I have a tee shirt that says this on the back. I got it at the Bow and Arrow pub in Toronto. The beauty of it, of course, is that the message works pretty well everywhere you go.
Here in Halifax we have two very good micro-breweries and a couple of good brew pubs. There are now many different types of beer available fresh, in keg in our city. Any bar that has pretensions of sophistication must have a tap from one of these places. Period. There is no argument to parry this statement that holds water... or, er, beer.
Witness the Argyle Street scene. In comes the Carleton, with a lot of investment in fit-up, but they appear to have sold their "tap soul" to a major brewery. Not one decent beer on tap. Yet, at the same time, a more unexpected place to find a good beer on tap, perhaps, Seven Wine Bar, offers Propeller Bitter. Fizz, a new drinks place between the Subway and the Bitter End has not one decent beer available. And by decent I mean non-factory made beer. Yet next door at the Bitter End there is Garrison, at least one type, on tap.
The large factory brewers have one motivation - make a product that can be sold to as many people as possible and sell as much (in volume) as possible by whatever means. They regularly manage to provide bar owners with "incentives" to keep their beers on tap, and others' off the bar. This is Halifax's dirty little secret in the bar scene, a practice that is never regulated by the Province.
But when owners care about the quality of their wares, they choose differently. The best pub in town, Tom's Little Havana, has a suite of Garrison products. The Economy Shoe Shop and all its various affiliated licenses offer both Propeller and Garrison. Most places worth eating in the city have at least one of the local micros to drink.
There is no reason for a responsible Haligonian who wants to have a night out, need go to any place that does not support the local (as in true local, owned by Nova Scotians) beer business.
This analogy extends to wines. Again, many places are ignorant, so much so that if they have a Nova Scotian wine available, it is actually not made in Nova Scotia, or at least the grapes are not grown here. We now have so many decent quaffable wines at prices that can translate to affordable by the glass offerings in bars and restaurants, that there is no excuse for any place not to offer good Nova Scotia wine. Again, The Carleton falls flat on it face. But Fizz looks great, with the yummy strawberry accented Blomidon Rosé available by the glass. A perfect wine to sip while watching the street go by from their patio.
Most places with a trained Sommelier (not just someone who calls themself that) offer a number of different Nova Scotia wines. In fact, that may very well be the best way to identify a wine list that is professionally prepared in Nova Scotia. The losers have all the standard Australian best sellers at the NSLC with the big marketing budgets. Any place that you see, for example, Gaspereau Seyval Blanc on the list probably has a real Sommelier choosing the wines. Demonstrating an understanding of the local wines is one way for a restaurant to illustrate that it has an understanding of local food. Wine is food.
So, if you want to reinforce real local business with your spending, drink locally. When you are in Toronto, drink their beers and Niagara or Prince Edward County wines. In Montreal, drink their beers, and try Quebec wine (it can be good). And use the beer taps on the counter as a gauge of what to expect elsewhere in the place.
I vote with my palate. No reason you can't too.
4 comments:
Do you believe there is room for another micro in NS? If so, what kind of beer would you like to see brewed by said start-up?
With the Pumphouse now free to market in NS with no punitive taxes like those that killed HansHaus (the first real microbrewery in the Maritimes)the room for a newcomer is smaller. If Pumphouse takes the leap of faith to bottle and ship a serious IPA along the lines of Garrison's (which at last taste had some problems) then the ale segment may be full for now.
HOWEVER - I have been saying for some time now that there is an obvious niche for a real, pure, Reinheitsgebot conforming lager on our shelves. Moosehead came close with the Joe Clancy's Special Lager, and then with their version of Carlsberg. But a Creemore Springs, or King Pilsner type beer would be in my fridge constantly if I could buy it local and fresh.
Of course, the startup costs for a lager brewery are high, because you need more tankage, and refrigerated tankage at that. And more space too.
But the Creemore Springs model would be a good one to follow.
You - obviously - have zero business background and I doubt highly any credible beverage alcohol experience. I work in this industry and have for several years. I am in for the money (like most I have a family to support and a mortgage to pay). News flash we all are in it for the money – that includes small micro brewery owners, restaurant and bar owners and wineries.
