Sipster Vol.3
Sipster Vol.3
Welcome back, friends! This is Part 3 of my ongoing foray into grape life as a self-proclaimedSipster. It has been a tough few months for all of us, yet here we are and I am very thankful. I’m thankful for health and safety of our friends and families. I’m thankful that I was able to continue to work this whole time. I am thankful to all the frontline workers who had our backs throughout! I'm sending a huge shout out to everyone who donated community cups. It was a pleasure delivering them to the R.C.M.P. officers, the Comox by-law offers and the hospital and ambulance essential workers. A lot of love was shared over the past several months and I think it was the positivity and support that floated us through. I know that we as a local business couldn’t have done it without all the local support and the support of our wine club members everywhere. Thank you!
Some things have changed, there were hoops to jump... I mean regulations to follow in order to re-open safely. All the extra steps have slowed some of the services but increased the safety of our customers and staff exponentially. So I’d say it’s a fair trade. I wanted “Slow and in control helps keep the corona low!” on our chalkboard but I couldn’t sell it. I’ll work on some more slogans.
What I think is most important now, is that we can celebrate again. Wine Wednesdays are back, our employees are back and the tasting room is opened! In fact, one of the good things to come of all of this was the new format for tastings. My wife Alana says the tastings have become more intimate with more storytime and more sharing. More leisurely like wine should be.
Sounds nice right? I wouldn’t know. I’ve been sweating away in the vineyard here as well as the vines on Quadra! Yes, we are farming another vineyard on Quadra island, complete with an apple orchard. As well we are farming another orchard to the south of us. Rumour has it we might be dabbling in some traditional sparkling apple wine. But first I have to get through harvest.
If you haven’t been out to the winery lately, our vines are growing like crazy. I’ll add some pictures for you of both vineyards and see if you can guess which is which. The toiling is paying dividends because we got little baby grapes or “bapes” peeking out everywhere.
I keep meaning to do a smoldering exposé on how we make our traditional Brut and Soleil Rose but I'm always playing catch up with so much stuff going on! I do want to give a shout out to the amazing people who were on the bottling line the past couple of weeks, we couldn’t do it without you and I had fun popping all those bottles. I can’t express enough how much support and dedication it takes to keep a winery as large as 40 Knots going. It literally takes a whole community. That’s why I’m so proud when we are able to give back. The donations to our frontline workers or Agriculture for Autism initiative Brenda and Layne have been involved in for six years or the open vocal support of our LGBTQ community, I’m going to put an, etc here because I could go on and on but that’s what being part of a community is. I for one am proud of our not so little farm. We are cultivating grapes and love. Come by and visit soon, bring your whole family.