.com your platform.  Either way, we look forward to hearing more.

Keep on drinking!

Chris & Shannon