To call restaurants that have Aussie wines on their list “losers” is small minded and petty and disrespects the customer who wants to see these on a list. Taking a swipe at sommeliers that do not have a cross section of NS wine on a wine list is silly. They are putting wines on alist that customers want. Are you a sommelier? What credentials do you have in this area? I bet none.
All restaurants and bars that I work with do what they can to support local business but customers speak - with their wallets. There is a small demand for local mirco brewed beer and very little to no demand for Nova Scotia wine. When NS wines get better and do a better job of marketing the demand will increase. Outside of a few shining examples the quality is just not there yet and consumers are not willing to shell out for them. Good days ahead but not quite yet.
It is always interesting to read pointless diatribes from wall paper people like you who obviously have never had to actually make a living in the industry. Please keep posting this dribble.
Clearly Mr or Ms Anonymous does not know me. They probably know me, but they don't know who writes the "dribble" here. Or they do, and are having fun. Which is cool.
Or perhaps they have made a pretty good living feeding people crap beverage for a long time, and can't adapt to the fact that people might like something better. The status quo is a comfortable place, after all. Playing it safe is a traditional Maritime strategy. Only rich people take chances any more. The poor stay poor. So, stay poor.
Australian wines include some wonderful things that we can get here: Peter Lehman, Barossa Valley Estates, Sandalford, Henschke, Majella, and several other exemplary producers. Unfortunately those wines do not show up on local wine lists too often (there are 32 bottles of Aussie wine in my cellar, and one on the counter, right now, I buy and drink Aussie wine). When they do, they are too often ordered by people who mismatch them terribly with food, thus lessening their dining pleasure. And you know what? I bet they blame the food, not the wine. So the kitchen takes the blame for a bad wine list. Fact - most Australian wine on wine lists in Nova Scotia is of a mediocre quality, and not really suitable to pair with food. Much of it is a nice drink as a cocktail, but most of those on local lists lack acidity, structure and tannin to suit the foods they are being asked to match.
Anonymous sounds like your classic salesperson/agent rep selling booze who knows nothing about their product outside of what the spin doctors have written about it, and less about the greater world of wine. Just look at the wine lists of the successful restaurants in town. The winners have great, or at least very good lists. Some places survive on great food, despite having mediocre lists, other are doomed to be, um, losers. There is too much competition now anyway, some culling will occur.
I wonder how "Bear" will do? (They have hired Sommelier Wade Dhooge away from janes on the common and previously Saege, so the wine list will be very good, not boring, not predictable, and suitable to have with the menu)
I am a businessperson, and pretty successful at it, I suppose. I understand that people have to eat. But that does not mean they have to have wine that does not match with their food when there are better alternatives available.
I agree completely when people comment on NS wines not being up to scratch, but only if you take as the sample the ones that many bar and restaurant owners put on their lists in town. Most of the wine sold by Jost is not my cup of tea. But Eagle Tree Muscat, and Gaspereau's L'Acadie Blanc and Seyval Blanc, are worthy food matches in anyone's world. And there is enough of it made for most places to use it. Any knowledgeable person in the wine business can easily direct you to local white wines that are very agreeable - reds are more rare, I agree, but they do exist - might I suggest some Leon Millot next time?
Sommeliers trained here know all this, and shake their heads at the ignorance of people from away who can't get past a label. Well, let me tell you, I generally hate California 15.5% abv wines. And even more when they cost $150 a bottle.
As for beer, well, the entire city is pretty well a tied house. Slagging Keith's here (which is basically Labatt 50) is like slagging the Pope when in Rome. That allegiance is totally illogical/religious with the exception of the highly paid union jobs the brewery provides. They do represent a valuable local component, so when I have to drink mass produced beer, I will choose local (I prefer Moosehead, as they are still independent).
Keiths is sold to us by gazillionaires in Brazil and Belgium - we are their tenant farmers, sharecroppers, company store owned miners, when it comes to beer. Propeller and Garrison are owned by the guys in the brewery, making a so so living, trying to fight world scale marketing budgets designed to make us drink mass produced beer through marketing, not taste.
If I were doing a beer list, sure, I'd have Keiths on it in Halifax. The customers would demand it. But I'd also have good beer.
Credentials are not what blogs are about! This blog is about making people think about what they see, drink and eat in town. And I am happy to have caused Anonymous to think a bit.
Hope it didn't hurt too much....
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